The theme of the retreat was "I have called you by your name" and it started with a discussion of what a name means and how it is often a very personal aspect of who you are. A name represents a person and is a means of addressing this person. When someone uses your first name, it implies that there is a relationship between you and that person. This is why certain cold calls are disconcerting if they use your first name as you are tricked for a moment into thinking that this person knows you at all. When we consider that God calls us by our name, this shows that there is a relationship between God and ourselves. We also know that God knows who we are.
After this were some talks by two SCIAF representatives who spoke a little about their names and then shared stories of two poor and disabled Indians, called Jagadeesh and Fauzia who were helped by SCIAF funding and the Association of People with Disabilities (APD) who helped them to gain skills so that they could support themselves. Incidentally, I already knew quite a bit about APD as my high school was heavily involved for two years with SCIAF particularly in its funding of APD and my best friend from high school went to Bangalore in India to visit their facility. It is quite likely that he met either Fauzia or Jagadeesh while he was there.
These presentations were quite beneficial because they did not simply show images of poor people accompanied with hand-wringing which I had feared. In fact, one of the speakers from SCIAF quoted the following from Blessed John Paul II's encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis regarding solidarity, i.e. that it is:
not a feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of so many people, both near and far. On the contrary, it is a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say to the good of all and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all.This made clear that the basis of any justice and peace action must be love, which is grounded in love for God and thus has prayer as the cornerstone and an emphasis of the personal nature of charity, hinting at another major aspect of Catholic social teaching - subsidiarity.
Another speaker from the Sant'Egidio community, which was initially set up in Rome to help poor and homeless people there, spoke of how it is very important to them that they find out the name of the people they are helping. This allows the charity that they give to be personal, reflecting the human dignity of those they help. He also spoke of how the presents they give to the poor at the Christmas lunches they hold are all labelled for a specific person to show that someone cares for them and considered their wishes.
After this there was time for reflection. I went into a small library and read a book with modern icons. I disagreed with some of them (some of the icons were most definitely not of saints) but it was a reasonable way to pass the time.
After lunch, I participated in "body prayer", which I admit I didn't enjoy. It was optional, and I thought I'd try it out but I didn't like it. Afterwards, we could choose to attend one of three options of prayer - Lectio Divina (which I chose), imaginative prayer and centering prayer. Having heard dodgy things about centering prayer, I decided to avoid it and since I had a book about lectio divina, I decided to try that one out.
The retreat ended with Mass and then I swapped emails with a couple of folk.
