Retreats

In a normal year… I would be planning on going on retreat next week, but as we all know, that this is not anywhere close to a normal year. In the first week of June the priests of the Diocese of Des Moines usually meet at Conception Abbey in Northwest Missouri and spend a few days together to kind of regroup spiritually. We have the opportunity to pray together, listen to a spiritual director with a topic, celebrate the Mass together, and even spend some down time talking and maybe even spend some time just relaxing.

Retreats can be a wonderful time if you ever get the opportunity to do one, which I know that working parents would have a difficult time to do. As a priest, Canon Law (Church Law) requires that priests take a spiritual retreat at least once a year, because in a busy parish, we may not always get the opportunity to spiritually recharge in the daily life. Some of the retreats that I have been on have been mediocre, but I have also had some incredible retreat experiences in my life that have really strengthened my faith. I remember when I was in seminary that I was really considering leaving, but then we had an eight-day silent retreat. This means that we were not allowed to talk, read newspapers, surf the internet, text, watch TV, or anything like that for eight days! The silent retreats can be difficult to get into, but in many ways, they really help to get in touch with God’s guidance in the Holy Spirit. During this retreat, I had a great strengthening of my vocation because of the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

This weekend we also celebrate the feast of Pentecost in which the Disciples had an incredible experience that changed their faith and gave them the courage to go out into the world to preach the Gospel of Jesus. Jesus promised that he would send the Paraclete or the Holy Spirit to guide them and on Pentecost the Holy Spirit came upon the Disciples to give them the courage and the abilities to be able to fulfill their mission to spread the faith to the world, and they did.

The Holy Spirit is still working in our world even today, but we need to calm ourselves to be able to listen to him, and retreats can help us to do that, but they are not the only way. We sometimes need to work for some silence in our lives. A book that I really enjoyed was from Cardinal Sarah called “The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise” Cardinal Sarah reminds us that to truly hear that whisper of God we need to get into the silence and a retreat is a wonderful way to do that.

Even if we do not have an opportunity to do a spiritual retreat, maybe take some “micro” retreats in which we find a nice quiet place, turn off our phone, break out the Sacred Scriptures or find a good spiritual book and spend some time with God each and every day, and with God’s grace we will all be on fire with the Holy Spirit just like the Apostles were.

God bless,
Fr. Ken