EJIF Summer 2005 Meeting in Germany
Unusual, and yet successful – final report
The idea to somehow orient this year’s EJIF Meeting toward the WYD activities and especially toward anything that Jesuits propose at that occasion, arose from the experience of the Jubilee 2000 and the fact that some 25 young Jesuits met elsewhere while everybody was in Rome. On the other hand, making ourselves available for the [‘magis] project during the week before the WYD and for the Café Magis during the WYD was not something anyone was used to. The basic question was: can an EJIF Meeting work with this kind of formula, with more action and less debate?
The challenge was big, but everything indicates that this year’s EJIF Meeting was indeed a great success. To make it function, the normal order of activities was turned upside down: after two days of getting to know each other and the city of Frankfurt, the Delegates started their Retreat, while CoCo was discussing the last details about EJIF’s involvement in [‘magis]. This year, the main retreat director was the “big chief”, Mark Rotsaert himself. Although the retreat was, as always, individual, Mark’s ‘punkta’ after breakfast were always very well attended, which says enough of their quality, while the presence of the other three directors (Hugues Deletraz (GAL), Chris Dyckhoff (BRI) and Pavel Gabor (BOH)) was appreciated as well.
After the retreat, the real work began. In the first week, we were at service of the [‘magis] project: first, we helped the local reception groups in 8 different cities in Germany, in Strasbourg (France), in Luxembourg and in Liege (Belgium) to receive the participants of the [‘magis] project. Some of us stayed “in the field” with the experiment groups all the week, while the rest got back to Frankfurt for some office work (putting the first evaluation forms in the “digital format”). At the end of the week, we moved to Loreley and, with some other volunteers, tried to prepare the site for the arrival of some 2000 participants and maintain it proper and welcoming during the week-end.
The second week, during the WYD in Koeln, we helped Lutz Mueller to run the Magis Café and other activities that accompanied it. Quite tired at the end of the week, we still found some strength to rejoin the rest of one million crowd at Marienfeld for the closing Mass with Benedict XVI.
The last day, already back in Frankfurt, the sharing of our experiences
showed us that each and every scholastic was more than satisfied with this
active, sometimes rather exhausting form of Meeting, and happy about the
possibility to work during two summer weeks with the fellow scholastics from
all the Europe – something worth keeping in mind for the organization of the
future EJIF Meetings.
EJIF Summer 2005 Meeting in Germany untypical
Very untypical meeting of European Jesuits in Formation (EJIF) will take place this year in Germany. It will start on 27th July in Frankfurt. After some days of introduction and our retreat, the EJIF group (altogether 29 Scholastics) will support the German Jesuits during the magis-project and during the World Youth Day in Cologne. During magis delegates of EJIF meeting will go out to different cities to help register pilgrims. Then they will help on the Loreley where 3000 pilgrims are expected. Finally, in Cologne they will work in the Cafe magis nearby St Albans Church, which is given to the Jesuits (running the Cafe, spiritual programme, etc.). EJIF meeting will finish in Frankfurt with some days of evaluation.