Last year the Covid pandemics made it impossible to continue the 5-year-old tradition of offering an Ignatian 7-day retreat in the city of Navahrudak, Belarus, to lay people and religious. (An online retreat on YouTube was offered instead.) Since this summer the anti-Covid measures were attenuated, the opportunity for the “offline” version of the retreat in July of this jubilee year opened up, and immediately it found enthusiastic response, so that another series had to be planned in August.

The particular feature of this “preached retreat” this year was the presence of three non-Jesuit guides, together with Victor Zhuk SJ, who was suggesting “impulses” for prayer to the group: a lay person (a long-term collaborator in online projects of the Jesuits), a diocesan priest and a nun, who went through some training in spiritual accompaniment and supervision.

The result for the participants, as many said during the final sharing, was a good balance between a careful guidance and a freedom in individual approach to everyone’s particular spiritual stage. We are determined to continue this kind of collaboration with our non-Jesuit partners, as the recent documents of the Society of Jesus suggest, pursuing one of the UAPs – showing the way to God to all those who are willing to draw from the treasures of the Ignatius’ heritage.