Retreating

Lectio Divina

... my guilt I did not hide.

Psalms 32:5

Library

Sped through the remainder of the recently arrived Catholic periodicals.

Absorbed in Miranda, Being and the Messiah. This is living theology.

Log

Feeling melancholy today. Inhibited and turned inward. The world is not moving quickly enough. And it is only turning in place. My impatience, is it holy or not?

There could not be a better time than now for a retreat. Tomorrow morning we leave for the Serra Retreat Center for a week of quiet conversation in reflection on the vows we will take imminently. ("the vows we will take imminently": That is for me a hopeful statement: the novices of the Province of Saint Mary have not yet been formally admitted into vows.)

Our schedule this week will be different. Our hours of common prayer and celebration of Eucharist are abridged and modified. We will spend the mornings in prayerful silence while meditating on the meaning of the vows in our life. (Among other helps for our meditation are Capuchin documents like the Constitutions and the documents of the seven Plenary Councils of the Order.) We will spend the afternoons in gentle quietude or in one-on-one conversations until gathering in small groups for deep sharing. The evenings will be spent variously: Mass on Monday, Eucharistic adoration on Tuesday, viewing a pertinent movie on Wednesday, a social on Thursday. We will visit the Santa Monica Pier and sup at a soup and salad buffet in Camarillo on our way home Friday.

This is not a silent retreat, but given the opportunity to make much of it a time of hermitage, I intend to be scarce and in solitude to the maximum extent possible.

And I will be offline until my return to San Lorenzo Seminary on Friday evening.

This morning, Mass at Saint Mary of the Assumption Parish in Santa Maria. My body was there but did not know where it was; my soul was way off somewhere else. This afternoon, finishing the watering I began yesterday. Then, Eucharistic adoration and evening prayer, our social, our evening meal, and prayerful silence before gathering one more time in prayer and recreation at the end of the day.

Let us unite in prayer, friends. And even as we pause, let us surge forward to what lies ahead.

Weather

The sky is clear and blue. The light and warmth are all around us. Penetrate me, flood me! Not as dry summer heat, but as the warmth of spring softening and quickening every cell, tissue, and member of a dull, dormant body.