Laity

Twelve hours of journey along the Italian and French motorways, 13 young people and 2 priests on the road, a week of shared experiences, a place to discover: Betharram, a saintly friend to listen to: St Michael. These are the ingredients which have given meaning and joy to the Summer Camp of young Lay Betharramite Italians (joined by 2 Spaniards) which took place between the 5th and the 11th August 2014.

Alongside St Michael, the BetharrAmici (“Friends of Betharram”, a Betharramite lay group of Italian young people) went on the road to say their Here I am! They have said Here I am to the effort and the joy of being together, to listening to each other, to challenging each other, to the walks through the woods of the Pyrenees towards Lourdes or the mountainous leaps of Ibarre or to throwing themselves enthusiastically into the Ocean waves. They have said Here I am putting themselves at each others service to replicate the same family atmosphere present in the place where they stayed as guests: the farm at Betharram. They have said Here I am to a meeting with St Michael which met them at Ibarre where, with him, they listened to the Word of God which “Keeps burning constantly” in their hearts and which pushes them forward along the pathways of life, to say “Yes” to real Love. They have witnessed the stories of the Here I ams of many Priests who came there to meet them, felt the welcome of the communities of Betharram and Pau (where they traced the path of the Little Arab). They have given their most sincere Here I am in showing each other their own wounds and their own gifts, slipping off the mask of insincerity and rejoicing in their own truth. They have listened to the silent Here I am of the sick at Lourdes, during the candlelight procession. And finally, they have spoken of their Here I am with God in the silence of prayer and in the meeting with Him who says Here I am to us every day in the Eucharist.

So many Here I ams to fill their lives with the joy of the love drawn from the great Source of the Heart of Jesus, accompanied by so many friends and witnesses in Faith: the Virgin Mary, St Michael, Blessed Miriam, the Priests…their companions on the journey.

The treasure that they have discovered in this journey to the Source of their hearts, to this relationship with God, to the family of Betharram, will accompany them in their daily lives because their Here I am carries on: “Always Onward“. -

Simone Panzeri, scj

Giulia Orlandini - Betharram has been a journey for me in which I learned to see others and myself too under a different light. Living in community, the sharing of each moment of the day, made me realise that the question we should ask when we meet someone is not “What can this person do for me ?” but “What can I do for this person?”. It has been an insight that has changed me…The understanding that I can be of help, of comfort to someone using the gifts that God has given to me, is wonderful. The realisation that someone else is not just a thing but a person like you with their own gifts has been an understanding that has completely changed my mode of relating to other people. Thanks to this, I have experienced the true nature of community, I discovered many little qualities in the people around me which I had never noticed before. I began to appreciate the qualities and defects in each person just as in a real family. A family in God where each member can feel free to take off the mask and be finally themselves without disguise. Every prejudice gets jettisoned through praying together, by the smiles which we exchanged with each other,by the jokes and the laughter. This is what has remained with me from the time at Betharram, the memory of a real family, and the knowledge that it is not others who are in service for me but above all it is I who am in service to others.

Alessandra Corti - The fact of the matter is that when you come home and around you is the usual traffic, the usual little old lady with her shopping bag ,the same old bar, friends, passers by….you can’t help looking at them and wishing that they too could see with their eyes the beautiful things that you have seen in these last days. I stop for a moment , even though my heart is used to walking on and it seems as if I were still there with each one of you. The thousand alarm clocks which rang every morning, breakfast, getting up and out, the laughter, the begging with eyes closed: “Please don’t make it my turn to say the prayer today at lunch!”, the out of tune songs on the coach, the shower with the grasshoppers, dinner, coffee, the gossipy chats, the guitar, the walks… but above all the Spirit. It was like a breeze of fresh air which we shared. “Forward always forward!” And we always went onward, always a little bit nearer the Sky. A family. Something more . We have shared what we believe, we have witnessed the pain of people who have by the light of a candle and within a prayer have pledged their lives. We have savoured that which is Beautiful, but in truth that Beauty is something we must now carry within us. We must show others “the same joy”. In this way, even the usual traffic, the same old lady, the bar, our friends… we will see them with different eyes, and they too will see us differently because we are bathed in a different light. Thinking of the Pyrenees which greeted us from afar, I thank you for these days and am looking forward to a new adventure in order to say once more with you “Here I am”. Thank you.

Alessio Bartolini - What did I take home from the experience at Betharram ? That’s a good question… Many things, above all a new experience of fraternal life which strengthens bonds and helps you understand the real meaning of community: to walk together even with our own different experiences and for each of us to make our own step towards the goal and the origin of our journey. The experience of St Michael is without doubt a boost of faith in the fact that in Christ our fragility and our despair is transformed in the experience of the cross. Moreover relecting on the carism of openness, on the Fiat Voluntas Dei, which characterised the life of St Michael, has been provocative in my own path towards the diaconate and put into focus some important aspects of my own formation.

Ilaria Giusti - Before starting this experience, I didn’t know what to expect especially having been on many retreats in which I was the Leader and so knew what I would do and what would take place. At Betharram I met a person I still didn’t know if only in a superficial way. To see the places where St Michael was born, grew up, where his spiritual side developed and above all to share this with a group who had themselves different backgrounds and different needs, was a wonderful thing. It was like starting a new journey together with friends with unexpected implications. Becoming familiar with the life of St Michael has made me think about my own life a lot, and about the choices I have made. God is alive, present in the midst of us even when we do not feel Him to be so, or, even if we sometimes pretend not to hear Him. He is there, and always finds a way to get us to hear Him, it is up to us to find the courage to listen to Him and follow Him.