Today, is our last day in Madrid. This week-end was marked by the power of the joy. The joy to be together: to pray, to play football, or to drink a beer! The joy, to be with other people and to share fraternal moment in simplicity.
Friday afternoon, we did a prayer in Sercade. We prayed with some guys of the center, and people of the parish. We were waiting for a priest and some young volunteer of the parish. But, what a joy, when I opened the door and I saw in front of me, Francisco (the priest), but also five or six young people, with guitar and violin, a sister, another priest and 2 or 3 other people of the parish. They were coming, to prayed as we do in Taizé, but also to prayed with migrants. This was for us, very strong, and beautiful. We spend a month praying “alone”, Francisco and me, just two voices acapella in the chapel. To have in one go, some twenty people, (with instrument) praying with us was a moment of gladness.
In the end of the prayer, the young people from Madrid started to sing, music of their local repertoire. This was splendid. People start to clap their hands. We were living something together. We were living a moment for God. We call him Jesus, other in the room call him Allah, but we were praying together for him.
After, the prayer, we stayed in Sercade, to close the place with Carmen and Carlota (the center’s leaders). On leaving we meet one of the young lawyers who comes to help refugees in asylum procedures, he invites us to have a drink. So, we went to the bar, with some other volunteer of Sercade. It was also a moment of joy. Quite, different of course… But, I really appreciated this moment of friendliness. Relationships between people are very different, when we are “out of the work”. We discover others under a new angle and we feel closer. I think that there are things that are vectors of fraternity no matter, languages or cultures. Sharing a beer is one of them! (Of course, we can also have this kind of moment without alcohol).
Another example of a moment of intercultural fraternity is football. I’m not really good football player, besides I have never really enjoyed this activity. But, playing football with others, it’s a very good way, to simply share a moment of joy, gathering people who are so different. So, on Saturday evening, we played football. This was an initiative of Francisco a priest of a parish near to our. Francisco is close to Sercade, he hosts in his house some volunteer and also some refugees that we find in the afternoon in the center. He invites us to play football with them: Casa Boza Vs Nuestra Señora de la Paz. The meeting was at 7p.m. (The Madrid weather does not really allow us to play in the middle of the afternoon). This moment was athletic, fraternal and joyful. One of the guys when we left the football field, after the match, said:
- “C’est bon, ça permet d’oublier les soucis de la vie !”
(In english: “It’s good, we can forget the worries of life”).
With, this sentence, I understood what we had just done. We erased our difference, and shared a moment of great simplicity. We shared this moment, with men who struggle daily to integrate and who still carry the stigma of their past life and long journey, which for many is not yet complete. We allowed them to forget their problems, in the simplicity of a football match.
Praying, playing football and share a drink are so different things. But, they have some common characteristic: their very popular, simple, international, intercultural and by creating fraternal bond they bring joy in the hearts of men.
I have the feeling that this weekend, is not marked, as it could be, by a certain blues before the departure. But more by the concretization of this project, we shared fraternally the joy with all simplicity.
May this holy Joy, remain in us, that with share it with the word!
“El alma que anda en amor, ni cansa, ni se cansa » S. John of the Cross
“Stand in simplicity and joy, the joy of the merciful, the joy of fraternal love.” Br Roger of Taizé, La règle de Taizé, 1953
Since we have shared this time in a Capuchin parish, let us be inspired by St. Francis of Assisi to guide us in our prayer, so that we find the strength to continue on this path of fraternal joy.
“ Lord make me an instrument of your peace Where there is hatred let me sow love Where there is injury, pardon Where there is doubt, faith Where there is despair, hope Where there is darkness, light And where there is sadness, joy
O divine master grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console to be understood as to understand To be loved as to love For it is in giving that we receive it is in pardoning that we are pardoned And it's in dying that we are born to eternal life
Amen »
Jean
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