During Lent, silence deepens. And slowly, in that silence, we begin to hear the voice that has always dwelled within our hearts. That’s how this reflection began for me not with an idea, but with an awakening. And in that quiet, a question emerged:
What does it mean, today, to be pilgrims of hope?
It felt too big for me, too deep. Where could I begin? What could I possibly say that hasn’t already been said more clearly, more beautifully, many times before?
Then, during a Lenten retreat broadcast from the Vatican, a single phrase stayed with me. It lit a small flame that has never gone out:
“We are on a journey as pilgrims of hope… but toward what hope, if not the hope of eternal life?”
Those words stirred something I’ve always carried inside a quiet certainty, held by faith, that suddenly became clear and alive.
We were made for Heaven.
Not as an abstract belief, but as a truth that gently guides and sustains my steps. I paused. I listened. As Carmel teaches, stillness of heart is where every journey begins.
I looked back on my life like someone gazing at a mosaic still taking shape each piece, each experience slowly finding its place as if, at last, everything began to make sense.
“The Kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21)
For years, those words felt distant. I couldn’t make them my own. They seemed true perhaps for others but not for me. They never reached my heart. They hovered quietly at the edge of my mind.
At the time, faith was a gentle presence. I knew it was there, but I had not yet lived within it.
And it was precisely in that silence that a deeper memory began to surface clearer than the rest: the memory of a loss that has marked my life since childhood.
I lost my father when I was just three. With quiet courage, my mother entrusted me to a Catholic boarding school run by nuns. There, I received a solid Christian formation but my heart found no warmth.
My mother’s visits were rare. And so, a double absence began to grow within me: the absence of a father I had lost, and of a mother who felt too far away.
Those silent absences left a mark. Even now, I see them in the way I love, in how I welcome, how I try to protect. Even as a wife and a mother, I sometimes feel the quiet longing for what I never received.
And yet, it was there precisely there that God began to teach my heart a different kind of hope: not the hope of being filled, but the hope that is born when we begin to give.
Then came the day. Just an ordinary day yet unlike any other. The faith I had carried in silence came to meet me. Not as a memory. Not as an idea. But as a Presence alive, real, close.
Inside, I felt empty. A silence that pressed in. A sense of being lost, disconnected. Faith seemed far away quiet, almost forgotten.
And still, I found myself in a place of prayer. I hadn’t gone looking for anything. But Something or other, Someone had been waiting.
I remember the people. They weren’t just saying prayers. They were praying with their whole hearts. It wasn’t noise. It was flame. It was breath. It was faith alive.
And there, without even meaning to, a cry rose from somewhere deep within me:
Jesus, come.
Change my heart.
Live in me.
And He came, not in words, but in His Presence. He touched what had grown cold and quiet, and lit a flame that has never gone out.
It wasn’t emotion. It was faith being born, a heart opening, and Him entering.
He lifted me. He set me free. He gave me a new life,His own.
From that moment, I was never the same.
“By grace through faith.” (Ephesians 2:8)
“I will give you a new heart, and put a new spirit within you.” (Ezekiel 36:26)
Hope is no longer just an idea. It has a name. It has a face: Jesus.
After that encounter, I began a new journey, a slow, silent ascent toward Mount Carmel, much like the one Saint John of the Cross describes.
It is not an easy climb, nor a quick one. It is an inner path that asks for fidelity, patience, and silence.
The Lord works deep within, often without making a sound. He strips the heart of what is unnecessary. He purifies it of what is not love. As Saint John of the Cross writes, He moves the soul to its centre with secret touches of love.
Sometimes I stumble. Some wounds and weaknesses have been with me for as long as I can remember. Still, I keep Jesus in my heart, and each step, even the unsteady ones, leads me back to Him.
I keep walking. At times with strength, at times out of breath. I wish I could say I’ve arrived, that the summit is near. But that wouldn’t be true.
And perhaps it is in the struggle of the climb that the heart truly learns how to long.
My path toward Carmel began with a small sign of light,gentle, silent, like a star appearing in the night. That was how Mary made herself present in my life: with tenderness and quiet grace. She pointed me toward a path filled with grace and hope.
I was searching for a place to grow spiritually, to guard the fire Jesus had lit in my heart. That was when I encountered Carmelite spirituality.
When I read Saint Teresa of Ávila’s words on prayer, it was as if a door opened within me:
“A deep friendship,
a frequent conversation,
heart to heart,
with the One we know loves us.”
Those words had lived in me for some time. They were calling me to remain. Because for me, prayer has become the quiet place where hearts meet without masks.
Every first Saturday of the month, we gather. We are different ages, journeys, stories. And yet, when we meet, the heart finds its home.
Formation, prayer, Lectio Divina, the Liturgy of the Hours… everything unfolds in simplicity. And within that simplicity, there is a quiet strength, a light that is kindled each time.
In those moments, I know I am not alone. Hope is no longer just an idea, but a presence beside me: a brother praying with you, a sister listening without judgement, a word rising from silence that reaches your heart.
In that simple and living fraternity, hope becomes a gesture. And Carmel becomes flesh, day by day in what is small, in what is concrete, in the service we share.
In the smallest acts of daily life, when love becomes service, and the gift received becomes an offering for the Church.
The journey goes on. And as my steps move through the world, I know there is a place where everything returns and finds rest: my inner cell.
As Saint Albert teaches in the Carmelite Rule:
To meditate day and night on the law of the Lord, and to keep watch in prayer.
As Edith Stein once said:
The cell does not abandon you, wherever you go, because you carry it within you.
It is there that hope becomes silence. It is there that the Word becomes Presence. It is there that Carmel continues to bloom… within me.
And perhaps, deep down, this is the secret of eternity: not to wait for it as a distant goal, but to recognise it in the steps of each day, held by the grace of a Love that has called us by name.
Eternity has already begun.
I am living it now.
Whoever has God lacks nothing:
God alone is enough.
Raffaella Cognigni. T.O.Carm, Birmingham (UK)
