Here I Am! – A Reflection from the First Women's Pilgrimage
This is my first text for Powerella. It wasn't clear to me why I hadn't written anything before, but today it is more than clear. I had to go on a pilgrimage and leave everything behind in order to meet and find what I have always been – His beloved daughter. A cliché, at first glance, but it is the only thing we need in order to live to the full what we are called to. To know your identity and, within it, to be and to do. Above all, to be.
Amid the sea of roles I carry as a woman, I too often forget precisely that – simply to be. Without the desperate need to prove myself in one way or another, through work, many children, achievements, books read and quotes, projects, or whatever makes up the list this world applauds. I had to leave and step out of the everyday for that word to come alive again: "Here I am!" – the words I, as a Secular Franciscan, spoke for my whole life. And that is exactly what this pilgrimage was – His call and His providence. The most tender kiss the heavenly Father impressed upon me. An encounter took place, of me with myself and of me with Him – through every woman I saw, touched, heard, and felt.
For days now I have been pondering how to describe everything that happened, but some things take time. I feel like Mary, who pondered these events in her heart and kept them. I would be lying if I said I had any expectations. I have learned to hand everything over to Him and to let Him surprise me. (And He would regularly surprise me with silence and the desert, just as He does with His true friends, Teresa of Ávila or John of the Cross.) I prayed for the women who would go and for their missions, lives, and situations. Every day, together with Ivana, I would dream up a hundred and one scenarios that might befall us, wrestling with myself and my fears, wondering how I fit into all of this. And then we set off, and everything was so familiar and so – simple. Fifty women and simplicity – it doesn't sound very convincing, but it truly was so. A scenario I had not quite expected.
The Visitation of Mary and Elizabeth kept turning over in my mind especially. One woman, though in need herself, hurries to help another woman. And if I had to describe this journey of ours in a single sentence, that would be it. A woman is not a wolf to another woman, but her most faithful support and help. Another lie the pilgrimage dispelled. Ivona, Ivana, and I. Three completely different characters, different interests, and by every worldly criterion we are incompatible. One an entrepreneur, one an educator, and one a homemaker – one goal. To be, for these women, the arms that embrace them, receive them, and point the way, receiving that very same thing from those He brought.
Gemma's mysticism, Elena's fruitfulness, Angela's ordinariness, Clare's contemplativeness, Rita's steadfastness, Zita's gentleness echoed in Janja's big-heartedness, Anamarija's joy, Helena's big-heartedness, Rahela's devotion, Petra's living faith, Stefani's deep humility, Sanja's obedience, Ivana's purity, Marina's patience, Matilda's wisdom, Željana's simplicity, Ines's courage... The women saints we went to meet lived just as we do, an ordinary life, with a heart ready to encounter Him.
We spoke about our temperaments, talents, and gifts, the longings of the heart, experiences, struggles, and wounds. We did reflections after coming to know the saints. We drank coffee and ate croissants in the morning, and in the evening toasted with Aperol and Hugo, as one only can in Tuscany and Umbria. We went through packs of tissues wiping away tears, whether in prayer or in conversation, in Lectio divina or before the Blessed Sacrament. The sacraments are the summit, and I dare not say all that He was doing through His Body and His Word during every Eucharist upon our hearts.
The simplicity of the monastery in Lucca, the comfort of the hotel in Assisi – a balance that accompanied us. Silence and too-loud laughter. Solitude and communion. All that Francis – whom we visited in this, his jubilee year – himself was, and because of whom all of this exists. The Poverello because of whom I write this, because of whom Powerella came to be, a project He leads precisely through encounters and differences united in Him.
Why go on this pilgrimage? So that you may find yourself in Him and in those who, just like you and me, hurried and said: "Behold, the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me!"
Author: Antonia P.