5-day Silent Retreat

1/7/2011 19

                Wow! All I can say is WOW! (Well I can, and will say more haha) The silent retreat went above and beyond what I expected. I expected to come and just be quiet for a week. Not talk to anyone and just go through the motions. This was my first 5-day long silent retreat. The only other days of silence I’ve experienced was on All Souls Day and a couple of evenings of silence. We were asked to be silent for about 8 hours. This 5-day silent retreat was great because of many reasons but the ones I will explain are the ones that really impacted me.

                I must start off by saying that I witnessed a group of religious sisters this summer in NYC go through a silent retreat and they were amazingly quiet. They set my standards really high because of their silence. Having witnessed that I really tried to just let the Spirit move within me and guide me.

                The retreat master, Fr. Jeremy is a wicked-smart man. He gave 9 conferences in this 5-day span and every single session was amazing! All he did was give reflections upon passages in the Bible. BUT the depth of which he went into was motivating, inspirational, brilliant, humbling and heart-felt. He is a Theologian who teaches here for the first semester and in Rome the second.  He will be receiving a very prestigious award in 3 weeks recognizing his passion, devotion and ability to teach Theology.

                The book that I read (Light of the World by Pope Benedict XVI) was very good. I read about 35 pages every day and I ended up finishing the book on Friday. The book was a bunch of questions that were answered by the Pope. He touched on many subjects regarding the Church, himself and his predecessor Blessed John Paul II. I really enjoyed the book because 1: I noticed how much I know regarding the Church and was able to keep up with the book without many “what is he talking about” gestures. And the things that I had no idea were going on were great to hear about because they show promise and even though things might look bad for the Church, according the Pope things are getting a lot better.

                I was also to do some work during this silent retreat. I helped the Filipino Community out by making their Santo Nino booklet for the upcoming Feast Day. I was also able to make 21 Crucifixes out of clothespins. I made 5 a day and at the end of the week I snuck them into each of my Subiaco brother’s mailboxes. The Benedictines’ have a saying that work is prayer so I figured I could help by doing these things and offering them up as a prayer.

                All in all, this was an amazing experience that helped me grow spiritually. Thank you God (and the seminary) for this wonderful retreat!