From Sr. Marie Sakina, Lilongwe Community, Malawi
How good and pleasant it is when brothers and sisters live together in unity.
Psalm 133:1
I would paraphrase this passage of psalm 133:1 “How good and pleasant it is when sisters pray together in unity! That is what I would say of our common retreat which we had in Uganda from 15th to 24th October2023. Those who lived this retreat would bear witness with me. At least that is what I felt.
Our congregation in its constitutions (No 48 paragraph 3) states the following:
To keep our lives centered on Christ in faithfulness to his call, we take time for a daily examen, a monthly day of recollection and an annual retreat.
This shows that making an annual retreat is one of the “perks” of consecrated religious life for us consecrated religious. Moreover, doing the retreat together as sisters of the same religious family is even greater, supportive and strengthening one another in our faith.
Personally, I look forward each year to time away from every day work and my daily routine to deepen my relationship with God. Although we pray daily as Sisters in the community and individually, there is something special about making a commitment of several days of silence, prayer, and reflection in retreat and that together with other sisters.
Besides doing the retreat together as sisters, there was something special to this retreat:
The deepening of the eight beatitudes. (cf. Mt 5:3-10)
I have prayed with the beatitudes several times; however, I have never had an opportunity to deepen and pray with each beatitude separately. It was the first time to live this during a retreat. This experience helped to know the beatitudes more deeply and feel the challenge the message they carry. I learned that I can even prepare by confession by looking at my life in the light of the beatitudes. The beatitudes also invited me to work on myself in order to be that blessed, good, authentic person that the beatitudes are describing. To live the beatitudes in my daily life, my responsibilities and services entrusted to me in order to build a society, community where people act as peacemakers.
I thank Bishop Rodrigo Mejia S.J who is the author of the book: “The Beatitudes, Road to Happiness” and who accepted to direct our retreat.
I would like also to thank our leaders Sr. Victoire Niyonzima and Sr. Harriet Kabaije for taking the initiative of organizing the common retreat. We hope that possibilities for common retreats will be organized in future. Such occasion is a grace-filled occasion to allow ourselves to be “captured” once again by the love of God in Jesus Christ.
Thus, with our whole heart, soul and mind renewed in the living waters of Scripture and the Holy Spirit, may we be helped to “walk in the Lord’s ways” with our entire being!
