This year in the Province request for Easter opportunities a novel proposal arose, promoted by the Loyola Spirituality Center, “Encounters on the way,” that read like this: “we approach the death and resurrection of Jesus through an aesthetic and contemplative lens. We will pray with nature, poetry, music, film, words, and silence ….” And essentially, that’s what it was.

This Easter there were 22 assistants: three Jesuits, a religious sister, and 19 participants between the ages of 24 and 38, all from very different places. The Easter proposal aimed for a personal encounter with Jesus, and so we maintained silence except for dinner and the visits to the Ignatian sites. For prayer we met in the Basilica of Loyola.

The structure of the experience came from the book, “Encounters on the Way” (PPC, Madrid 2015), by Jesuit Bert Daelemans, professor at the University of Comillas in Madrid. In the book, Bert develops a contemplation of a set of Stations of the Cross in bronze located in a German church. Each scene of the contemplation was conceived as a double encounter: the Biblical version in bronze and the version of each one of us that arose in prayer, always in continual reflection on our lives and on our modern world.

The whole thing was guided by the text and the images of the sculptures, interspersed with Biblical and Ignatian passages and accompanied by pieces of classical, modern, and Taizé music. There was also space for films, nature, and art with which the privileged setting of Loyola graced us. Next year we hope to repeat the convocation with other young adults interested in living a different kind of Easter.

Oscar Cala SJ

Participante de los Fondos Next Generation