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.

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.

Perfect Faith, Imperfect Understanding

Some of this post I already wrote about four years ago. I apologize in advance.

A couple of things have come together in my reflection today: Jesus' encounter with Nathanael (John 1: 45-51), which we have as the gospel for the feast of St. Bartholomew today, and an outing I took with one of the friars yesterday.

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."

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.

Distractions in Prayer

Anyone who decides to get serious about prayer and the spiritual life soon knows the discouragement of struggling with distractions during the time of prayer. They may be useless or even sinful, or just an intruding awareness of the next thing we have to do during the day.

To be distracted when we try to pray and recollect ourselves in the Presence of God is one of the ordinary and most useful trials in the spiritual life. Dealing with the annoyance and disappointment of distraction can help us accept the tutelage of the Holy Spirit and allow Him to draw us deeper into the Blessed Trinity.

That being said, what should we do if we find ourselves unacceptably distracted in prayer?


Outside of the time of prayer

First of all, if we are distracted at the time of prayer, it may be because we are distracted in our life in general. Mindfulness is critical in the spiritual life. Age quod agis, as the saying goes: "Do what you are doing," and not something else.

There can be no hope for prayer if we spend the rest of our day in a state of distraction, with the attention of heart and mind thrown about by every little thing that presents itself to them. A life of prayer demands that we begin to practice "watchfulness of thoughts" and "guard of the heart." We must work with our thoughts, inclinations, and affections throughout the day, practicing the letting go and breathing out of those that are useless, vain, or sinful. If we do not at least begin to discipline our interior attention and affect throughout our whole day, we cannot hope to just turn off the chaos during the time we have set apart for prayer.

Second, we need to practical about planning out our daily prayer. At what time of day is our mind most clear and at peace? For many the early morning is the best time for prayer, when the dawn or pre-dawn--the summo mane as the rubrics for the Liturgy of the Hours put it--recall the Resurrection and the whole world is quiet. For others the best time is the evening, after the day has been dealt with and stress has been worked out. For parish priests who often have a kind of crepuscular, bi-phasic workday, the best time may be in the quiet of the afternoon. We should seek the time for prayer that suits our particular temperament and circumstances best, so that we set ourselves up for success, praying when our mind and heart are most at peace.


Within the time of prayer

Even when we have organized the rest of our lives in service to our prayer, we we will still have to work with distractions while we are praying. It is good that we have to do this, because it trains us in our prayerful intentionality and will leave us more free from the tyranny of our thoughts during the rest of our day.

The most basic response to distractions in prayer is to simply let them go. Thoughts wander into our consciousness without our consent, and we are under no obligation to pay them any attention. If we don't, they will continue on their way. Images are sometimes helpful here. One that I like compares our mind to a river and our thoughts to little boats. I think I got it from Thomas Keating. Imagine the consciousness during prayer to be like a section of a river. Thoughts and distractions are like little boats that come floating downstream. If we don't pay them any attention, they float by and are gone. If we put our attention into them, or worse, weigh them down with an emotional reaction, the little boat gets heavier and moves that much slower. The more attention and emotion we put into the little boat, the heavier it gets and the more sluggish it becomes in floating away.

The purpose of an imaginative exercise like this is to help us learn that one of the real purposes of prayer is dis-identification with our thoughts. Our conscious thoughts do not exhaust our real identity, any more than our body does.

In order to make the letting go of thoughts and distractions work, we need to give up control. As long as we try to force thoughts out of our consciousness, we will only introduce more distraction. The point is not to push them out by force, but to let go of control and to dis-identify with the thought-stream altogether. We are not the thoughts, but the spiritual being that has the thoughts. Just as control is opposed to love in relationships between people, so control is opposed to prayer in the interior person. Let go. If distractions want to be there in our mind, let them be there. It is none of our business. When we don't worry about them or pay attention to them, they will go somewhere else. Control is the opposite of prayer.

Practicing in this way has tremendous spiritual fruit in our life outside of prayer. As we become less identified with our thoughts and feelings, we find ourselves less controlled and determined by our thoughts, feelings, and "tapes" as we go through our day. We become free from what we thought, half wrongly, was our "self."

Now sometimes it happens that we will be overwhelmed. Distracting thoughts come that have such an emotional charge or urgent intensity that they drown out everything else. At this point we sometimes have to simply surrender to the distraction and pray with it instead. As pain in the body is meant to make us deal with an urgent issue, so it sometimes happens with the soul. If distractions are so intense that we cannot let go of them or work with them, we have to start praying through the issue the distraction presents. But we shouldn't resort to this too readily. To let go of thoughts and distractions is a much more fruitful practice.

Retreat Notes 6: Talking

On one of my trips to the bookstore (I like to walk down and up the hill each day) the garrulous German (?) monk Fr. Peter starts a conversation. I'm always amazed at these talkative Trappists. He remembers me from past retreats and recalls that I'm a Franciscan. He notices (from my concelebrating, presumably) that I am now a priest and says that this makes him happy.

He asks me if I have seen Into Great Silence--the DVD is on the store counter for sale. I say that I saw it at Kendall Square in Boston on the night of a huge snowstorm. He says that he saw it there twice, (taking the opportunity during the religious duty of airport runs) and then a third time at the monastery. I'm amazed to hear this, not only because I don't think of Trappists as going to the movies, but because I could hardly bear sitting through the film once.

I make fun of him, saying that I'm surprised to see them even handle the DVD in their store, seeing as in one of the precious few spoken scenes in the film, "Trappist" is used as an insult. He says that he liked the honesty of allowing old monks to appear on film with untrimmed nose and ear hair. "Religious life is not so glamorous as it is often portrayed, brother."

Retreat Notes 5: Observations

Seeing the Trappists at prayer, I recognize many from the nine years I've been coming here. It's like the people you see when you ride the bus or the subway every day. You see the same people you don't know over and over again. Like my own community, I can tell that theirs is shrinking. There are fewer than before. On this visit I see only one novice, not particularly young, and no observers.*

There are differences between these monks and my own religious brothers, though. They seem more evenly divided over the different age groups than we are. The older ones seem to get around a lot more easily than ours, and they're all lighter on the whole. This is probably due to differences in diet and regular physical activity, namely bad are rare for us vs. better and often for them.

*On the last morning of the retreat, I noticed that novice was missing from choir (Trappist novices stick out because of the different color of their cowl and scapular). After Mass, walking back to the retreat house, we saw him getting into a car bound for the airport.

Retreat Notes 4: Hearing

Peaceful morning. I try to pray and I sit and nothing happens. Should I be upset? Is God to be subject to my command to appear and disappear on cue?

In the parlor some of the priests on retreat sit and chat about the standard concerns of the clergy: gutters, roofs, money.

I read Merton's Day of a Stranger, which I find in an anthology in the tired retreat house library. Nine stunning pages that I don't think get read often, perhaps because they are late, obscure, and confrontational in their ambiguity:

"The spiritual life is something people worry about when they are so busy with something else they think they ought to be spiritual."

"I an age where there is much talk about 'being yourself' I reserve the right to forget about being myself, since in any case there is very little chance of my being anybody else."

"Who was that hermitage I saw you with last night?"

Retreat Notes 3: Consumerism

To be consoled or encouraged in the experience of prayer is great, e.g. by the gifts of feeling peaceful, feeling an experience of God, feeling a sensible faith, etc.

But the danger is to come to expect these things, or worse, to pray in order to get these feelings. At that point, since we've descended to the level of "what do I get out of it," we're spiritually safer just going to Target instead of praying. That is to say we're better off admitting our consumerism instead of indulging it with a greed for spiritual "experiences."

The goal needs to be faithfulness to prayer without encouragement from the experience itself, perhaps without even an "experience of God," whatever that means. And then, coming away from prayer, we need to careful not to fill our lack of consolation with the first indulgence that presents itself. The world is all too happy to find us in this condition, and has made any number of cheap substitutes for spiritual consolation readily available.

Retreat Notes 2: Holy Communion

It is a joy to be here as a priest and to concelebrate with the monks at their conventual Mass--and to be able to offer Mass for the intentions that are in my heart.

One thing I miss though: being given Holy Communion. I was always struck by the way they did it here. It was clear to you that the priest saw himself as handling something precious. It was just the way they held it and put it in your hand. You don't always get that at a regular Mass in a parish. I try to keep this in mind as a minister of Communion myself, but I know that you can have a lot of your mind at Communion, e.g. keeping an eye on the extraordinary ministers, trying to judge whether or not you have to go to the tabernacle, watching people to make sure they consume, etc.

Nevertheless, it is an important catechesis to behave with the holy Eucharist as if you were handling something precious, and unworthily at that.

Retreat Notes 1: Vertigo

I had a good retreat with a lot of quiet and time to pray and reflect. I did a lot of good writing too, naming grace from the present and the past. I thought I would share some of it in the next few posts. Here's the first selection:

Most people, as you get to know them, seem less strange. You get to know what 'makes them tick,' the origins and values behind their behavior, their eccentricities, etc.

This is not my experience with God--God seems to be the opposite. At the beginning you have a lot of clear ideas about the content of the utterance "God." But as time goes by, it becomes much more cloudy. What or Who is this "God?" Easily we say God is not this or that, but what is God? Words become weak--the lines between description, metaphor, and name are blurred, e.g. Source, Ground, Spirit, Word, Father.

In this atmosphere prayer easily becomes a kind of vertigo--what is the Is on the other end of this conversation--the I AM?

This experience raises two critical needs or strategies:

1. The need to live in mystery willingly, to take the step into the cloudy unknown, to mortify and escape from the tyranny of the conscious mind and its "understanding."

2. To seek Jesus Christ and him crucified. "He who has seen me has seen the Father." Whatever God is, our confession ( and the truth into which we are baptized) is that Christ crucified is the revelation of God's truest Self.