We invite you to join the go4peace network in celebrating Advent 2024 with reflections from the writings of Etty Hillesum. During Advent, we will meet three times in the evenings for English-language Zoom sessions, where young Europeans will share personal experiences on three topics. It all begins on Saturday, November 30, 2024!

Listening within myself
(Saturday, 30 November 2024, 7:30 PM)

Entrusted to myself
(Wednesday, 11 December 2024, 7:30 PM)

Helping God not to fade within me
(Saturday, 21 December 2024, 7:30 PM)

Each Zoom session will also include brief moments for participants to share their own experiences. Between the meetings, you are invited to be attentive to yourself and to give yourself 10-15 minutes of silence every day in order to expose yourself to the gift of your life and the hidden God in it.

Etty Hillesum, born into a non-practising Jewish family in the Netherlands in 1914 and murdered in Auschwitz in 1943 at the age of 29, discovers God, the Immanuel, in a unique way during the terrible horrors of the Second World War. She does not pray to an all-powerful God like a begging child, but rather discovers His presence in the powerlessness in which He suffers with us. She experiences God like a mysterious fire in the heart of man, which threatens to go out if we do not nourish it through our trust. She writes - addressed to God: ‘Almost with every heartbeat, it becomes clearer to me that you cannot help us, but that we must help you and defend your dwelling place within us to the end.‘ - ‘I will have many more conversations with you in the near future and in this way prevent you from leaving me.’

Using texts from Etty, we will try during Advent 2024 in the go4peace network to discover God, who often lives in us like a deep spring under many stones and rubble. On three evenings, we will follow impulses and share our experiences - in our Europe-wide network.

CC BY-SA 4.0 Rob Bogaerts / Anefo, traitement par IA : Madelgarius