Pax vobiscum.. Today, I write between Conferences at a Discalced Carmelite retreat. I will return once more in the evening. The update will be along the top. I return in the evening, 7p CST.
My husband and I have been attending retreats for over 10 years now. Raising 5 children in a Catholic home, it never occurred to us that to be even more Catholic meant to nourish one’s prayer life with a little bit of removal from the world to stand before God for a whole day.
If I am on retreat, then what am I doing here speaking with you?
My dear friend, you are my Church, part of Christ’s Mystical Body, so it with He and thee I share a few thinkings as Thérèse, Teresa, John of the Cross and Jesus keep me company in the deepest recesses of my soul.
Why retreat?
We all know Jesus withdrew into gardens, the desert, and mountains. Where do we go to spend time solely with God? with Jesus? with Our Father? to listen to the Holy Spirit?
Once a priest told me every Catholic needs to retreat from the world at least once a month — to literally remove oneself from the world to be solely with God for at least 8 hours, the equivalent of a workday. If we can offer our hearts and minds, yay, our entire animus to perfunctionary duties to secure our livelihoods for our loved ones, how much more should we set ourselves apart in devotion to God for a day? to love our God and love our neighbor?
When we read, pray, meditate, contemplate before Him as Jesus did for an extended period of time, we can be assured we return to the holy work of our lives with a purer intent, a more sanctified focus to fulfill His Holy Will.
How would one go about doing this?
Check your Diocesan Offices for events at your local retreat center, or make your own. Carve out 9a - 3p any given Saturday. Pay attention to what God has been telling you in the days or weeks prior and find those holy books or prayers you’ve set aside but haven’t had time for. Then, go somewhere. Find as much isolation before God you can manage. Segment your day into morning, late morning, and after-lunch “conferences”: read for an hour, talk a walk to mediate, reflect for 30 minutes, then pray for another 30. Don’t forget to begin or end your retreat with Holy Mass.
Our retreat.
Every October, our Discalced Carmelite Community has a weekend-long silent retreat. My husband and I did not plan on attending this year because 1) bad economy 2) I’ve been swamped with work because of my new teaching job (grades are due this weekend). Praise God, I’ve been doing well with my prayer life, daily, with His help — because I see this job that appeared out of nowhere as a Holy Work of the Father.
If I can manage to see my livelihood with this perceptive, if I can manage glancing up at Our Lord in Love throughout the day, isn’t this enough? Do I really need the additional help of a set-aside-time-for-God retreat?
Yes. “Managing” isn’t enough.
Whatever you’re doing in your prayer life, at whatever stage, a retreat only amplifies the beautiful work to be done by God within you. Your soul just returns to becoming God’s work. Just as you would drop off your vehicle for your mechanic to work under the hood, a retreat about is taking your soul in for a spiritual tune-up by the Master Mechanic.
What elation I have in being here among like-minded Catholics who seek the Face of God with me. (so much so, I had to come by & speak with you!)
This month’s retreat is on St. Thérèse and is called — joy of Joy! — Faithful Daughter, presented by one of our Discalced Carmelite priests from our Province. We just wrapped up our second of four conferences or talks. The first was on the History of Carmel in Spain and England during the Reformation and on France before and after the Reformation. Father wanted to provide cultural context on Thérèse’s Catholic France and on what influenced her, her family, and her Carmel of Lisieux.
My Biggest Take-Aways for Conference #2
The first is Father asking us to consider God’s Providence in our own personal salvation history, in our own redemption.
St. Paul1 tells us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. Yes, my work will look different from yours, which can be said for all the saints throughout History. All this, we know, will be affected through The Great Saint of all time, Who is Christ Jesus and Him Crucified, through Whom all good is perfected and accomplished. How wonderful to think we each have a unique, but common Holy Story to tell when we get to heaven!
Thérèse‘s Story is different than mine in that I wasn’t born in 19th Century France nor raised by Sts. Zelie and Louis Martin before dying young in a Carmelite cloister etc, etc, etc! My holy story will involve perfecting my Faith, Hope and Love while living out my vocation somewhere in Texas as Matriarch of a Catholic family who works to raise, mold and inspire saints among her own household.
What graces and crosses does God gift us to work out our personal story of salvation?
I don’t have anything that resembles Thérèse‘s “Christmas Miracle” conversion when she was 13, but I do have a history of beautiful crosses that I can clearly see have shaped me throughout my life.
I was just reflecting on this very idea of my crosses, my sacrifices this week before coming to my retreat, without ever knowing what Father’s talks would be about — isn’t that interesting?
I’d written in my Notebook —
God has been dripping away all these years. Many things, many _____. All that I have imagined, He has not allowed or have always come to naught.
Naught. Nothing. Nada.
…
I think how all these He has been working for me to more like Him without me knowing it.
This is one of the beauties of experiencing retreat.
Retreat causes the soul to slow down and reflect — not just during this holy time, but before and after by contemplating God’s Love, Work, and Action in your life.
It is as though in spending Time with God, you actually step into His Eternity and He lets you see, connect, and experience His salvific work in your life.
Indeed, you are putting on the mind of Christ, seeing with human eyes where God has been as you journey toward Heaven.
Me, within
I’m so happy.. I’m surrounded by my holy books, my Breviary, my Notebook, my pens, my friends and family and my saints, (food), my Church, my priest — words, language, & ideas and The Word.
Carmel is the desert, a land of hopeful detachment preparing us for heaven where we will have nothing but God to make us happy. Carmel is a dawn dulls earthly distraction.
No matter what kind of “holy work” I think I do with my Masses, my rosaries, my Adorations, its times like these that I am wholly reoriented toward God because I cast off Time and allow Him to work in a space that is wholly unknown to me — my soul.
Every retreat is different, just like every phase of my life is different, just like every moment is different, impacted by God’s transforming grace. During a retreat, I open the gate to my garden to let The Gardener in, to do what He will, how He will, when He will.. His effects lasting for as long as I stay in grace, forever if I wish!
Oh, Lord.. it is better I don’t know what You do to me.. You know what I need. To You, my Sovereign Lord, I give you the little realm of my soul. Do with me what You will. Amen.
❤️
Wherefore, my dearly beloved, (as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but much more now in my absence,) with fear and trembling work out your salvation. — St. Paul to the Philippians 2, 12