From 6 to 11 November, we participated in the week of spiritual exercises organized by the Custody [“Most Holy Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary” of the brothers of Albania-Montenegro] at Perast, in Montenegro.
For us sisters there was a doubly significant experience: for the first time we took part as a community in a formative and spiritual course shared with the brothers, and we were even able to experience it in a very special time for us, the twentieth anniversary of our presence in Albania.
Preaching the course of the exercises was Br Giuseppe Di Fatta, friar of the Sicilian province [Most Holy Name of Jesus], Franciscan music composer and currently engaged in a new experience of fraternal life shared with the Poor Sisters of Castelbuono (Palermo). With Br Giuseppe we went through some passages of the Gospel, such as chapter 12 of Mark and Jesus’ response to the scribe questioning him about the greatest commandment, or chapter 20 of Matthew and the bold request of the mother of Zebedee’s sons, and finally the Annunciation to Mary, interpreted with the key to understanding the three “Behold” that punctuate the text. Br Giuseppe also placed these passages side by side with the prayers of Francis, the Praises of the Most High God, and the Salutation to the Blessed Virgin Mary. And each meditation began and concluded with a song he composed and played. In particular the very first meditation started with the song “Dabar Jahve” which contains the text by the blessed Gabriel Allegra dedicated to the Word of God.
The background of our prayer together was the enchanting landscape of Perast and of the Montegrin coast, in particular of what are known as the Bay (Boka) of Kotor, inlets of the Dalmatian coast, the southernmost fiord in Europe. We contemplated the splendor of nature and human creativity. Perast, as well as Kotor, Herceg Novi, Budva, are jewels of history, nestled between the black Dalmatian mountains and the Adriatic Sea, lands belonging to the most serene Republic of Venice until the Napoleonic era, and in fact always marked by the Lion of San Marco. The Venetian dominion acted as a bulwark against the expansionist aims of the Ottoman Empire, thus allowing the entire region to remain predominantly Christian. Ancient Catholic and Orthodox churches still bear witness to this. Thus, the Bay of Cattaro even today makes visible the historical and cultural aspects of the entire Balkan peninsula before the arrival of the Turks.
Among the various places, the one with which we became most familiar was Perast, where we were housed in an ancient convent of the Friars Minor, now managed by the local parish priest as a house of spirituality. But we also had the opportunity to dedicate a morning to a short pilgrimage on the nearby island of the Madonna dello Scarpello, where stands the sanctuary that houses an ancient Marian icon, miraculously found on a rock by two fishermen brothers in 1452. And it is here that Br Guiseppe, under the good gaze of the Virgin and Child, helped us to contemplate the mystery of the Annunciation.
The Word of the Lord and the writings of Francis, the liturgy prepared together, the moments of eucharistic adoration and the enchantment of the place allowed all of us, brothers and sisters, to be able to live these days in simplicity and fraternity, and to be able to rediscover on our journey the beauty of belonging to the Franciscan family and sharing the single charism.
Poor Clare Sisters – Scutari (Albania)
