When Imaginative Prayer, Meets Reality

From the Jesuisphere a blog called Crying Out in the Wilderness, its author is Richard J. Beebe, SJ is a Jesuit Scholastic in the Chicago Province of the Society of Jesus. He entered the Society on 20 August 2005 and professed perpetual vows on 12 August 2007. Richard is currently living at Loyola University in Chicago where he is studying philosophy and theology.

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David vs Gelato

An excerpt.
This is the last week of my summer of international travel - I'm enjoying a few days in Rome with a friend who flew over from the States. Today we went up to Florence and did the town. Of course, there's much too much to see and do in Florence in one day, but we saw the most important things like the Academia (in which the famous statue of David lives), the (Cathedral of Florence) Duomo, the Basilica of Santa Croce, the Ponte Vecchio, had gelato and walked my way to two blisters. It was a great day. The last month has really been incredible.

It started out with two weeks in the Holy Land. During the first week several of us toured around Israel going up to Nazareth, Galilee, then over to the coast to visit Haifa, Mt Carmel, Caeserea Philippi. Back to Jerusalem, then Jericho, the Dead Sea, Qumran, and Masada.

After that, we entered into our 8-day retreat. Being in Jerusalem was a very special and moving time - every day during morning-evening prayer whenever Jerusalem, the holy city, the temple, or Mt Zion were mentioned, I could look out my bedroom window and say, that's right there in front of me. The psalms have never been so alive nor more related to my current prayer experience. So amazing to be in the city of David, and the city which had such importance for the story of Christianity.

The places where Christ brought his church into being through his suffering, death, resurrection, and appearances - where the Last Supper was held...we celebrated Mass at the site of the crucifixion and in the tomb of Jesus. The retreat itself focused on Jerusalem as a place toward which Jesus, St Paul, and St Ignatius all were drawn.

Being in this Holy place, and especially for me, Galilee which has special significance to me as the place were Jesus was at home and the place where most of his ministry took place, helped to place me more fully into the life of Jesus. I will be unpacking this experience for quite a while. Needless to say it was great.

Read the full blog post (here)