A new summer season is approaching and there is an abundance of offers for training and cultivation of the spirit.
With Pope Francis we can affirm that We live in an information society that saturates us indiscriminately with data, all at the same level, and ends up leading us to a tremendous superficiality when it comes to moral questions. We need an education that teaches us to think critically and that offers a path to maturity in values. (Evangelii Gaudium, 64)
This is the call that the Malagón Rovirosa Classroom which for years has been developed in the Monastery of Soto Iruz (Cantabria). This space of integral formation offers us the experience of a harmonious balance between study, work and prayer. A singular and unique experience: a sign, a foretaste, imperfect of course, of the society we would like to build.
In the classroom we are invited to learn to to be people, to be family. In these times, this means that we must travel the road from the self-referential and narcissistic "individualist" to the "person" that we are called to be. A person who can never be understood without relationships, without "family", without the solidarity of others in the present and in history. To travel a path that goes from isolation, which disassociates us and destroys us, to encounter, to permanent commitment.
There is another very important experience we can live in the classroom. Perhaps the most important. That of the listenWe need silence. Not an evasive silence, organized to leave aside the anguish of everyday life. But a silence that helps us to stop, to listen. At first, we can only feel the roar of our storms. We come from the noise. The heart is filled with an unbearable din of crickets, of anxieties and anguish, of fears, of shadows of sadness. Only after a while do we discern among the noise the important messages: What have we done with our life? What have we done with our neighbor? What have we done with our weaker, more vulnerable "brothers" in this global world? Why this permanent war against the dignity of human beings? This silence, for Catholic believers, becomes daily and on many occasions Prayer.
We are all invited to this unique and singular experience. In it we welcome the call of Pope Francis to protect our common home through concern for the whole human family, dialoguing about how we are building our society and convinced that things can change if we all take responsibility for each other. Fraternity is possible!
You can find out more about the retreats and meetings at www.solidaridad.net
