By Revd Philip Wales
A retreat is a spiritual practice which stands solidly on the ancient wisdom of the Church, yet one which is flexible enough to be moulded to the changing rhythms of people’s lives. Today, a retreat can take many different forms. There are silent retreats, directed retreats with a spiritual guide, thematic group retreats, or, indeed, retreats in daily life. These, as the title hints at, involve adjusting home routines without the comfort of a retreat centre.
Whatever shape they take, the guiding intention is to remove oneself from the everyday to allow oneself to be drawn more deeply into God’s presence. Opportunities to pray, reflect, and practise stillness become moments in which we may hear God’s still, small voice more distinctly beneath the hubbub of our busyness and preoccupations.
Before my recent ordination to the priesthood, I joined other ordinands on a preparatory retreat lasting several days. Retreats of this kind have long been an indispensable staging post on the journey of those called to ordained ministry. One moment I particularly remember was our director’s invitation to dwell on, and later share, some of our “hinge moments”, the turning points when something shifts and we especially notice God breaking through. These are not only the more visible public ones that we have in common with all disciples, but also the individual, personal, and intimate times when we have felt God’s presence profoundly.
As you would expect, no two people’s journeys were the same, but each story revealed how we were all bound together by a deep, fervent love for Jesus and a desire to let God’s love be known in the world through our ministry. Our time of sharing reminded me again that none of us walks the path of discipleship alone; we are all fellow travellers on The Way. This remains as true for us now as it has been for all Christians before us and for all who will follow on. God’s glory is revealed through the relationships and encounters we have with others.
The late Fr Herbert O’Driscoll offered a powerful image to help us see this. He pictured each of the centuries before ours as a concentric circle radiating out from the death and resurrection of Christ which is at the centre of all the circles. Next, he asked us to see our century as the outermost circle. We are first brought into the circle, into faith, because somewhere, somehow, someone in the circle just before ours took us by the hand and said, “come”. They did so because someone had once taken them by the hand and invited them in.
And so it goes, back and back through time until we reach the hands that had touched the mark of the nails in Jesus’ side and the hands that touched the stone that had been rolled away from the empty tomb. In this invitational way, Christ builds his Church; hand touching hand, heart speaking to heart. Once someone else’s invitation has drawn us in, we, too, are entrusted with this joyful task. Seen this way, when someone professes that they believe in the communion of saints, they are not simply reciting words handed down to them. They are entering into a circle of living faith and allowing themselves to feel the palpable presence of the saints who have walked before them.
So, I thank God for the gift of retreat. Not because it removes us from the world, but because it roots us more deeply in the richness of the Christian life we live out each day. Used wisely, a retreat may, in its small way, reorient us more fully towards God’s expansive love. Once we return from it, we may find ourselves already equipped, in ways we did not expect, to participate in Christ’s invitation to draw others into His kingdom.