Recollection of the Spiritual Family in France        Ruillé the 18th and 19th January 2019

The Spiritual Family group from the Loiret which is made up of 13 people, including three Religious, met in Ruille for our annual recollection on the 18th and 19th January. This is a time that we all appreciate.

After a warm welcome and our evening meal we met in the Oratory with the group from Rouillon who had prepared the prayer. Our speaker and facilitator, Deacon Claude Cosnard, had already given us the programme of the weekend on the theme:

Together, Towards the Future Dare to be Providence

Listen, Take the book and eat

With a key expression:   Your God delights in You

On Saturday, after a meditative prayer on the theme of the Word of God we had two talks from Claude. The first one was based on the Gospel of Luke  (17:11-19) the healing of the Lepers. After a time in groups and some personal time Claude challenged us to imagine how we would react as the lepers in front of Jesus.. “Leper, why did you come back?”. This enabled us to reflect on our personal reaction with regard to the Gospel scene.

The second talk was on the Gospel of John (2: 1-11) the Wedding Feast at Cana. This was a memory test of the of a well-known Gospel in which we were invited to find the exact words. The aim was to teach us to taste the words rather than paraphrase. All of this was done with lots of humour!

Questionnaires which were put together by Claude enabled us to go deeper during a time of personal prayer.

The presence of Sister Gillian, one of the new General Councillors, who was in Ruille on that day, enabled us to put a face to the name. After lunch, we were delighted to see Sister Martine and Henri Dominique.

We spent some time in our group in order to look at our future existence in the Church. A time of prayer prepared by the group from the Loiret ended our meeting and we arranged to meet on the 6th and 7th July to go on pilgrimage to Sees and Alencon in order to deepen our prayer and to continue to deepen our friendship which has been ongoing for so many years.                                                        

                                                                        Françoise et Grace