If you haven't, then here is an attempt to describe what a retreat is, and what you can expect to gain from it.

People who travel overseas know that when they return home they will be different.

That also happens spiritually when we go on a retreat.

Retreats come in all lengths - one day, two days, a week, thirty days - but each usually offers the following:

A contemplative space that takes us away from our normal work-day activity.

Some input from a retreat director or leader who invites us to go wider and deeper in our spiritual journey.

An important time of silence in which we take our reflection to the deepest level of prayer.

Safe and confidential sharing of journey.

A movement into "the peace that passes all understanding…"

As a retreat facilitator, I prefer to call a one-day retreat "A day of reflection".

In a day, we may not have the spiritual movement we would get in a retreat of a week or a month, but we usually feel refreshed and strengthened.

On the longer live-in retreat, the day usually begins with prayer and the readings of the day. We are in silence except for the time each day when we see our spiritual director.

Later in the day, there is usually a Mass.

The silence in a long retreat becomes so profoundly rich and giving that it's sometimes difficult to go back to a noisy world!

This always reminds me of Jesus, his times of prayer in a wilderness environment and how he took the result back to the people.

A retreat with Christ Jesus does that for us.

So how do we find out where our retreat centres are in Aotearoa?

The Catholic Directory is a good start.

There will be a list of retreat places in every diocese. You can phone and find out what is offered.

I'll finish this with something from an 88 year old woman who told me in a few words what a retreat is about.

At the time, I got permission from her and the group to use the quote.

There were 20 people on that day of reflection and I had given them a task. They were to write their own credo. What they believed at the moment of writing.

There were some interesting creeds, and some very like our standard creed.

But the statement that came from this elderly woman made us all sigh with pleasure.

She read: "I believe in less and less and more and more."

That's it.

It's about releasing and gaining; it's the journey of faith that happens on a retreat.

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator. Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator. She will be one of several participants at "Lifting our Eyes" an Ignatian Spirituality Conference.

We also look back to find moments in the day when things didn't go so well—when we were hurt by something that happened to us, or when we sinned or made a mistake. We give praise and thanksgiving for the blessed moments.

We ask forgiveness and healing for the difficult and painful moments. Having reflected on this past day, we then turn to the day yet to come and ask God to show us the potential challenges and opportunities of tomorrow. We try to anticipate which moments might go one way or the other for us: toward God's plan or away from it.

We ask for insight into what graces we might need to live this next day well: patience, wisdom, fortitude, self-knowledge, peace, optimism. We ask God for that grace, and we trust that he wants us to succeed in our day even more than we do.

That's the basic idea behind the Ignatian Examen. Ignatius would say that this should be the most important moment of our day. Why? Because this moment affects every other moment.

If you are like me, at any given moment there are little truths about your life that lie beneath the surface of your consciousness—things you have not yet recognized or acknowledged.

For me, these hidden truths are usually, but not always, a painful reality that I have trouble accepting. Sometimes there are felicitous happenings in my life that I simply haven't slowed down enough to notice and name.

This Examen tries to dig deeply into our thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and motivations to try to uncover a hidden truth or two. Continue reading

Sources

• Mark E. Thibodeaux, SJ, who serves as a spiritual director for Jesuits in formation, published this article in Aleteia
• Image: The Integrated Catholic Life

For the last month, Muslims have been celebrating the holy month of Ramadan, a time of fasting, almsgiving, and praying over God's revelation.

For those at Jesuit institutions — schools, parishes, and organizations inhabiting the spirit of St. Ignatius of Loyola — this July is a celebration of the spirituality of the Jesuit founder, whose feast day is July 31.

This confluence of celebrations prompted me to reflect on the points of convergence between Islamic and Ignatian spirituality.

As a student of Islam educated in Catholic Jesuit schools, I've discovered some profound similarities, or, as the late Trappist abbot Christian de Cherge would call them, "the notes that are in common" between the religions.

These similarities can be explained best by pointing to three Arabic mottos, central to the Islamic tradition, and their surprising Ignatian counterparts.

The phrase MashaAllah, or "what God wills," is used to express appreciation, gratitude, reverence, and awe about the good and beautiful. As my friend Zainab put it, it's about recognizing "a flicker of God's divine character" in the created world.

Muslims exclaim it when their friends get into college, when they spot a stunning sunset, or when their relatives post a picture of their new, healthy baby on Facebook. I like to think of this prompt acknowledgement of God's blessings as an immediate, "in-the-moment" Examen, the daily prayer of gratitude developed by St. Ignatius.

The Daily Examen encourages us to reflect back on — or rummagethrough — our day, looking for the places where God made Godself known to us. Often, these ayat, or signs of God, can be found in creation.

Pope Francis, a Jesuit, and the Muslim mystic Ali al-Khawas, both realized this. In his recent encyclical, "Laudato Si', on Care for our Common Home," Francis cites the Sufi writer, who wrote in the ninth century: "The initiate will capture what is being said when the wind blows, the trees sway, water flows, flies buzz, doors creak, birds sing, or in the sound of strings or flutes, the sighs of the sick, the groans of the afflicted." Continue reading

Sources

• Jordan Denari is a research fellow at Georgetown University's Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, where she works for the Bridge Initiative, a research project on Islamophobia. She is writing in National Catholic Reporter
• Image: The Daily Stormer

People agonising over healthcare, fretting about unemployment, troubled by tuition payments, mortgage payments, car payments or other costs.

So many people, it seems, are labouring to be at peace, groping for stable ground, living for the weekends.

So many people, even those with health and wealth, straining to be joyful and satisfied, seeing life not as a gift but as a series of unfair demands.

It seems that we've forgotten one crucial thing: Hardship is not the point of life. Stress is not our purpose.

We were not given this incomprehensible, stupendously amazing gift of being alive to spend it negotiating a ceaseless angst.

We are not here to carry on with an anxiety that turns us to addiction, pettiness, self-loathing and, ultimately, captivity.

Of course, we must not ignore suffering. Pain is not an illusion. Grief is real. Worry will wake us.

But pain and suffering are byproducts of being alive, not the point of it. We might struggle to live; we do not live to struggle.

We were not given life as a punishment, but as an expression of an infinite love. Remember: "God saw that it was good." Continue reading.

Matt Emerson is an educator and lawyer, who blogs daily for America magazine.

Source: Matt Emerson

Image: Vera in August

No petitions have been sent heavenward asking for your safekeeping. Not even any candles lit on your behalf.

The CLC Ignatian way lies in healing historical divisions, a way that blurs distinctions of skin colour, offers a new way of relating, and shows the love of the Lord for all his peoples. In the forefront of these endeavours stand the Jesuits. They often came with the conquerors, but immediately showed a different way of relating with the indigenous peoples. They demonstrated 'love in action'.

Based on formation through the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius, CLC offers a process and ways of discernment and evaluation for those individuals who take seriously Christ's call to 'love one another as I have loved you' Coming together in small groups to share their spiritual journey strengthens them to begin healing the terrible wounds inflicted on their neighbours, through the divine gift of forgiveness. as in Rwanda offering to share the treasure of CLC with Burundi, the country which had massacred so many Tutsis. Taking the first step is crucial on this journey.

I find it inspiring, challenging, shaming that people who seem so poverty stricken and disadvantaged compared to those around me in Aotearoa, are able to rise above their circumstances by ministering to others in need.

Here are the brief stories of two women from Burkina-Faso, one of the tiniest and poorest countries in Africa, as examples:

The woman with little education who studies for three relentless years to become a nurse, followed by three years of more advanced medical studies so that she may help HIV/AIDS victims. She has the perspicacity to see that they want most of all to be listened to, treated with dignity, when they are often rejected by their families through shame or fear of infection. Through the CLC process of sharing on personal prayer, of being listened to without comment or judgment, she learns to express herself, to pray, and to find a commitment to 'help souls', as Ignatius has it. She finds that CLC is not for herself, but for her sisters and brothers.

Another woman whose son's failing sight motivates her to train in ophthalmology, in order to help those suffering from eye infections. She emphasises the importance of the quality of the reception of the patient for healing. She continues by detailing how the CLC, by means of silent, interior prayer on the Word of God has helped her to share her Christian experience through the witness of her life. She says that she looks for joy in the patients; their joy becomes her joy, and sustains her in her work.

The Christian Life Community is long established in over 60 countries and now nascent in Aotearoa. Tricia Kane.

• Tricia Kane is a former librarian and a grandmother.

Ignatius was also in touch with the parts of himself that were incomplete, thirsting for, hungry for, longing for a deeper relationship with God and with others. He has been known to have wept at the very celebration of Eucharist because he feels so deeply.

A friend of mine told me he carries an empty plastic container for facial tissues in his pocket to remind himself that his work as a chaplain does not involve wiping away tears, but to allow others to cry and express themselves in a safe and sacred space. Read more

Sources

• Jocelyn A. Sideco in National Catholic Reporter
• Image: Travco

Jocelyn A. Sideco is a founding member of Contemplatives in Action, an urban ministry and retreat experience.