Late Tuesday evening I returned home after a ten hour drive from an eight-day retreat at the Eastern Point Jesuit Retreat House in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Universal canon (church) law and diocesan clergy personnel policy require each bishop and priest to make an annual retreat. No one has to force me to do this!
What a blessing my retreat was this year. I returned to the same house where I did the full Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola two summers ago. I returned and was greeted by the same wise and kindly spiritual director, Father Ken Hughes, S.J., whom I had for the 30 day retreat two summers ago. I returned to a site bordered on three sides by water, with its own rugged beauty as it overlooks the Atlantic Ocean. To see photos of the property visit www.easternpoint.org .
A directed retreat in the Ignatian tradition is different from the usual preached retreat diocesan clergy are used to. It is done in silence by all retreatants. No talking in the dining room, no chit-chat in the hallways, no night-time tv surfing, no telephone conversations (well, at least not in the open where your voice carries and startles). I was taught to try to spend four one-hour periods in intense prayer every day. These are in addition to participating in daily Mass as a community, and the personal celebration of the liturgy of the hours. Each retreatant meets with his/her director for about 30-40 minutes each day in private. The retreatant talks about what went on in prayer, what are his/her desires, concerns, sometimes obstacles to prayer. Most times the director will give his/her directee one or two passages from the bible, to meditate on and to use as a "jumping off point" for conversation with God.
The whole exercise is grounded in St. Ignatius's understanding that God wishes to have a personal relationship with each one of us. Only in a "deafening" silence, and with an open and listening heart, can we "allow God in." We listen not only to the voice of God, but also to our own desires, which can lead us to where God wishes us to be.
This was my eleventh eight-day silent retreat. I love the silence. Only in silence, I believe, can one really "pray hard." Each of these retreats has brought me closer to God, to the point that I dare to call our relationship a friendship, and our occasional conversations as personal, idiosyncratic, and even humorous, as one with my best friend.
Two years ago I did longer explanations of both the Spiritual Exercises and my reaction to my 30-day retreat for the parishioners of Saint Juan Diego, Sharpsburg. When I can put my hands on these essays, I'll paste them in this blog, with some of my photos.
If you are at all interested in a developed explanation of the Spiritual Exercises, or even in growth in the spiritual life, I highly recommend Jim Martin's wonderful book, The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life. He explains Ignatius's vision, and the Spiritual Exercises, with clarity, insight, personal stories, and not a few jokes.
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