This is the last of my three years of training as a Resident Medical Intern in family medicine, in Huelva. It is an intensive stage of my religious life, living to the full and learning from relationships. To share something of my educational experience, I shall begin by naming the inner convictions which have been forming in me.

“We contemplate the Heart of Jesus in the joys, hopes and sufferings of humanity….The experience of an incarnated spirituality impels us to live education as a process of transformation” (Chap. 2000).

I feel that the educational spirit of the Society fits in perfectly well wherever we put our lives on the line in favour of relationships based on human nature and on processes of accompaniment, growth and healing.

The dignity of the person in every circumstance. I have come across people who feel the need to be mentioned and have their worth recognised, and others who are very humble and dignified in their weakness, who have made me want to take off my shoes in their presence and feel for them as the Lord’s Heart feels.

“We don’t have bodies, we are bodies”; the physical dimension is integral to us and cannot be separated from all that we are as persons. This means that the body has to be listened to, respected and cared for, avoiding the extremes of ignoring it and giving it too much importance; we know that the second extreme is what we find in the society around us.

Health and sickness form a continuum and are part of life. But society does not encourage us to welcome our weaknesses and pains, or to put up with our ailments. To educate in this field is quite “countercultural”.

Health has very much to do with the network of relationships in family and society: I can clearly see that for some people the family is supportive, while for others it is a source of conflicts and maladjustment, giving rise to much uneasiness and many mental problems.

The holy ground of intimacy, of whatever form (physical or psychological). I look on it as a responsibility and a gift, since having an opportunity to care for it presupposes so much trust.

Looking back over my brief experience as a doctor, I see that I am learning many things that are very useful for life; for example:

Listening to the other person, to what he or she says, feels, needs, hopes from me… and to what I can offer.

Personalising: what is good for one person may not be good for another.

Respecting others and making sure that others respect me. Respecting those who think they have no value and take no responsibility for looking after their health, and asserting my own worth in situations where people sometimes forget themselves.

I can also share a growing awareness that links our spirituality with my experience in medical consultation. In the Society I learned to understand the heart as the nucleus of the person and the seat of energies, and in my work as a doctor the usual way of being in touch with people is through the body. “This hurts”, “I can’t see very well”, “Feel this lump”, “the little girl has a high temperature”, “I’ve come out in a rash”, “I can’t sleep”, “She’s much better”… seeing, touching, feeling… We discover and reveal ourselves through feelings. If the heart is the seat, the body is as it were the palpable “sacrament” of who we are, the physical presence of our whole person.

“Keep your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life” (Prov.4:23). Keep the body too, inasmuch as it leads us to life, as Jesus does when he heals. Peter’s mother-in-law “was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them” (Mk 1:30-31).