The Dominican Sisters of the Most Holy Name of Jesus and the Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine of Siena reflected on Master Eckhart’s interpretation of the Gospels.
From July 30 to August 4, in Villa San Ignacio (Buenos Aires), the Dominican Sisters of the Most Holy Name of Jesus and the Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine of Siena, together with lay people from the Dominican Family and Father Lalo Valoy, lived the spiritual retreat ‘In the footsteps of the desert. A reading of the Gospel from the texts of Meister Eckhart’, animated by Silvia Bara Bancel, doctor in Fundamental Dogmatic Theology.
‘Going through some passages of the Gospel from Meister Eckhart’s sermons was an opportunity to make contact with the most authentic part of ourselves, to encourage us to look at our wounds and to allow ourselves to be embraced by the God who constantly comes out to meet us, overflowing us with his love. In the depths of silence and shared prayer, gestures of closeness and fraternity were accompanied by prayers and praise, returning us to the depths of our souls, where the Mystery of God dwells. We were seduced and led into the desert to listen to God who speaks to our hearts, to become aware of our being creatures loved by God and to necessarily take on the path of detachment and abandonment. We are called to love and to let ourselves be loved, to contemplate the Cross in silence and to be encouraged to unload all the weight of our journey on it, on that wood which, without doubt, allows us to become green again, flooding us with Grace, and from there, to support each other, with those who share this journey’, emphasises Sister Rossana Aguilar, OP.
From the figure of Martha and Mary, the participants in the retreat recalled that becoming daughters of God means being in the midst of reality and living in service: ‘The desire and the will to love are enough for us’. With simplicity and serenity, they went through their own history and wounds, and felt sent to radiate light, carrying their treasure in ‘earthen vessels’, a continuous and daily task on their journey of consecration.
The retreat was led by Silvia Bara Bancel, PhD in Fundamental Dogmatic Theology from the Pontifical University of Comillas in Madrid and a graduate in Chemistry from the Complutense University of Madrid. She works as a lecturer in Christianity and Social Ethics in the Faculty of Theology at the Pontifical University of Comillas. Her areas of research focus on the German mystical school (Meister Eckhart, Henry Suso and Tauler) and medieval women mystics (especially Mechthild of Magdeburg). She is a member of the Association of Spanish Women Theologians, the Meister Eckhart Gesellschaft and the Équipe de Recherches sur la Mystique Rhénane, as well as being the director of the ‘Aletheia’ collection.
