During the extended Easter weekend, 125 young adults participated in a spiritual retreat... online! Confined to the four corners of France, they were all connected by digital tools. This was organised by the Christian Life Community (CLC), the Mouvement Chrétien des Cadres (MCC), the Ignatian Sisters, the Jesuit Spiritual Centre of Manresa (Clamart, Paris) and the Magis network. Pierre Alexandre Collomb sj bears witness to this experience.

For the second time this year I took part in the organisation of this spiritual stopover. Usually this retreat takes place at the Jesuit Spiritual Centre Manrèse in Clamart and in the present context the question of whether to maintain it or not was raised. Great good has come from persevering!

Results: more than 120 participants from all over France and beyond, with time to meditate on the Gospel, individual accompaniment, sharing groups, testimonies, creative activities?

Echoes are excellent. Many were afraid to experience the Triduum in loneliness and desolation. And just as on the day of the Resurrection, life arose unexpectedly! In the trust of exchanges, in the contemplation of beauty, in the beautiful work of God in our lives. And this whether one is alone in one's studio, in one's family apartment or at one's parents' home.

"It helped me to enter into a different understanding of online exchanges through Zoom, Skype and others. Screen communication is often understood as a degraded form of presence to the other, like the pale reflection of reality that would be a painting or a photograph. And yet, the image is effective if it is not just a screen but refers to more than it is, in the manner of an icon. In the virtuality of the exchanges of this retreat, I was able to experience the promise they manifest, and not an ersatz of relationship. Something of life gave itself to be felt in these encounters, not in spite of the screens but thanks to them. And that's happy!"

"The paschal mystery invites us to welcome the present situation and not just to bear it. The Nolite me tangere (Do not touch me) on the morning of the Resurrection carries both the impossibility of contact, that is to say, of regaining the relationship of before the Passion, but it is also the promise of a relationship where closeness is combined with distance, where another closeness is born from this distance. The grace of this time is perhaps to make us touch that every relationship carries within it the mystery of the other."

"For me, this retreat opens up unsuspected possibilities in the way of being at the service of those who journey. Yes, the grace of Easter is to make us enter into the unheard of God!"

Pierre Alexandre Collomb S.J.,
Pedro Arrupe Jesuit Community in Vanves