Healed to heal

Entering the retreat through the door of prayer, we began the second day with the Eucharist presided by Father Felicísimo Martínez, a Dominican priest. In his homily, he recalled three essential points of today’s Gospel: scandals, forgiveness and faith. Living our vocation and our commitments with respect and dignity helps us to avoid scandals. To live forgiveness is to discover God’s mercy for me and for others. Faith is key to our consecrated life, and may the prayer of the apostles be ours: “Lord, increase our faith”.

We continued our day of retreat, led by Sr. Jolanta Kafka RMI, where we contemplated the way God looks at us. How does he look at each one of us? At our congregation? At our community? At our chapter assembly? And at all humanity? In this dynamism, she invited us to imitate God’s gaze, full of love without prejudice, merciful, renewing, that motivates us and touches us in the depths of our hearts to reach out to others.

He also reminded us that we are vulnerable and fragile, so we can be hurt by others and we can hurt them too. However, the best response to these wounds is forgiveness and a promise: to be there, to do better…. To be a missionary is to alleviate the pain of the people.

We concluded the day with a celebration full of symbolism in which we went through the heart all the movements that we had lived throughout the day. In an atmosphere of prayer prepared by Sister Jolanta, we asked the Lord for forgiveness for all the times we had not protected, cared for or defended life, but were accomplices of indifference, selfishness and injustice. We presented our wounds and those of the other people we had accompanied, writing them on a piece of paper in the shape of a heart. Then, we anoint them with the perfumed oil as a sign of our commitment to alleviate them. Finally, we ask the Lord for the grace to alleviate the pain of all kinds that we encounter in our lives and to remain faithful to these commitments, each of us presenting the bouquet of flowers in the chapel.