In the nearly three years I have spent on the retreat team here at Mt. St. Alphonsus I have created at least three retreats that treated our the connection between all things in the universe. Call it ecology. Call it Creation Theology. The fact is that all life is connected. We human beings, with our intelligence are the "crown" of creation. But our intelligence, besides being a great "gift of God" holds us responsable for being just and compassionate caretakers (stewards) of all life. Right now I am preparing a Holy Week retreat for women (1 day) and for Men (3 days). One recent Roman Catholic Saint, St. Benedict of the Cross (Edith Stein), has helped me understand how, if we understand the "connectedness" of all life, all people and all created life....it can "lead us to God". This is what happened to Edith Stein, born a Jew, become a great philosopher but never allowed to have a professorship in her native Germany, first because she was a woman and later because she was also a Jew. The experience of being excluded, hated, despised led Edith Stein to understand and accept the person of Jesus Christ as one who like the Yom Kippur "scapegoat" took all the evil and all the pain and all the sin of our world and destroyed it. No one likes suffering. But Edith Stein learned that great love leads people to great suffering. It happened with Jesus. It happens with good, valiant and loving people of all times. And it happened with Edith Stein.
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