A Gift You Deserve to Give Yourself A Spiritual Retreat

When the apostles came back from a busy mission trip, Jesus invited them, “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest for a while” (Mark 6:30-32). We are called to do the same in our journey as Jesus’ disciples. We do this each week when we honor the Lord’s Day, which for us is Sunday, as a day of worship and rest. We do this at times by taking a vacation, which – whether it involves travel or not – is meant to be a break from our routine to recreate (literally to be re-created) and recharge physically and emotionally. We do this most fully in the sense Jesus means when we are recharged spiritually by taking a break to focus on our relationship with God and how we are (or could be) following Jesus in our lives. This is the essence of a spiritual retreat, which is meant to renew our appreciation of who the Lord is, God’s love for us, our need for God’s grace and healing in our lives, and how we can live the greatest commandment to love God and our neighbor more fruitfully. We need this gift of “getting away with Jesus” periodically throughout our lives if we want to truly grow in faith and relationship with God.

We can live a spiritual retreat in many different ways, depending on our life situation. Ideally, we would make a spiritual retreat that involves going away for couple days or more to a place where we can be less distracted and focus on God (more on that below). If we can’t do that, there are programs where we can spend a few hours with God, usually several times (daily or weekly), to help us integrate our spiritual life into our daily lives. We have offered this in our Advent Retreat Day, our Discovering Christ weekly meetings, and in the centerpiece of our Lenten programming here which is the Lenten Mission/Retreat (it goes by both names), which meets daily for three days: Monday through Wednesday, March 18-20, so be sure to reserve the evenings in your calendar (see the mission article for more info).

Last weekend, a few members of our collaborative parishes took me up on the invitation to attend an “Emmaus Retreat”  (Friday night thru Sunday), as about 30 men and women gathered in the LaSalette Retreat House in Attleboro for prayer and the Sacraments, small group discussions, and to hear people like ourselves share talks about their experience living out different parts of our faith. People described it as a life-changing experience! The next Emmaus at LaSalette will be June 7-9. The “Cursillo Retreat” is a similar program, with the next men’s weekend this month, March 21-24, and women’s weekend on April 25-28, both at Holy Cross Retreat House in Easton. For more information on both retreats, see links on our website or talk with members of our Pastoral Team, especially Maggie Hoagland, Deacon Joe and Peggy Flocco, or myself.

Whether here in our parishes, at a retreat house or shrine, or in your own way at your own time, this Lent we encourage you to make plans to give yourself the precious gift of time away with the Lord in spiritual retreat – you will be glad you did!