Retreat
24/August/2007 Filed in:
Chapter TalksVery soon we shall be in retreat. You may wonder why contemplative nuns should need a retreat. Isn't monastic life itself a continual retreat? I think the answer may be found in St Benedict's chapter On the Observance of Lent. There we have an excellent guide to what a retreat should be, written long before our Jesuit friends made life complicated and introduced one or two slightly foreign notions. Like Lent, a retreat is a time for purifying our lives of all that is not God or falls short of his glory, an opportunity to review our lives and make the changes which at other times we are too busy or indolent to make. It requires some effort on our part, but the emphasis is not on some kind of muscular attempt to take the kingdom of heaven by storm. It is more a change of focus. Benedict exhorts us to give ourselves more completely to prayer, to wash away the negligences of other times, to stint ourselves of some legitimate pleasures, but to do all joyfully, "with the joy of the Holy Spirit". Our lives can be busy and distracted, with apparently irreconcilable demands pulling us this way and that. The doorbell or telephone rings, the email pings through the ether, the letter lands on the mat, and we know we must do our best to meet the need. A retreat is a privileged time when we may enjoy, so to say, a sabbath with God. So, to your prayer and your reading, please add a little rest, a little leisure, sheer delight in the presence of God and the beauty of his creation.