A Concord Pastor Comments: Going on retreat and taking you with me

This afternoon, November 26, I'll be heading to the north shore to spend a week at Eastern Point Retreat House in Gloucester (above). I'll be back in the parish on Saturday afternoon, December 2, in time to celebrate the beginning of a new year of grace with the First Sunday of Advent.

I've been making retreats at Eastern Point for years now, the first being my ordination retreat in 1973. In a real way, a week at Eastern Point is a homecoming...

I'll be making a directed retreat which means the week will be spent in silence, broken only by a daily conversation with my retreat director and with prayer and song at Mass. The house rule for the rest of the time is silence, including meal times in the dining room.

I'm often asked if I find the silence difficult to handle: not at all! I find the quiet to be a peaceful stillness that refreshes and restores my soul and my prayer.

What does one do with all that silent time on a directed retreat? It's time to slow down, rest, pray, read, reflect, pray, ponder, remember, wonder, pray, and ask the Lord to renew and revitalize my relationship with the him. I need and look forward to all of that!

I won't be posting as regularly as I usually do, if at all - I'll have to wait to see how the Spirit might lead me...

Here's a photo of the chapel in the center of the main house at Eastern Point. (That's a tabernacle in the center; the windows overlook the rocks and the ocean; and there are chairs all around the perimeter of the room.)