From the 21st to the 28th of September 2018, the Carmelite nuns of the Our Lady of Mt Carmel Association ─South Brasil─ gathered together in the St John of the Cross House of Prayer in Porto Alegre, to take part in a course titled “Accompaniment with Empathy” given by Fr Luis Jorge González, a Mexican Discalced Carmelite friar, a professor in the Teresianum in Rome and the University of Mysticism in Avila. The course was based on the book Santa Teresa: Acompañar Empático (González, LJ (2016), México: Ediciones Duruelo).
The course was destined mainly for formators and there were present 21 nuns from 11 monasteries of the region. In five steps, Fr Luis developed the topic of treatment with empathy in spiritual accompaniment: 1) Awareness of the THOU; 2) Migration into ones interior world; 3) Intuition in order to be with the THOU without judging it; 4) Capturing the emotional state of the THOU and 5) Reformulation in order to verify the understanding of the THOU.
