Encountering Christ

From my time spent in retreat and guest ministry, I believe spiritually inclined individuals have a great need for silence and contemplative prayer. People are longing for deeper spiritual formation and catechesis. Scores of souls have left organized religion in the United States in the first quarter of the 21st Century. Many more are disengaged and are not active in their faith communities, and are also not engaging in an active personal prayer life. Monks at Conception Abbey in Missouri started a retreat series called the Encounter Christ Retreat.^[i] The hope for this retreat is to offer the Catholic spirituality and silence to help souls grow in their relationship with Christ. After the success of the first year, the retreats continue to grow, and I am privileged to start these retreats at Benet Lake in Wisconsin, Conception’s daughter house. I offer these reflections as a guide for growing more deeply in the spiritual life.

Retreat

A retreat is meant to draw people closer to Christ through a silent atmosphere and guided meditation. Someone who comes on retreat comes with an invitation to dive deeply into one’s heart, ready to receive all that Christ wants to give. With the Holy Spirit’s inspiration and vitality, the soul comes into a spiritual oasis where it will receive all that God wants it to discover. The goal of this retreat is not to achieve something or do something, but to become someone. Remember, the person you are meant to become is who God made you to be.

Silence

Western culture is always active and never resting. You can’t go anywhere without encountering advertisements and some kind of noise. The sanctity of our homes is even open to digital noise from our smartphones and computers.^[ii] So, silence and quiet are important for the realm of the Church. When we come to Christ, we need to be filled with God’s presence. We cannot do this when we are constantly on the move and overstimulated.

I want to offer you a challenge that I know you can accomplish. Take the time to “unplug” from everything. Turn off your devices at home: phone, computer, TV, and anything connected to AI, and so on. Let it lie for a short time. Let God, in his divine essence, fill your soul. Open the door for Jesus, in his authentic presence, to fill you with peace. Await the Holy Spirit in her majestic radiance to light all the darkness that is within you, to now be light as she is light. This is the gift of silence. It prepares the ground for you to receive the promise, the promise of divine life eternal. 

Mary, Our Model for Discipleship

Hans Ur Von Balthasar and others have called Mary the model of discipleship.^[iii] She is the one who shows us how to live the Christian life. Her daily fidelity and silent strength are qualities of life that we can emulate. Although she was fortified by grace, we can learn from her choices. She chose to stay with Christ and Joseph her whole life. She never turned away from God’s mission. Now, what’s important to note is how she responded to God’s word. She “considered all things and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). She literally took her experiences to heart. This is the invitation that you have before you now, in this small sliver of time. What will you make of this beautiful grace? Learn from Mary, our role model for discipleship and contemplation.

For Reflection, what would you do when Mary arrives at your door today? You just get home from work and are looking forward to resting when you hear a small, faint knocking at your door. You open the door, and there you see a little woman dressed in white and blue, humble, short, wearing sneakers, and carrying only one travel bag. Turns out, it’s Jesus’ mother. She has served God for 2000 years and is taking a break. She humbly asks to have a place to stay in your home. Do you take her in? Will you give a room to someone who gave so much for God and her son? Mary has so much to teach us, and we need to let her come into our hearts to find peace. 

The Longest Journey

So, let me tell you a story. A young man decided to leave his home and start on a journey. He had spent his whole life in a small hamlet in the countryside of Andalusia, Spain. He lived his whole life, sheltered and protected, hidden from the world around him. One day, the youth decided that enough was enough, and he was anxious about getting out to see the world. He left his village, said goodbye to his family, and then became a shepherd. He found shepherding to be hard, but he stuck with it. One night, he came across an abandoned church and decided to rest there. He dreamed about a treasure buried in the desert under the great Pyramids. He knew that this was his personal mission, so he sold his sheep and went on a journey. Along the way, he met a mysterious elder who showed him what to do and where to go. He crossed an ocean, was robbed of his money, and had to work a year under a crystal merchant to earn enough money to get back on his journey. He set out in a caravan with camels and wayfarers who were going across the ocean from oasis to oasis. At one oasis, he met a modest and beautiful woman whom he knew he loved instantly. He promised to return for her once he found his treasure, and the lovely maiden agreed. 

Finally, he met a hermit, who was a wizard. The wizard taught him his craft and promised to show the youth where he needed to go to finish his journey. Finally, the youth made it to the Pyramids, only to find that the treasure was missing and that thieves were waiting for anyone they could find. Then he heard a story from one of the thieves. The thief had a dream that a treasure was waiting to be found in an abandoned church in Andalusia, where the youth came from. The thief told the youth it was foolish to follow a dream to find a treasure. Now the youth knew where the treasure was. It was in the place where he had started. Now, all he had to do was return to where he started to find it.^[iv]

While this journey seems fantastical and unreal, it is comparable to the journey that we all share a part of, and the Lord calls us to follow him and to return to our true home. Jesus said to his disciples,” For where your treasure is, there your heart will also be” (Matthew 6:21). I invite you, my fellow journeyers, to take this to reflection and see where it leads you.

From Head to Heart

As long as I have been studying prayer and working in ministry, I have come to believe this saying more and more. It’s hard to get out of your head. One will leave behind preconceived notions and biases to journey to the deepest center of the soul. Here, you find the “treasure” that you need. The thing is, it is hard to let go of what we believe and value in the beginning, to lay aside or throw away a self-image and personal beliefs. And this is precisely what we need to do for interior freedom. Are you willing?

Here’s another thought experiment. I want you to picture yourself outside in nature, far away from any distractions. Look around you and see that you are in a beautiful place, nestled in the mountains, on rolling hills, or maybe in the desert. Whatever suits your fancy. Now, imagine that you are walking along and you come across a hole or opening in the land. You go over to investigate it and discover that it is a deep crevice that opens into a deeper space. You take a rock and throw it into the darkness inside. As it falls, you wait for it to land on the bottom of the pit. When it finally does, you hear a faint echo. Shocked and a bit afraid, you venture into the cave a little way. You don’t have a flashlight, so you use a match to light a small torch from a branch within. You find that inside there are some precious stones, and you want to venture further, but can’t at this time. Later on, you return on a different day, ready to go deeper. You climb down into the cave until you reach the bottom. Down below, you find a cavern full of precious stones that hasn’t been discovered in years. You keep coming back, with the sure knowledge that you have found what you were seeking. This is a treasure worth finding.

This is a fitting analogy for our interior lives. God has made us in his image and wants to keep making us in this image. So, it is sad when we give up on the project. We stopped “taking the time to divine.” You are invited back to this. You are loved and challenged. Will you go deeper into this space to allow yourself to be and become who you are called to be?

What is your integrity worth? How will you succeed or grow so that this will happen? Only then can you be truly free, once you let go and make this journey into your interior castle.

For Reflection, take the following Scriptures to your silent prayer: John 3:14-16, John 10:7-11, 1 John 4:7-12. Ask the Holy Spirit to teach you the depth of God’s boundless love. All healthy spirituality will have God’s boundless love as its foundation and support. Never forget, you are loved deeply and divinely. Let us never forget this.

Our Journey So Far

Christian discipleship is a lifelong journey. It is not run as a sprint but as a marathon. We start the race full of energy, speed, and excitement. We keep a steady pace throughout the early stages, and then comes trouble. We encounter resistance as we continue, and the whole set of ideals of discipleship begins to wear thin and fall short of our romanticized expectations and hopes. Suddenly, something so vital as the spiritual life becomes dull and dare-say boring. This is the problem of acedia, “the noon-day devil,” as the Desert Fathers called it. It is not laziness or inattentiveness. The nature of the beast is that it causes us to put ourselves to flight and abandon our prayer. We move on to other things. You may not intend to give up your prayer life for lower things. Still, you find yourself losing that first love and zeal that you started with. 

So, it is with anyone’s prayer life. Imagine how complicated this is with technology and web addiction, which draw us closer to our shallow selves and take us away from that which will inspire us to Christ. We are called, you and I, and all in the Church, to rekindle that first flame of devotion which we first had when we were younger. This is the hardest part at the mid-way point of life, to look back and remember the love we had and ask God to give us that grace again.

I want to touch on the great poem of the Western canon, the Divine Comedy, to teach the importance of finding love in our spiritual lives. The famous classic narrates Dante’s journey through the Cosmos, his descent into the Inferno, and his ascent through Purgatory and Paradise. Literary critics will point out that Dante is not only illuminating a spiritual landscape but also his own life story. His poem is simultaneously narrative and didactic, telling of his own journey and teaching spiritual wisdom. Dante’s Comedy guides the soul to find God’s grace in one’s own story. Dante finds, in Paradise, that love “binds all things together.” God’s love for humanity made the whole of history possible, and that is an invitation of endless grace for us. 

I love the timeless power of Dante’s message in the Divine Comedy. Grace is found in reflection on life’s beautiful twists and turns. Several times in the poem, Dante is told to look back at how far he has come. He looks back at Earth and sees how small it looks and how far he has come. This is our calling as well. Let your soul remain humble and grounded, remembering where you came from and where you are “going” in the spiritual sense. No matter how high or low we go, we need to keep our minds on Earth. Humility is literally a call to staying grounded and focused on our essential identity. On this journey, no one is self-made and autonomous. We are all here by God’s grace; no one is self-made. Let us not forget this. We are the ones in need, as God’s chosen ones, to remind ourselves of God’s gifts bestowed upon us, and the greatest gift within us, the indwelling image and presence of God within. Only through prayer and deeper reflection will we continue to understand this great gift. 

For Reflection, I invite you to take the book of Wisdom, Chapter 18, to prayer in Lectio Divina. Read over it again and again, listening to God’s wisdom flowing from His Almighty Word. Also, read the Paradiso of the Divine Comedy, Canto 33, to understand its artistic depth and the aesthetic truth that the World is saved by beauty. 

Taking Our Spiritual Pulse

In recent years, I have been reminded again and again of the old saying that the journey of a million miles begins with one step. One small step. Another truth, equally important to this, is that it takes constant striving and repeated effort to keep the journey alive. And so, it is with our spiritual lives. Our interest in coming on retreat is not to save ourselves. Only God can do that. It is also not to save others. Our prayers and earnest intentions can benefit others spiritually, and God can use our charity to demonstrate His love to others, even strangers. Remember, though, we do not save ourselves. We cooperate with the invitation to grace. And this is the meaning behind our spiritual lives. We are called to be holy. God makes us holy, saves us, and grants us a share in His Kingdom, the share in eternal life. We have the choice to walk on the journey, to seek God who is constantly seeking us. It is so important to allow ourselves to get back on track when we fall away, and this is the importance of taking the time to go on retreat. 

The image of the flywheel serves as a spiritual metaphor. A flywheel doesn’t start spinning all at once. It takes many hard turns to start it and set it in motion. Imagine having to spin a large flywheel in a factory all by hand. It is a hard task to do. The turns do nothing at first. Then, after many turns, the flywheel reaches a critical speed and becomes self-sustaining in its momentum. Now it operates freely and supplies energy for the rest of the generator. If the power goes out, the generator will keep going thanks to the flywheel. So, it is with our spiritual lives. Every little practice, every pious devotion, may not seem to make sense at first. Once you take the time to realize the power your spirituality has, you see how it helps to carry you through the different parts of life, the highs and lows, the mountains, valleys, and plateaus. Religion is not there to fall back on. Our faith carries us forward and allows us to keep going, although we will fall. We fall forward, knowing that we will rise with him, having a share with Christ in His burial and His Resurrection (Romans 6:1-11).

So, dear friends in Christ, I invite you to take this to heart as we conclude our retreat together, to remember who you are and whose you are. Keep your finger on your spiritual pulse. Check in with yourself and your spiritual family to keep your souls healthy. There is nothing greater than this, to know the One who is with us always and draws us closer to HIMSELF.

For Reflection, I simply want to offer a meditation from Psalm 139, given from the Revised Grail Psalter of Conception Abbey.

Psalm 139 

1 O LORD, you search me, and you know me. 

2 You yourself know my resting and my rising; you discern my thoughts from afar. 

3 You mark when I walk or lie down; you know all my ways through and through. 

4 Before ever a word is on my tongue, you know it, O LORD, through and through. 

5 Behind and before, you besiege me, your hand ever laid upon me. 

6 Too wonderful for me, this knowledge; too high, beyond my reach. 

7 O where can I go from your spirit, or where can I flee from your face? 

8 If I climb the heavens, you are there. If I lie in the grave, you are there.

9 If I take the wings of the dawn or dwell at the seaʼs furthest end, 

10 even there your hand would lead me; your right hand would hold me fast.

11 If I say, “Let the darkness hide me, and the light around me be night,”

12 even darkness is not dark to you, the night shall be as bright as day, and darkness the same as the light.

13 For it was you who formed my inmost being, knit me together in my motherʼs womb.

14 I thank you who wonderfully made me; how wonderful are your works, which my soul knows well! 

15 My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being fashioned in secret and molded in the depths of the earth. 

16 Your eyes saw me yet unformed, and all days are recorded in your book, formed before one of them came into being. 

17 To me, how precious your thoughts, O God; how great is the sum of them! 

18 If I count them, they are more than the sand; at the end, I am still at your side. 

19 O God, that you would slay the wicked, that men of blood would depart from me! 

20 With deceit they rebel against you, and set your designs at naught. 

21 Do I not hate those who hate you, abhor those who rise against you? 

22 I hate them with a perfect hate, and they are foes to me.

23 O search me, God, and know my heart. O test me, and know my thoughts.

24 See that my path is not wicked, and lead me in the way everlasting.^[v]

^[i] https://www.conceptionabbey.org/guests/mens-retreats/

^[ii] To understand how much our minds are affected by constant web-use and exposure to technology, I recommend two books, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence by Anna Lebke, andThe Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr.

^[iii] George Wiegel, Letters to a Young Catholic, Basic Books, (2015), 61.

^[iv] Story taken from Paulo Coelho’s fantasy novel, The Alchemist, published in 1988. 

^[v] Revised Grail Psalter, first published by Conception Abbey, Conception MO, 64433, sold to GIA Publications.