The Retreat In Daily Life

Greetings from lovely Mildura, voted the friendliest and most liveable city in Australia! If you recall, this is my second time here at Sacred Heart Parish in this city of 30,000 in the state of Victoria. The first time was on the way to our retreat at Sevenhill when five of us drove the two cars 1800 km from Sydney. Once I'm back on my own computer, I'll be able to load some pictures up.

I'm here for three weeks giving a retreat with a Loreto sister, Jennifer Connor, to 25 lay people in the parish. The beauty of this retreat is that people continue with the daily routines, relationships, and obligations of their lives, but they also make time for an extra 45 minutes to an hour of prayer each day, and for two weekly meetings with a spiritual director. This makes the retreat a bit more accessible for people who can't get away and take a break, and provides them an opportunity to explore the relationship between their experience of God and their day to day lives.

I'm staying in the rectory here at Sacred Heart, a vibrant and diverse parish, with two active diocesan priests, Fr.s Tom and Matthew, and a retired priest, Fr. Frank. Any parish would be so lucky to have guys like these... real lovers of people, generous, funny, and prayerful. And I feel blessed to be living and working with them.

Aside from celebrating masses, I am seeing between five and seven people each day for what we call spiritual direction, a conversation where people share about their experiences of prayer and of life. My role is simply to facilitate their experience of relationship with God by offering texts from Scripture for their prayer, being a listener and sounding board, and by offering encouragement and support for them as they engage the challenges of the retreat. It is probably my favorite form of ministry because it involves helping and witnessing to the spiritual growth and development of regular folks in their relationships with the Divine... this growth is often manifest in the way people experience healing from old hurts, reconcilation with old "enemies", a sense of renewed purpose and commitment, insight into and liberation from unhelpful attachments, etc. Please keep us in your prayers over these next three weeks... this kind of commitment of the retreatants calls for courage, patience, generosity, and self-discipline.