From Bobo-Dioulasso Community, Burkina Faso
For us at the novitiate, JPIC-RD is a process of transformation that first touches us personally and then invites us to develop the right relationship with God and with all creation.
Day by day, we discover that JPIC-RD begins with ourselves, with why we were created. The principles and foundations of the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius help us to deepen our mission on earth.
In the novitiate, we insist on a personal relationship with God Triune and with ourselves, in order to live just and peaceful relationships with our brothers and sisters and all other creatures. This is lived out daily in our personal prayer, in our work on ourselves and in all our interactions with people, animals and other creatures.
We realize that whenever we are at peace with ourselves and with God, we become peacemakers and witnesses to justice. The opposite gives us violence, hatred, injustice, domination, frustration, selfishness, destruction of nature…
I became poor to be with the poor.
Here is novice Nadine’s sharing her apostolate outside the novitiate.
In joy, I share with you my apostolic experience at the Notre Dame d’Espérance center. The center welcomes mentally handicapped people. Some of these patients have been abandoned by their families. I’ve found that, for the most part in society, going mad is frowned upon, and it’s thought that there’s no cure for it. They are seen as a burden on the family. The center offers medical and psychological care to patients. Most of those who come to the center come out well. The center’s staff play their part with them, but that’s not enough, because they need affection, listening, etc. To show love to them, they need to be cared for. To show my love for them, I talk to them and listen to them. Sometimes I play soccer or cards with them. I clip their nails. Sometimes I help them water the garden and arrange the vegetables. These gestures have brought me a lot closer to them and I’ve made a lot of friends. I’ve noticed that being with them brings them joy.
Lavigerie words
Nothing human is foreign to me”
give me the strength to go out and share my love and life with the sick. I thank the Lord for his goodness to the sick.
