On the evening of Monday, March 31, all the Sisters of the Senegal area, together with the Novices and Prenovices, went to the Foyers de Charité Center in Cap des Biches to live a time of retreat with the Lord, led by Fr. Joseph Ndong, an Oblate of Mary Immaculate. We had the grace of being able to gather, meditate, and pray with rich and varied teachings. Our retreat falls within the dynamic of the Jubilee Holy Year, a year of forgiveness and remission of sins that we lived in three dimensions: prayer, silence, and Scriptures. During this week we expressed our gratitude to God through contemplation of God’s creation, before which we are amazed, recognizing beauty in it and entering a profound relationship with God.
In the first days, walking through the nature, we discovered our smallness and we paused before what attracted our attention, since we are caretakers of what God has created. Contemplation allowed us to make an internal pilgrimage and discover God’s love within us, deepening our conformity to Christ.
Then we reflected on how to look after the roots of our faith to feed the flame of hope. Being sowers of hope means bringing light into darkness, instilling courage in those who doubt, and reviving the flame of hope in those who have lost it. In a spirit of synodality, we are invited to collectively and actively build community. Reviving the flame of hope in a spirit of synodality means learning that we are not alone in our mission.
Since we are in the Jubilee year, we have the courage and the capacity to forgive and have mercy. Community life then becomes a workshop of forgiveness, a privileged place of mercy. It will, therefore, be necessary to arm ourselves with humility and truth to live this dimension.
Lastly, through the parable of the sower in Mark, we deepened our awareness of being like the sower going out to sow. The consecrated person who has received the seed of the Word of God is in turn called to be a sower of hope. The fruit that the Word has produced in us is called to be sown in the heart of believers, adopting the same pedagogy of the Sower par excellence, a model of charity, faith, and hope. “You received without payment; give without payment.”
We are grateful to God for this intense time that we lived in God’s presence, far from the noise and tasks of our everyday life. During the whole retreat we carried the life of every Sister and Associate in our hearts in this Jubilee year. We then returned to our communities, strengthened and renewed in Christ’s love.
SFP Novices Clémence Ngom and Mathilde Thiaw
