Every year, starting on Pentecost Sunday or immediately after, the Saint Benedict Community goes on retreat. For 3 days, eight Jesuits who serve the European Conference and its works in Brussels, took a break, left the house in Rue des Trévires, and enjoyed time for prayer, reflection, rest and more intense conviviality in La Pairelle, a Jesuit Retreat House near Namur.

This year, we focused on the demand of Fr. General to examine how we currently live our vow of poverty. We progressed through three topics: my relationship with Christ poor and humble; poverty as source of fruitfulness in our apostolic life; shared poverty in community life. The times of spiritual conversation concluding the periods of individual prayer were very consoling. Sharing on our experience (and sometimes struggles) with poverty surely enriched us!

St. Benedict Community was, this year, composed by two Polish, two Portuguese, one Spaniard, one Italian, one French and one Irish. We work in the Conference Office, the JESC – Jesuit European Social Centre, the JRS – Europe, The Chapel for Europe, and one of us, a Regent, gives Religion Classes in the European Schools in Brussels.

The common language used is English, although soon there will be no English native speaker in the community, as Edmond Grace, from Ireland, has just concluded his mission in Brussels… More than just hosting ‘functionaries’ of Jesuit European institutions, the Community of Saint Benedict tries to be itself a concrete sign of Europeans from so many different parts happily sharing their differences and fruitfully cooperating for the deepening of a European Common Good. Most of the time, we actually achieve some of that goal and we have fun doing it.