Oct 2013 The Road to Daybreak A Spiritual Journey by Henri J M Nouwen

Continue from ...... On Retreat Tonight I am in Nevers, five hours by car from Trosly. I am here to make a "covenant retreat" with Jean Vanier and forty L'Arche assistants. We will be here the whole week to pray, listen to Jean's reflections on living the Gospel at L'Arche, share ideas and experiences, and explore the bond we have with handicapped people. The Cry of the Poor Two themes run through Jean's reflections: the descending way of God and the call to find God not just by serving the poor, but by becoming poor. God, who created the universe in all its splendour, decided to reveal to us the mystery of the divine life by becoming flesh in a young woman living in a humble village on one of the small planets of God's own creation. Jesus' life is marked by an always deeper choice of what is small, humble, poor, rejected, and despised. The poor are the preferred dwelling place of God. Thus they have become the way to meet God. Handicapped people are not only poor; they also reveal to us our own poverty. Their primal call is an anguished cry: "Do you love me?" and "Why have you forsaken me?" When we are confronted with that cry, so visible in those people who have no capacity to hide behind their intellectual defenses, we are forced to look at our own terrible loneliness and our own primal cry. We hear this cry everywhere in our world. Jews, blacks, Palestinians, refugees, and many others all cry out, "Why is there no place for us, why are we rejected, why are we pushed away?" Jesus has lived this primal cry with us. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He, who came from God to lead us to God, suffered the deepest anguish a human being can suffer, the anguish of being left alone, rejected, forgotten, abandoned by the one who is the source of all life. L'Arche is founded on this cry of the poor. L'Arche is a response to the cry of Jesus, which is the cry of all who suffer anguish and who wonder if there can be any real bond with anyone. Jesus came to reunite, to heal, to form bonds, to reconcile. He shared our anguish so that through our anguish we would be able to find the way back to God. Jesus descended to ascend. "He emptied himself ... he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross ... for this God raised him high and gave him the name which is above all other names." (Philippians 2:7-9).

- To Be Continued - © Copyright Shalom 2013. All rights reserved.