Silent Retreat

Towards the end of my last post I mentioned that we were beginning a silent retreat here at the seminary. To be specific it is a silent-guided retreat. The guided part means that we do have sessions as a group with a retreat director who talks to us about the topic of the retreat and gives us some guidance on how we may go about praying about the topic. The topic for this retreat is simply the priesthood… Our retreat director is using his talks to talk about various aspects of the priesthood, and how they have been lived out during his 43 years as a priest.

We were told early on that the silence isn’t an end in itself… but a means to draw us closer to God. By being silent we don’t distract others or ourselves. I will tell you from my experience that when I am not talking I can’t help but be praying, a very good thing. We still do some of our community prayers out loud, morning prayer from the liturgy of the hours, and Mass to be specific.

The silence isn’t just a “no talking” it is a more general silence… we are to eliminate all the things that distract us: TV, radio, internet, telephone, and so on.

This retreat has of course been difficult for me with my very outgoing personality. I will say that other seminarians recommended that while it would be best for me to try to get fully into the retreat, it may be better and less stressful if I self-modified the terms of the retreat. I thought that this was a very good idea. I have allowed myself a little bit of internet time (for example writing this blog) but moved away from the more distracting aspects of the internet such as Facebook. I have allowed myself to read and write letters, as I find this to be a very prayerful activity, but most business mail remains unopened. A few things that were on my mind business wise I have allowed myself to deal with, as I felt that their hanging out unresolved would be a distraction to me.

One thing that the seminary builds in with the retreat to allow for the exchange of thoughts is the idea of a prayer partner. This is one person whom we picked in advance that we are allowed to get together with to either pray together, or just talk about faith stuff, not everyone takes advantage of this, but I thought it would be very helpful for me. My prayer partner and I take a walk around the lake after the morning session by the retreat director. On Tuesday we did pass on this, just to have a day of silence. My prayer partner has done silent retreats before, so wasn’t going to take part in this, but thankfully was very willing, and even happy to help me out in this way.

My prayer partner is a great guy that I am constantly amazed by. He has believed in his desire to be a priest from a very young age. He actually even moved away from home (with his parents blessing) to attend formation during his high school years at a high school age house of formation in La Crosse. He then went on through college level seminary and is now beginning his theology studies here, meaning that if God keeps calling him in this direction he will be a priest in 4 more years. Prior to my coming here I had some people talk about guys like this to me… most of them said that they thought it was a bad idea, as these guys don’t have much real world experience. I have always commented to them that the clarity of a vocation is a gift no matter what time it comes in life, it just come earlier for some people. I have grown to think this even more in talking to my prayer partner. Has he had an outside job, a mortgage or any of those things? No, but he has indeed lived a lot of life in the way that God has called him to. My experience with life outside of the church will make me a different priest from him, but surely no better of a priest, he won’t be a better priest than me for his life experience, we will just be different.

As the week has gone on I am finding that I truly am gaining a lot from this silent retreat. I am ready for it to end, as there are things I’d like to talk about with people, but it has been a wonderful experience, and I am looking forward to next year’s silent retreat already. I think I will be more strict with myself than this year to see if I can grow even more.

Peace,
Adam