From ESM Newsletter

An article from the school's first newsletter of this year, published December 2005, written by our only Italian, Matteo from Milano.

ESM 2005 is ready to give its time to God for a year of Mission
By Matteo Cehovin

Nineteen students from 10 different countries started the Emmanuel School of Mission in Rome this year. With the “desire to be a Saint in every day life” they started their journey on the 1st of October with a beautiful retreat in Assisi that really allowed everybody to meet and entrust each other to the love of our Lord Jesus Christ. Among them there are musicians, engineers, an actress, a sociologist, a nurse, an environmental scientist, businessmen and many others. Even if the age difference varies from 22 to 34 and the backgrounds are as much diverse, after a few months of community life, the differences have enriched and bonded us. It’s really “the will to follow Jesus Christ” which is the motor that makes all these students run in the same direction, trying to live together in charity and love.

It’s amazing to see how God works with our gifts, through our differences. Some of the students have experiences they’ve accumulated during their careers as managers in big companies, so you have organizational and problem-solving skills that mix together with the ideas of the people that have had more artistic-based professions. You find engineers trying to be better actors or musicians, and artists learning better time management and organization skills to make their lives less “dramatic”. And you have the southern countries’ cultures (also called “Siesta” cultures) trying to adapt to the northern countries’ cultures.

They all came with different desires, but at the same time they came with the knowledge of the necessity to abandon these desires to the Lord, asking Him to show them the way to fulfil and accomplish them. It’s rare that different people, with different histories, without even knowing each other, decide to live a year together; by giving their life for God. Through the love of their brothers and sisters they fill themselves with this beautiful everyday struggle of love.

Their Mission? To bring the testimony of this life to the people on the street.

This in a few words is the Emmanuel School of Mission: a little Noah’s arc where instead of animals you have ten women and nine men; different in ages, countries, cultures, and formation, but all of them with the same desire to be carried in God’s plan of salvation. In our world sometimes we have the impression of living under water, where our capability to listen and communicate are distorted, and we have a hard time paying attention to what is happening around us. The school gives us the possibility to jump on that boat and get out of the water for a yearlong ride, with the formation to guide us in contemplation of what is absolutely essential for us: God.