Developing the contemplative dimension of our personalities

I am in Trinidad where we are having a retreat day—a day of solitude, prayer and reflection with the novice and pre-postulants.  Input is being given by Sisters Julie Marie, Delia Marie and myself. We are reflecting on the following elements of the charism—contemplation, service to the poor, sacrifice, Eucharist and obedience. The importance of developing a contemplative lifestyle was emphasized, that is developing an interior life.  On a daily basis, am I willing to become aware of who I am, what I am thinking, feeling, how I am acting and how those actions impact my relationship with self, others, God and creation? Am I engaging in life, fully participating in life each day or am I withdrawing, isolating? Am I listening (being obedient) to life and how it is impacting me and the messages from God that come to me through all of life, all of me (feeling self, thinking self, acting self, relating self, choosing self)?  We reflected on the importance of serving the poor, beginning with oneself. Am I aware of the poverty of my affective life, my thinking, my behaviors, my relationships and able to acknowledge this poverty?  Do I engage in the sacrifice of letting go by sharing my poverty with significant others: bringing it out into the open so that I can transform my poverty into a richness that comes from the truth, from dialogue, from engagement, from self-disclosure that leads self-integrity? Being Eucharistic people,  “bringing fuller life to others”—the tagline of the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother—means that I am living a full life, not an impoverished life that manifests itself in an unwillingness to become aware of, acknowledge, and accept the pains and sufferings of life (bread broken and shared with others), an unwillingness to stand beneath the cross,  to hold my pain and the pain of others on my lap, so to speak, as Mary held the body of her dead Son, to let go of my pain as Mary let go of her dead Son and buried Him. Do I live my Good Fridays and Holy Saturdays (enter into my emptiness) and heed Jesus command “Woman, behold your son; son, behold your mother”—take care of each other, relate to each other, in a way that  leads to the experience of Easter—the resurrection of a new  way of being me and  a new way of being in relationships? From entering into this Paschal Mystery and living as Eucharistic people, we also experience Pentecost, that is, our persons are set on fire with the gifts of the Holy Spirit and we become both Good News persons and proclaimers of the Good News.