One of the unexpected gifts of the We Walk By Faith project is the way it reveals fresh dimensions of familiar Gospel stories.

For Mary O’Shannessy FCJ, one contemplation continues to stay with her: the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt.

“The fear that they would have gone through,” she reflects. “Not knowing what tomorrow is going to be. Not understanding the language or the customs. Not knowing where they’re going to sleep that night. And they’ve got a baby to look after.”

As she prayed with the story, Mary found herself connecting it with the experiences of refugees and displaced people throughout the world today.

“Jesus would have experienced the fear of Mary and Joseph.”

Justin Glyn SJ finds similar insights emerging from stories that many readers might overlook. Reflecting on the naming of John the Baptist, he noticed how Elizabeth and Zechariah are misunderstood and dismissed by those around them.

“There is a whole sense of these people who get dismissed,” he says, “and then suddenly there’s a presence beyond them that absolutely vindicates them.”

Their reflections remind us that the Gospel continues to speak through our own life experience. We encounter Scripture as people shaped by our joys, wounds, questions and hopes.

As Mary observes, “We experience things as we are.” And this is one of wonderful gifts of imaginative contemplation, in discovering how God is already present.

We Walk By Faith

Developed by two Ignatian religious, Sr Mary O’Shannessy FCJ and Fr Justin Glyn SJ — both legally blind — who have re-imagined imaginative contemplation, drawing from their lived experience, and with deep fidelity to the heart of the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, they have created a body of contemplations that offers a more spacious, inclusive welcome. Expanding the ways we encounter God through imagination, intuition, memory, feeling, sound, touch and experience, the gift Mary and Justin offer is a deeper understanding of how God meets each of us uniquely.

We are grateful, too, for the contribution of Sr Susan Daily CJ, whose artworks accompany the contemplations for those who pray visually.