Magis Indonesia held a virtual Magis Action Day on 9 May to reach out to young people with the gift of Ignatian Spirituality. As young people who are already familiar with Ignatian Spirituality, we wanted to share and invite others to stop for a moment from the hustle and bustle of life and feel God’s presence through Ignatian prayer.
During the activity I noticed that the faces and eyes of the committee members were shining and they looked very happy. There were 25 young people who participated from various provinces in Indonesia. They were full of interest and faithfully followed the activity from beginning to end. The webinar began with a basic prayer exercise on the awareness of our bodies, then we introduced Ignatian prayer emphasising the importance of having an honest relationship with God so that our prayers are fruitful.
At first we worried that meeting new people virtually could be awkward, but our discussions turned out to be very spontaneous. A participant from Bali said she was happy to have had a chance to follow the webinar so she could dive again into Ignatian Spirituality.
Personally, I was very interested in documenting the preparation for this activity. Covid-19 has changed the world. It has impacted how we look, choose, and act. Magis Action Day 2021 was also a product of that change. Every day, whether at work or school, almost all our time is spent online. As organisers we asked: Do we also have to prepare this activity in the same way? Spending hours in front of a computer screen can be very uncomfortable and tiring, and we all really struggled. In the end, the success of the activity made it all worth it. Maybe that was why the faces of the people who prepared the activity were full of smiles and sparkled because we had achieved what we had strived for.
The virtual Magis Action Day 2021 showed us that there are still alternatives and opportunities to continue spreading the love of God given our present limitations.
Tiara Silalahi joined MAGIS Indonesia in 2019. She is a humanitarian worker who loves books, people, and everything about Africa. Magis is a Jesuit-organised international meeting of young people to accompany them in the way of St Ignatius Loyola.
