Retreat Report

Last week I was at St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts for my annual retreat. I've been there for retreat many times, but had not been for twelve years (living in Italy, Covid, and so on). It was a very good week with lots of time for prayer, reading, and reflection.

The monks made some improvements to the retreat house over its Covid closure, including an expansion of the retreatants' dining room, which used to be a little cramped when there was a full house. They also cleaned up the inner courtyard, which, if I remember correctly, was rather overgrown before. It's lovely now and you can sit out there on a nice day.

I had one of the rooms on the west side of the retreat house that have a little tiny enclosed backyard, I guess so you can pretend you're a Carthusian. The weather was good all week so I was able to leave my back door open at night (there's a screen door) and enjoy the cool air and the sounds of nature.

The back door to my room from my little backyard

It was good to see the monks again, and I recognized a few of them from past visits, though I don't know their names for the most part. They had aged, as I suppose I have as well. One monk introduced himself to me when we were cleaning up after lunch one day, and explained how he had followed his brother, a TOR Franciscan, into religious life. He said that he had been in the monastery for fourteen years, which means he may have been a novice the last time I was on retreat there. He then explained how he had only recently been ordained a priest, within the last year. I thought of asking him for his blessing, but I was worried about the other retreatants getting the idea and it becoming a scene. But maybe I should have done it. As old Fr. John Proppe, may he rest in peace, once told me, "The blessing of a new priest is worth wearing out two horses."

I saw that there was a novice. Novices stick out in choir with the white scapular. On Thursday there also appeared in choir a tall young man in secular clothes, with a beard that would make a Capuchin novice proud. Maybe he's discerning. One time when I was walking into church I saw the novice helping him find his place in the book, and that gave me delight. Let's pray for the two of them and thank God for their vocations.

The meals were in silence, of course. On my past retreats we have listened to an audio book, but this time it was music. On one day we started listening to N.T. Wright's Paul: A Biography, but after that it was back to music. There was no explanation for this. I was a little disappointed because I had found the beginning of the book entertaining. Then I thought I would buy the book and finish it myself when I got home, but I haven't done it yet. I have to decide if I'm curious enough for $15.95 (Kindle edition). Maybe the monks and the publisher are in cahoots. They get you hooked on a book, and so forth.

There were two special events during the week. The first was the solemnity of the dedication of the abbey church on the first full day of the retreat.

At the first vespers of this observance, which was the first evening of the retreat, we retreatants were pretty confused about where we were in the psalter, but we seemed to have figured it out by lauds in the morning. I overheard someone saying that there were certain candles around the church that are only lit on this day each year.

The second special event was the resumption of communion under both kinds, presumably post-Covid. While the priest monks were vesting for Mass on the last morning of the retreat, a monk approached us retreatant-concelebrants in the corner of the sacristy where the albs and stoles are set up for retreatants. (When you register for a retreat, you are asked your height so that an appropriate alb can be set out for you.) The monk instructed us that, starting on that day, we would not receive by intinction, but should consume the host and then drink from the chalice. This went fine for us concelebrants when the time came, but something seemed to go wrong with the logistics of the communion of the other monks and the people in the visitors' galleries. I saw the abbot gesturing to the various priest monks who were ministering Holy Communion as if to redirect them to certain places. He also seemed to be trying to get the attention of the principal celebrant as he descended to the monks and retreatants who were lined up, but in vain. At this the abbot let out what seemed like a sigh of resignation. So it's not just friars, I thought. At that moment I recalled a previous conversation with the monk who was the principal celebrant, in which he exclaimed, "I am a free dancer." It seemed like an odd thing for a Trappist to say. That story is back in this post. 

There was a full house of eleven retreatants. Five of us were priests, or at least five concelebrated at Mass. Of the other six I gathered that two or three were permanent deacons. There seemed to be a couple of groups of two or three on retreat together. Retreatants there together always means more talking, unfortunately, and we were admonished about this in the middle of the week. It was far, however, from the worst group in this regard I have been with on retreat at the abbey. That's another story. I seemed to remember that at previous last breakfasts before departure we were allowed or instructed to talk so one could meet the others he had been praying with (and hopefully for) all week, but in any case it didn't happen this time. It was the usual music, so I finished the retreat without getting to know any of the other retreatants. I prayed for them, though, during the week, for their openness to and discernment of the graces God desired for them during our time at the abbey.

Retreat

Today the friars of the Capuchin General Curia are off to Assisi for their annual esercizi spirituali, which is what, in the USA anyway, we would call guided retreat. I will be grateful for the charity of your prayer, as I will also pray for you.

Cat, Via San Francesco, Assisi

Retreat Report

This afternoon we have returned home from our annual community retreat. It was held, as has been usual in time my time here, at our house in Frascati in the hills outside Rome.

Ah Rome. She's pretty from a distance, no?

For me the grace of the retreat was to pause and take a look at my life and vocation at this particular moment, especially in light of some changes in the recent past (e.g. loss of a spiritual director) and looking forward to changes that are on the way (e.g. the General Chapter this summer). My prayer was mostly about who I am at this point and the discernment of what God desires for me going forward.

For the days of retreat, I found myself most of the time in one of two places. The first was the Capuchin church adjacent to the friary:

San Francesco d'Assisi, Frascati. Consecrated 1579.

There I prayed, reflected on things, and sometimes just sat with the Lord. It was cold enough in there that even I wanted a sweatshirt, so there wasn't much danger of any other friar interrupting my solitude!

My other spot was in the friary rec room, where I read, journaled, and tended the fireplace in the later afternoons.

What a rich source of metaphor for the spiritual life! Long-time followers of this blog will remember my sufferings during a period of my religious life when I gathered with confreres to pray around a fake fireplace (supplied with real tools; 'Lord, close my lips' must be my prayer about that), despite the fact that the Blessed Sacrament was reserved in a number of nearby places.

During the retreat I finished Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation by Fr. Martin Laird, O.S.A., which had been recommended to me by a confrere, and I read most of Cardinal Sarah's The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise, which is a prayerful, beautiful book. I recommend it.

Back From Retreat Ramble

I'm back in Rome after the week in Assisi. The 'spiritual exercises' were good, just not what I would call a retreat. It's a nice time to be with the brothers, to hang out, to have some time away from work and the usual routine. And of course it's always a privilege to be able to visit Assisi, to pray at the tomb of Francis and before the relics of St. Clare.

Back From Retreat

It was good to be on retreat this past week, especially since by my most grievous fault and given the transition, I missed my annual retreat last year. What can I say? In the end I'm not a very good religious.

On Retreat

Dear friends, I am on retreat with the brothers for the coming week and so there will be no new posts nor comments moderated for at least that long.

Thank you for the kindness of your prayers, as I will pray for you.

Shrimp and Blindness

Ash Wednesday. My twenty-first Lent. Every Ash Wednesday I write some version of the same old post. So this year I won't. But if you want to read it anyway, here's a simple version and here's a more baroque one.

This morning I was praying on the fast today, and praying for inspiration about fasting during Lent. Into my thoughts came a memory and a new understanding. With the new understanding, came a new repentance.

Retreat Notes: Trappist Humor

[On the last afternoon of my retreat, when I was doing my gift shopping, one of the monks told me a Trappist joke.]

A Jesuit, a Dominican, and a Trappist were on a deserted island. There they found a magical bottle, out of which came a genie. The genie granted them three wishes in thanksgiving for his liberation. The men decided to divide the wishes equally, one for each.

The Jesuit went first.

"I wish I were teaching in the most prestigious university in the world!" he proclaimed. As soon as he had said this, the Jesuit vanished from sight, whisked away to his glorious new academic appointment.

The Dominican went next.

"I wish I were preaching in the most beautiful cathedral in Christendom!" he piously wished. As soon as he had said this, he too vanished from sight, spirited away to his august new pulpit.

At last the genie came to the Trappist.

"And what do you wish for, brother monk?"

"Never mind," said the Trappist, "I already got it."

Retreat Notes: Arise, My Beloved

[Songs of Songs 2:8-14 was the reading for Morning Prayer on the feast of St. Clare at the Abbey]

"Arise, my beloved, my beautiful one, and come...the time of pruning the vines has come."

That is prayer. That is the spiritual life. The desire to pray, the inspiration to turn to prayer, is our experience of this invitation. Our heart and mind lifted up to God in prayer is just the call of God to the soul, 'Arise my beloved, my beautiful one, and come' viewed from our human perspective. So to pray is only to surrender and consent to be lifted up into the call of Love to the beloved.

But prayer must also be the consent to pruned, to be cut, to accept the painful excision of attachments, of sentiments and aspects of the self that you thought were integral to who you are, to 'being yourself.' For the created person whom God loves is not the same as my idea of who I am. So I must have faith that the loss and pain of the pruning is not only what is supposed to happen through prayer and is not a sign of something wrong, but instead is directed toward making me more the creature beautiful to God and therefore more happy and free for the purposes of his kingdom.

Retreat Notes: Righteousness and Vainglory

Here is the danger in allowing yourself to be astonished or scandalized by others, or, put better, allowing yourself to consider others unrighteous:

If you indulge the thought that others are unrighteous, conversely it will include within itself your taste for the idea of yourself as righteous. You then risk making this the motivation for your religion: you pray not because of the love of God, but because you want to be able to think of yourself as a righteous person. Thus, your religion becomes vainglorious at best and an idolatry at worst.

Considering others as less righteous leads one to be even less so himself.

Back From Retreat

Well, I'm back from retreat. I guess there's not a whole lot to say about the week. I spent most time trying to sit in the 'uninteresting wilderness' of quiet prayer and catching up with my beloved John of the Cross. I have a couple of bloggable reflections, which I'll be putting up over the next few days when I get to it.

For starters, the little encounters of my arrival and departure:

"The monk who greets me--I recall his face--tells me he's from Marblehead. I tell him that my mother's from Gloucester. We discover that we both had our first experience of religious life in the OFM of the Holy Name province. He was a student at Callicoon. They used to say the rosary walking around the lake. He wanted more prayer. Now he's a Trappist.

'I've been here for 53 years. I think I have a vocation.' he says.

He takes me to the room called St. Catherine, and leaves me there."

This morning after Mass the same monk greeted me in the sacristy, thanked me for reminding him of his first fervor, and said he hoped I would be back soon.


Over the course of the week I also had a few conversations with this chipmunk, who seemed to live in the retreat house courtyard, often sitting--as if presiding over things--on one of the hedges.

Retreat Notes: From My Confessor

I'm always struck by confession with these Trappists. I have found them very wise and extraordinarily gentle.

Self-knowledge is part of asceticism, and so is always a good in the spiritual life. If your self-knowledge amounts to how wretched you are, then it won't seem like a step forward, but it really is because God meets us where we are, not in the imaginary self we think we want to be.

Every day is a new opportunity to wake up from sleep walking. That's the core of the ascetic invitation.

This is the retreat house chapel. Check out the dove-shaped tabernacle where the Most Blessed Sacrament is reserved, suspended above the altar.

Retreat Notes: Mary Magdalene

For her day today, I was praying with Mary Magdalene, especially through the gospel for her feast, John 20:11-18

"Mary stayed outside the tomb weeping." The beginning of prayer. We are left alone, and we lament before the empty tomb. What is our lament? Our compunction over our sins and distraction, and the obscuring of the presence of God we have brought upon ourselves. Contrition is the beginning of prayer.

As Mary addresses her concern and pain to the one she thinks is the gardener, so we cry out into the obscure and unknown wilderness that opens inside us through prayer.

But then this Unknown is recognized as God--not because of our efforts, or because our perception is clever, but because we are called by name. Mary, who knew Jesus well in his earthly life, does not recognize him right away in his Risen Life. But once she is called by name there is no doubt, and this Encounter cuts through and renders obsolete all of her previous concern and sorrow. Something new has appeared, broken in. It is the Resurrection.

But that experience in prayer, of being called by name and knowing, recognizing the Teacher in that moment--that's all you get. You can't hold on to it, and afterward you can hardly understand or recall it. Noli me tangere, "stop holding on to me." God refuses to be a possession. This is the coincidence of prayer and holy poverty.

Retreat Notes: Prayer and Intention

The "practice" of contemplative prayer can be an obstacle to prayer--if, consciously or not, we come to it and execute it wrong-headedly as one more project, one more task. Dismiss thoughts! Form intention! Desire God!

No! This is not a job or another task! "You have only to keep still." (Exodus 14:14) Let go of thoughts not as a project in itself, which only reinforces religion as agonistic self-involvement, but to sit still and hear God calling within. It is not a strenuous reaching up to God, but the practice of noticing that he delights to descend and live within you.

Retreat Notes: Quotes

A collection of quotes read and heard that I wrote down during the retreat.

"...it's when I am with people that I am lonely, and when I am alone I am no longer lonely."

--Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas


"The Word of God is a light to the mind and a fire to the will."

--St. Lawrence of Brindisi, from his sermons for Lent


"I cannot think what harsher curse I could call down upon a man than that he should always get what he asks for when he tears away from sweet repose out of a curiosity which revels in restlessness."

--St. Bernard of Clairvaux, On Conversion, a Sermon to Clerics (trans. Bernard Saïd, OSB) (In my margin it says, "like when you realize you've been surfing Wikipedia articles for 20 minutes".)


"Grammar is not for me. I am a free dancer. Life begins beyond the rules. I am a free dancer."

--Foreign born, not so young Trappist opening an Amazon box containing a book of English grammar, after explaining, in perfect English, that he now has to learn English.


"I think it is likely that much of the restless boredom, frantic escapism, commitment phobia, and enervating despair that plagues us today is the ancient demon of acedia in modern dress."

--Kathleen Norris, Acedia & Me


"Luminous beings are we; not this crude matter!"

--retreatant waiting for the dishwasher, quoting Yoda in half-mockery of the taped lecture we heard during the meal.


The tools of retreat: The Sacred Scriptures, breviary, rosary, and journal.

Retreat Notes: Meals

The silent meals are a real treasure for me here. I could even do without the "spiritual" tapes they play. (I'm pretty sure it's the same one as last time.) But to be able to eat moderately, slowly, not cutting or forking another bite until finishing the current one, I find it all so refreshing. To consider the food in itself--what is it? From what sort of living creature did it come? How did the nutrients and energy get into it? How did it get to the table? With what loves in its journey? With what sufferings? What am I eating on the spiritual level? What love and care? What injustices?

Retreat Notes: Acts of Contrition

The long retreat morning, Office, Mass, and breakfast all being done before 8 a.m. Now its down to the chapel to pray. As soon as I start, I'm fighting with sleepiness. The wisps of dreams float into my consciousness--those eccentric and yet logical mash-ups of the people and places of the last few days. So, the answer--in holy obedience--get up, go back to my room and go to sleep. About an hour later I am awakened by the bell announcing the optional retreatant's conference. I have no intention of going.

Back in the chapel I start in on prayer again. I do everything right. Sit quietly. Let go of thoughts. Disidentify with feelings. Purify my intention. God alone the desire of my heart, God alone the end of my will, God alone the delight of my mind. After the 20 minutes I have trained myself to sit and "do" this, I get up and walk the retreat house cloister, quietly, eyes cast down, refusing all reflections and the resumption of the interior monologue. Returning the chapel, I continue where I left off, as if such an expression makes any sense with this.

And what of it? Do I get a feeling? No. An awareness of God? Not really. An experience of God? No. I can't say that it's an experience of any-thing. But it's not quite no-thing either. It does not satisfy, does not make me feel better. This is my "dryness," this is the "aridity" as the spiritual writers call it, of my so-called prayer life.

Writing about St. John of the Cross, Thomas Merton called contemplative prayer an "uninteresting wilderness," and does that ever speak to me!

Indeed, John speaks to me a lot at times like this. For years God has been trying to invite me into the "night of sense," and for years I have been resisting the invitation. The sensual satisfactions of prayer and spiritual practice from my first fervor--now lost by the kindness of God--I have replaced by running off to other intellectual delights and physical comforts, as well as pointless distractions and anodynes.

Thus, I have not been willing--interiorly, that is--to enter the night of sense. So though I am clever enough to seem spiritual, I remain shallow.

The answer: the Cross.

Retreat Notes: Arrival

[Hi friends. I'm back from retreat, and thanks to your prayers it was a good one. I have reflections and pictures to post over the next few days.]

I arrive. I'm not on the little list in the guestmaster's hand, but I'm in the big book. St. Agnes is to be my home, one of the rooms on the more or less western exposure, with a little yard attached. It's a trade-off; either you get the eastern exposure or a yard.

I go to the chapel and pray recite None. I ask the Lord for a good retreat. Back to St. Agnes and unpack. Find a spot for the coffee pot.

Tired but not sleepy. It's also part of retreat to get back in physical balance.

What now? Back to the chapel to push right into prayer mode? Make coffee? Try to sleep a little bit? Just hide out? This too is retreat.

The shocking first couple of hours crawl by--"how long until Vespers?" cries out the question inside...but it's not quite yet the love of God and desire for prayer; it's just the effect of the sudden fasting from noise and the lust to be distracted from the Truth that is only spoken in silence.

Away on Retreat

This weekend I leave for my annual retreat. After making a couple of visits on the way, I will arrive at one of my favorite places in the whole world, St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts.

So, there will be no posts this coming week. Once I leave no comments will be moderated until I return next Saturday.

In your charity please offer a prayer for me on retreat.

I'll post pictures when I return, and reflections should there be any.

Without you, Lord, I am nothing. May I go into the woods to find you again, for the first time.

Hermitage Notes: The Arboreal Observance

It's a beautiful Spring morning. Four young Franciscan friars offer Mass together with quiet devotion, two of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin and two of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal. Amen. Thank you, Holy Spirit.

After Mass I take a walk in the woods, up to a little clearing where someone has placed a statue of Francis. The woods, it really does it for me. Peaceful and secure. Quiet and yet full of the little noises of insistent life.

The trees are my spiritual directors. Reaching up to the sky they fulfill the joyful Easter slogan, sursum sunt quaerite, "Seek the things that are above." Without torturous self-reflection they take the grace of God poured out in sunlight and rain and transform it into their own flourishing. Could it be so simple with us? Yes!