Camino online IX

INDIA

BENEDICTINE MONASTERY SAINT MICHAEL

Potential

• • Spiritual Centre: Our monastery is situated in a calm and quite place where, one can spend time in communion with God, which gives much potentialities and hope to us. We emphasize more importance to our motto ‘Ora et labora’.
•  In India where Christianity is only 3 %, the scope for evangelization driven by Christian love is much higher and challenging.
• • Keeping friendly with the nature and preserving the environment, we are practicing and preaching ‘eco – farming’ and uphold the motto ‘green umbrella to mother earth’

Challenges of the Future

•  The waves of secularism, nuclear families and modern thinking affected Kerala also that once known as cradle of vocation as a result there is a slight decline of new vocations.
•  New Juvenile Justice (JJ) Act intended to raise the standard of child homes and orphanages to international level as UNO prescribes. It demands much developments of the infrastructure.
•  The downward trend in the prices of our agricultural products put us under heavy financial pressure; helplessness and financial stringency is storming our monastery.
•  Unexpected variation of climate especially two consecutive floods of 2018 and 2019 seriously gave a hit to our farming.
•  Lack of proper rain on due time and over rain at sometimes derailed our budget.

Difficulties and Projects

We were under ‘lock down from 23rd March to 3rd May 2020. So, we had to cancel the public retreats and Holy Masses with the people’s participation.

•  Agricultural sector, our main source of income had become inactive due to Covid- 19. The price of cardamom had been steeply fell down to an alarming level. Our plantation works have been stopped to keep social distance. It badly affected the life of our workers. The other earning members of their family have also lost their jobs which coupled their miseries.
• • The members of our “Don Bosco” student’s family are also facing this challenge. Since the boys are at home, a few of them could not avail the online classes due to the absence of television and smart phone.

REFLECTION

Working as a hospitalero looking after pilgrims on the camino Francés is an experience like no other. It can be fascinating, frustrating and fun but I have never known it to be boring. The very idea of meeting up to forty strangers and making each of them feel personally welcome each day, is a daunting challenge, especially when you realise that by 8 o’clock the following morning, they will have left the comfort and safety of the refuge and moved on. Despite this, the hospitalero is privileged to meet some very remarkable people and, perhaps, learn a little of their stories.

During the hospitalero training, one of the key points emphasised is to avoid making judgements or assumptions about people. I have to confess that I have failed in this many times, and misjudged people for all the wrong reasons, such as the clothes they wear. I remember a young pilgrim arriving late one evening wearing flip-flops and questioning whether he was a real pilgrim before eventually admitting him to the refuge at which point I realised he was known to some of the other pilgrims and that, yes, he really did walk in flip-flops!

Somehow, encounters with strangers on the camino, can be very intense and can affect us deeply. It’s as if when we lock our own front door and set off from home, we open our inner self to the world around us and start to see things in a fresh and vivid way. It’s almost as if meeting people we don’t know helps us to see ourselves in a new light, which our mundane daily life can make more difficult.

One evening, two men were out walking when they were approached by a third man who started chatting with them. Eventually, they arrived at the inn where they planned to stay and the stranger was about to move on, but since it was getting dark, they persuaded the him to share a meal with them. During the meal, the stranger blessed the bread and wine they were sharing, suddenly the two friends realised who it was, but it was too late for he had already left. “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us?” one of them said and, despite the late hour, they decided to return to Jerusalem to tell their friends of this remarkable event.

It’s fascinating to see that Jesus chose to meet up with his two disciples while they were walking and to share a meal with them even though they hadn’t recognised him. Perhaps, this helps us to understand that the camino can be a way of somehow glimpsing our own divine nature and that sometimes it is reflected in the strangers we meet along the way.

Many returning pilgrims experience the difficulty of keeping this sense of wonder alive under the onslaught of twenty first century daily life and the relentless pressure of the news cycle, the media and instant communications.  By seeing each day of our life as a pilgrimage, we can hope to keep this sense of the Other as a part of our existence. We need to listen and watch what is happening all around and to respond readily to the people we meet and the wonders of creation which surround us as if “our hearts are burning within us”.  This way, the other and the Other become one.

PRAYER

See you next week!