Sharing the things of God

Psalm 61

In God alone is my soul at rest... 

 Psalm 45

God is for us a refuge and a strength... 

 Those two psalms are the background for these days together. 

What better way to spend life than being together, sharing the things of God? 

What a graced moment it is when we come on a retreat, time to relax in the Lord who delights that we are here. No sense that we should be working at anything, being at peace. 

We are in the Year of Religious Life - let us, as Pope Francis said in his "Letter to Religious for the Year of Consecrated Life, "remember the past with gratitude, embrace the future with hope, live in the present with passion."   Today is the feast of St John Paul II, a giant figure of the 20th Century, a man totally centred on Christ. He was Pope at the crossover between two millennia. We saw him in two versions, the colossus bestriding the world in his fifties, the older man carrying his cross in age. 

We come here as we are, from all the mess of daily life, from anxiety, bereavement, trouble. We do not put this aside, but we carry them quietly, holding them with us with God. We remain aware of our human family, aware of the suffering of our brothers and sisters on the move away from war and sorrow, we hold them in our hearts and prayers, we bring them with us this week.

We gather as the bishops in Rome come to the end of the Synod - let us pray that our Church finds a way to both witness to the sanctity of marriage, but also carry mercy to those suffering.

There is no doubt that the great gift of this retreat will be the inner and outer silence of these days. Not just "be still and know that I m God" but " be still and know that you are loved."

"Nothing is so like God as silence" - Eckhard - all around, untouchable 

"if we can silence the din in our mind, the ear of our heart picks up the music which is everywhere" - St Augustine. 

Thomas Merton once went on an interfaith conference - he asked a Buddist Zen master what he learned most in his novitiate - the answer was how to open and close doors quietly!

John O'Donoghue said " if we can just withdraw for a little while from the glare of the world and enter into our own inner stillness, then we will soon quicken into life in the embrace of God"

MotherTeresa was asked "what do you say when you pray." She said "I just listen." She was then asked "them what does God say?" " oh, he listens too!"

In retreat, we seek the face of God in silence.   You can compare the silence of a retreat to the harbour with the boats gradually passing out to sea, and finally seeing the water that bears you up.