Religious prophets and mystics. Introduction to the retreat

Presentation of the retreat

Main characters in a retreat:

• God the Father is with us with his plan
• The Son will be the centre of all our talks
• The Holy Spirit will be there to guide us all the way through
• Mary is the model we have to follow
• The devil will be there to disturb us and make sure we gain as less as possible, especially when we feel the desire to become holy. He will tell you: “That’s not for you, that’s too much, Later, I told you, there are other important things, what is going on in my community (school) now, etc,”
• The preacher, me, trying to challenge you with inputs and willing to guide you in any doubts or decisions
• You with all your desires, curiosity, worries, fears, lack of trust etc.

I suggest to you make the experience of the disciples of Emmaus. “Did not our heart burn of desire while he was talking to us on the road?” Pay attention to these motions of the Spirit, treasure them, pray them and as soon as you go home transform them into practical love otherwise they will soon disappear. After all if they would have not invited Jesus into their house they would have not recognised him.

Read the prophet Jonah as representation of humanity (he wants to run away from his responsibility), causer of destructions (storm), accepts the mission and pulls on himself the blame and asks to be thrown into the sea to save the others (death of Christ) and stays for three days in the belly of the fish (Jesus in the tomb). He becomes a real messenger of mercy, yet he remains proud and selfish (He wants to see the punishment of Niniveh).

Jonah is a paradigm of our life. We get up early morning, we go for prayer and offer everything to the Lord, then we start working, hoping that there will be no problems, we meet the needs, get angry at them, find solutions often not understood by those around us. We come back in the evening exhausted and find the house empty, not empty of people, but empty of feelings, we would like that people ask us how was our day but nobody does it, they come and put only extra burden on us. We are tired and yet there are so many things to be done like prayer and meetings. Superiors ask us for new responsibilities and we feel unable to cope, we do not see reasons for doing something new. Now we remember that this morning I had promised to do everything for him, but during the day he was the absent one, we didn’t see him, feel him, the burden was on us only and after all the good results achieved were so because of our hard work. One day we get sick, old, we cannot work anymore and we ask ourselves: what now? The one who comes after me is undoing all my work because he has completely different ideas, a different way of doing things and that burns inside of us as if the years we have been there working had been wrong or useless.

All these situations remind us of the need of clarifying the reasons of our being here, of our vocation. We live in a society so complex that most of the people have confusion in their mind and look at us to have some clear indications, but: do we have clear ideas to give?

Often our young brothers come out of formation with good preparation about prayer community life etc. but no experience of apostolate, except those few days of experience during the novitiate. They arrive to our communities full of enthusiasm, they start working hard. Thanks God the tirocinium is only for two years, then they go for theology. They are now more independent, think they know everything (they learned in tirocinium), they easily criticize the decisions of superiors but somehow they manage to get through those four years. They come now back to the communities and they have also so much knowledge learned at school. They plunge once again into work, they learn social problems but they become progressively cold in the spiritual life, especially in the personal one. Then they get into crisis because some doubts come about the validity of what they have learned during novitiate or theology, they are a bit nostalgic for those good days, they doubt the real utility of what they are doing. We must have clear ideas in ourselves if we want to guide others well.

St Paul in 1 Cor 13:12 has an interesting sentence: “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”

So what is to be done in order to be successful in our vocation, in our being religious, in being Sons of Divine Providence?

During these days we will reflect on the twofold aspect of religious life: to be mystics and to be prophets. John Paul II in the document Vita Consecrata says clearly: “The Consecrated Life, deeply rooted in the example and teaching of Christ the Lord, is a gift of God the Father to his Church through the Holy Spirit. By the profession of the evangelical counsels the characteristic features of Jesus — the chaste, poor and obedient one — are made constantly "visible" in the midst of the world and the eyes of the faithful are directed towards the mystery of the Kingdom of God already at work in history, even as it awaits its full realization in heaven.

In every age there have been men and women who, obedient to the Father's call and to the prompting of the Spirit, have chosen this special way of following Christ, in order to devote themselves to him with an "undivided" heart (cf. 1 Cor 7:34). Like the Apostles, they too have left everything behind in order to be with Christ and to put themselves, as he did, at the service of God and their brothers and sisters. In this way, through the many charisms of spiritual and apostolic life bestowed on them by the Holy Spirit, they have helped to make the mystery and mission of the Church shine forth, and in doing so have contributed to the renewal of society” (VC1).

CL is deeply rooted in the example and teachings of Christ. We will have Christ as main object of our reflection all through the retreat. We are here for him and not for ourselves.

It is a gift of God to his Church. Is not something we do or something for ourselves. We are the depositories of a gift of God to the Church, we have to protect it care for it, not spoil it.

The purpose of the gift is to make visible the feature of Christ and this especially living the three vows. We are not religious in order to teach the poor or to give them medicines or job or house etc. We are religious so the poor may come to know, through our life and apostolate, the image of Christ the Saviour, the teacher, the healer etc.

We devote ourselves to him with an undivided heart. So nothing can come between us and Christ. The apostolate is the way to get closer to Christ. If it becomes in any way an obstacle then we are totally wrong in what we do.

A mystic is a person that realizes that whatever he hears, sees or happens to him, comes from God and is for him.