Brunelle Mbuntil, a second-year novice with the Daughters of Jesus of Kermaria, France, tells us about her experience at L’Arche de Trosly-Breuil (Oise) France, during her internship from the 17th of October to the 12th of December 2025.
Throughout my internship at the Foyer de l’Ermitage, I discovered that God is at work in encounters with the most vulnerable. At work in effect in :
Caring and listening
Working alongside people with disabilities, I experienced a God who is deeply present in
relationships, simplicity, and shared life.
As the days went by, in the most ordinary gestures of listening, accompanying and taking the time to be with others, I discovered an inner joy that revealed to me how much this place resonated with the charism of the Daughters of Jesus: living close to the least among us, in the manner of Jesus, with a humble and faithful presence.
Active compassion
This internship proved to be a journey of life, a school of learning and transformation, which invited me to accept my limitations and to trust God in what I could not control. “In seeking to humanise others, I allowed myself to be humanised by them” by letting myself be movedinternally, overcoming my fears and resistance to reach out tothe Other.
I experienced “giving and receiving“. but I came to realise that I received much more than I gave.
Working with these people, who are often rejected and excluded from I learned the gratuity of love and acceptance of my own fragility.
The joy of living together
– Around the table
– Returning from mass
– During the discovery of Compiègne
– By participating in my last cooking session
– By sharing meals in a spirit of fraternal listening
Being with
I have often read the expression ‘being with’ in the history of the Congregation in and through the lives of our founders.
Today, I have experienced it in the reality of everyday life with people with disabilities, and I have been able to taste the reality of this ‘being with.’
During these two months, I came to realise that this expression is easy to formulate but only gives its true meaning in practice and not in theory.
I
give thanks to God for the faces I have encountered and for these words of Jesus that have accompanied me on my journey:
“As you did to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.” (Gospel of St Matthew 25:40)
Brunelle Mbuntil,
Second-year novice, fj
Paris, France
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