“It was an impactful experience.” “It has helped me to see my day-to-day life with much happier eyes since I left the retreat”. These are phrases that emerge as testimonies of two young people who participated in October in a new retreat experience. Search. This Regnum Christi initiative, which began nine years ago in Mexico, arrived in Chile in 2019 thanks to María Ignacia Lewin, Ernesto Kaltwasser, Agusta Cox and Fr. Gastón Vicuña, LC, so that university students could have a unique encounter with Christ, organized by young people for young people.
“With my eldest son we were concerned that once they left school they were a bit lonely in their relationship with Christ,” says Maria Ignacia Lewin. She looked for different options until she met a Mexican couple who were doing this retreat in Guadalajara (Jalisco), who invited them. They traveled with a mini-team to live the experience, which they later took to Chile.
This year was the third version in which 56 young people participated, who are called “walkers”, who are assisted during the course of the retreat by a group of people called “servers”, because they are behind the scenes so that everything goes well and they can have a great experience during their retreat. “We avoid giving much information about its program and methodology because it is a unique format that is maintained over time. The idea is not to advance anything so that it really is a unique experience, as they would say today, we don't want to spoil”says María Ignacia.
The core message behind the retreat Search is that “no one outside of Christ can give us true happiness.”. Its creators explain that this instance was born with the aim of transforming the world. “Thus the idea of creating a retreat arose, but it could not be just any retreat, we had to make sure that everyone who lived this experience had such a strong transformation that it would make them want to change,” they explain in their web site.
Search is open to university students and young people who have recently entered the world of work, and who may come from other movements or charisms. «We had to combine fun and formation, emotion and friendship, testimonies and experiential activities. We knew where the goal was, but we didn't know the steps that would lead us to it. And it was there, at that precise moment that we realized that our life is an eternal search, and that the most important thing is to know our goal so that when we feel lost we can look up and know in which direction to look. That is why we decided to baptize the retreat as Search”they report on the site. Retreatants are accompanied for a few weeks to help them apply what they have learned in their daily lives.
“It was a shocking experience, I really did not expect it. It was something totally different from what I had experienced in terms of faith and I liked it very much. It is very dynamic and reaches everyone in their own way. It is a way of discovering oneself and in which God brought together precise people, at a precise moment, in a precise place and made the greatest miracle that I have ever felt in me, which is to give me this link with Him”, reflects José Pedro Kappes.
“It was an encounter with a community of young Catholics that I had been looking for for a long time. It is a giant help to continue, with much encouragement, fighting for my life of faith. It has helped me to see my day-to-day life with happier eyes, since I left the retreat,” says María Cousiño.
