You may not have made a retreat in a long while–perhaps you’ve never made one–but something seems to be stirring within: a longing to deepen your relationship with God, or the need to face some changed circumstance in your life.  An announcement at the back of the missalette catches your eye, “Ignatian Retreats, Guelph, ON.”  You contact the registrar, make the arrangements, and, despite your misgivings, you actually show up!

You settle into your sparsely furnished room where, on the desk, beside the Bible, you find a welcoming letter telling you who your director will be.  You may have requested that you be directed or accompanied by a woman or a man, by a Jesuit or priest, and perhaps your request was able to be met.  Or not.  You trust that somehow the Spirit is at work in all of this.

You have time to explore the Main Lounge and settle in beside the blazing fireplace, or you choose a chair that allows you to gaze through the wall of glass out onto the pond and garden with its world-famous statue of Ignatius the Pilgrim pressing into the wind.  In the distance your eye picks out the meandering Marden Creek, and beyond that the rolling wooded hills on the Centre’s 600 acres.

You move to the Chapel.  At 8:00 p.m. the person chairing the retreat welcomes everyone and asks you to introduce yourselves briefly.  You give your name and say where you’re from.  When the directors are introduced you spot yours among them–one of the staff (made up of a lay woman and four or five Jesuits) or one of the regular guest directors.

After the brief prayer service, you return to the Lounge, where your director is waiting to greet you and the others he or she will accompany, and you are ushered to an office in the John English Wing, named for one of the Jesuit pioneers of the directed retreat movement in Guelph.

Your director, recognizing that you are likely tired, keeps the meeting fairly brief: some suggestions for prayer perhaps, and a time for your personal appointment the next day.  A tour of the house may follow for those who are new to the place, and then you are on your own.  A sacred silence enfolds you as you settle into sleep in your comfortable bed.

After breakfast the next morning, you meet again with your director, this time for about 45 minutes.  Whether you are making a Directed Prayer Weekend, or a five-day or eight-day retreat, there is no fixed agenda apart from meals and Mass.  You will probably be asked how you slept and whether you have any ideas about how you want to spend the following days. 

There are no conferences or talks.  It may be suggested that you try to pray three times a day, in the morning, afternoon, and evening, for an hour each time, if possible, paying attention to the rhythm of your day as your prayer moves from the head and down to the heart, and your energies cycle through morning and mid-day to evening.  You may notice your prayer becoming less active, more passive–quieter, and more attentive to the promptings of the Spirit.

You will probably be encouraged to get outside, weather permitting, and walk some of the many trails, or make the outdoor stations of the cross or the stations of the cosmos, to help you locate yourself in the sacred history of creation and redemption.  Your director may suggest passages from Scripture that speak to your heart, but you may also have your own favourite passages–from the Prophets, the Psalms, the Gospels, the Epistles.

You will be encouraged in your desire to pray, but you may also be invited to relax and let God do the praying.  After all, God is always contemplating the whole of creation with love and looking upon each one of us with compassion and understanding, with tenderness inexhaustible mercy.  Perhaps the best thing you can do is to sit there and let God look at you and love you.

A retreat presents the opportunity to reflect on your whole life’s story, and your director may suggest a number of creative ways in which you can do this: writing, drawing, painting.  You will have been shown the Craft Room during the tour that first night, and the materials available may inspire creative ways of getting in touch with your own sacred history.  Perhaps a book may be offered you on dealing with the grief of loss, or on retrieving your inner child, if needed.

Occasionally a retreat may surface old wounds, long forgotten and not fully healed.  Your director may suggest at some point that you celebrate the sacrament of forgiveness and healing (Reconciliation) with one of the priests on staff.  The constraints of parish life seldom allow for the celebration of this sacrament of healing in a way that goes deeper than forgiveness and deals with the wounds out of which our sins have sometimes grown, entwined with anger or shame, with guilt or fear.  It can be a very deep and powerful experience of the healing love of God.

The deliciously prepared food, much of it grown on the Centre’s own land, the contact with woods and flowing water, the presence of songbirds and other wildlife, the glimpse of a deer in the morning, the howling of a coyote at night, all serve to connect you to creation and to the goodness of Earth, of which you are an integral and beloved part.  The Word of God, resonating with the Spirit dwelling in your heart, awakens in you the desire to surrender to the God who loves you, and to attend in a new and deeper way to the still small voice that guides your life.

The habit of reflecting on your experience of God’s activity in your prayer and in your life, the daily practice of the Ignatian examen, the sustenance of frequent Eucharist, the healing power in Reconciliation, the centrality of the Scriptures for nourishing your understanding of God’s ways, your need for silence and for continued contact with nature–with the beauty of the night sky and the first light of dawn, with the rhythms of each day and of the seasons–all these are things that you take with you as you leave your retreat.

You return home knowing that you are still the same person, but now with a new and heightened awareness of the presence of God in everything around you and within you.  You may want to share some of your experience with friends, but the best thing you can do is to encourage them to have their own experience of making a retreat.

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Loyola House, Ignatius Jesuit Centre of Guelph, Ontario = www.loyolahouse.com