I will not be with you to celebrate the Eucharist in person this weekend, but I will be with you in prayer. I will be on my annual 8-day Silent Directed Retreat. Each year for 33 of my 35 years as a priest, I have done an 8-day Silent Directed Retreat. This is a profound spiritual exercise during which participants use silence to reflect on their journeys of faith and the spiritual movements taking place. Participants are to be silent except for Mass and a session of between a half hour and an hour daily with a trained director. Such retreats are offered in groups as large as 40 and in some settings where there may be only one or a few participants. The purpose of the sessions with a director is to identify issues, concerns and other spiritual stirrings on the part of the retreatant. The director offers guidance and direction mostly through suggesting scripture passages for further reflective prayer.
One of the two years that I did not do a Silent Directed Retreat I did a Silent Retreat, relying on the silence and my own sense of direction. I did NOT find that experience to be as fruitful. The other year, 1994, I did the 36-Day Silent Directed Retreat at El Retiro Retreat Center in Los Altos, California. This is obviously more intense and extensive and is structured by the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola who founded the Jesuits.
I can’t quite explain how powerful this experience was, the fruit of which I experience to this day. That retreat was perhaps the most significant spiritual experience of my life. I, or any Jesuit, could provide many more details of this retreat.
I am often perplexed and even frustrated because many people claim to be spiritual and not religious, and they connect the Catholic Church with the ultimate religious and not so spiritual institution. The source of my frustration is that our Roman Catholic spiritual tradition is filled with diverse and engaging spiritualties. I happen to be engaged in and fed by the Jesuit spiritual river, but we have so many others from traditional to contemporary. The Catholic Church offers the greatest array of spiritual activities, prayer forms and spiritual masters who have expressed various approaches and convictions of faith and prayer through the centuries.
Today we have Richard Rohr, Bishop Bob Barron (my classmate in the seminary), Sister Helen Prejean, Mother Teresa, Joan Chittister, Edwina Gateley, as well as mystic saints whose writings are available including St. John of the Cross, Therese of Lisieux, etc.
A good spiritual director suggests other spiritual reading beyond scripture, and silence can be a powerful way to delve into those listed above and so many more.
Do your own research about spiritual giants, historical and contemporary. Avail yourself to the rich reservoir of spiritual resources available through our Catholic faith. Obviously there are many outside of Catholicism as well, but my point here is that our Catholic Church, both historically and currently, offers such rich and diverse ways to be enriched spiritually.
A Silent Directed Retreat is but one of those many resources. Almost in our back yard is the Bellarmine Jesuit Retreat House in Barrington. In the Jesuit tradition, they offer many retreats including silent directed ones that are as short as a few days. The 8-day version is only one type. They also offer many retreats on a variety of topics and focuses far beyond those that are identified as Jesuit.
Bellarmine is but one retreat house, there are so many others nationally and internationally because our Catholic Church is world-wide and culturally integrated in such deeply spiritual ways.
Many of you have heard me sum up the Silent Directed Retreat experience by saying, “It is amazing how God can speak to you when you shut up.”
Masks Required
Masks are REQUIRED indoors, regardless of vaccination status, for all clergy, staff, volunteers and parishioners inside archdiocesan facilities in Suburban Cook County and in the City of Chicago, including Masses, liturgies and all activities/events within our parishes.
We have said for so long that We are in this together. The THIS now is a communal approach to being pro-life. Wearing a mask to protect yourself and others is a way to protect life – yours and others. I am encouraging you to put aside secondary influences surrounding current Covid protocols and wear a mask anytime you enter any Archdiocesan facility in keeping with the mandates of the State, medical professionals at the highest levels and, thus, the Archdiocese and us here at Holy Family. Our staff and leadership are not the only ones called to enforce this. We are in THIS together. Thanks for your assistance and support.