Welcome to Retreats, Kiddos.

Earlier today, I got back from the sophomore retreat for the students from our high school. Five other teachers, five student leaders, and 40 sophomores converged on a ranch retreat center in the mountains of Southern California for an overnight retreat.

One of my first major tasks in working with our campus ministry was to do some intentional work on the format and content on this retreat. I didn't want to mess too profoundly with the structure without having seen it in action, so I kept most things in place and just rearranged the furniture a bit. We talked about (in order) identifying admirable qualities in others, being our authentic selves, rivalry in relationships, vulnerability, and companionship. But I wanted this retreat to open in a different way than it had previously.

These sophomores are a year into discerning and experience the community at our school, including their overnight freshmen retreat, an initial experience of what a retreat can be and how it goes down in our community. But I wanted them to have a better primer, a substantial invitation to what they had boldly decided to dive into. I wanted them to have a sense of what retreat can and should be - not in a proscriptive way but to explain to them the basic spiritual movement of retreat.

So, I offer you my reflections on retreat, which I shared with these kiddos yesterday...

Welcome, again, to the Sophomore Retreat. We're very happy to have you here, and God is ready, as always, to do amazing things with you and for you. So, let me begin by asking... why have you come...?

1) To relax, get away from daily pressure and have some fun.
2) To take some time out to think about myself and my life.
3) To get to know friends better and make new friends.
4) To think about my faith and get to know God a little better.

Usually for retreats, we step away from the familiarity of our routine schedule and the well-known surroundings of our campus. Our school is blessed with incredible friendliness and tight bonds of family, blessings that help us to be more aware of Christ's presence among us, within us, and between us. But for retreats, we try to go off campus to a new place because we want our community to grow beyond the boundaries of any one place or building or piece of land. We want to grow ourselves and our community beyond what we already know. What do you think of when you hear the word retreat?

1) regrouping
2) re-strategizing
3) backing up from hard stuff
4) stepping away

We come on retreat in order to advance; we step back in order to move forward. Retreat is an opportunity to spend intentional time reflecting on our lives so we can make positive changes going forward. Our friend St. Ignatius Loyola loved retreats as a way to renew his community. He believed that God works directly with and for people who make time to go on retreat and approach it as a serious opportunity. Gaining new insight from a retreat is called “receiving the graces,” as Ignatius put it. Our way of proceeding on retreat is to receive graces in deepening our understanding of three big areas of our lives: our self-awareness, our relationship to others, and our friendship with God.

In many ways, it all starts with how well we know ourselves. Our understanding of who we really are is crucial. We come on retreat to increase our self-awareness so that we can build stronger relationships with others and to create a deeper friendship with God. Retreats provide us space, time, and context to reflect on who we are and who God wills us to be. We are given a place where we can find quiet comfort to enter into reflection; our retreat schedule makes significant time for us to dedicate to this reflection; and, if we all commit together, we can create an environment that is quiet yet talkative, serious yet fun, and solemn yet informal. This chance to look within ourselves helps us to recognize God in our relationships and to more fully see Him at work in our lives and in the world.

One of my greatest moments of insight into myself came on retreat. We did an activity that asked us to look at our lives so far, to consider the high points and the low points and reflect on all that has happened to us. As I looked over my life, I noticed that I hadn't really had low points—very few bad things had happened to me, and I had handled those rare lows really well. I was hesitant to share, as my fellow group members were telling stories of difficult lows in their lives. I didn't want to feel left out, so I told them what I had discovered. They were very supportive and affirming. My leaders processed what I had said and suggested that maybe God has made my life relatively easy because he wants me to worry about other people... Hmmmm! This was a pretty sweet revelation. My life has made much more sense in this context, as I have been much more proactive about dedicating myself to helping others who regularly face more serious lows or have more trouble handling them than I might. The space, time, and context of retreat helps us to look within ourselves and see how God can be at work more clearly in our lives and our relationships.

We come on retreat to increase our self-awareness so that we can better relate to others and build stronger relationships. When we take time to tend to ourselves – to confront our inner struggles, to discern our inner desires – we can then offer ourselves to others more substantially in relationship. This is not to say that we can only enter into relationships when we have perfectly sorted ourselves out. It's just the opposite! We don't need perfect insights; rather, we ought to spend time looking at ourselves so that we can share our searching with one another. The more we talk with others, the more we can realize how much we have in common in our thoughts, feelings, and experiences. If you are willing to embrace some vulnerability and put yourself out there to each other, you'll quickly find that a sorrow shared is a sorrow halved while a joy shared is a joy doubled.

When I was on retreat once in high school, we had a reconciliation service. Going to speak with the priest and seek forgiveness for sins was an awesome opportunity, yet the strongest memory I have is the conversation I had with my friends after we had gone to Confession. We were sharing how we were so delighted to have shared the retreat together – the new inside jokes and fun times as well as the chance to share ourselves with each other. And through this, my friend Tommy (name changed for the blog) discovered a new level of trust with us. We had all been friends since freshman year, but Tommy had kept something significant to himself. Building on the community we built together on retreat, he had reached a point of comfort where he felt he could finally tell us what he had been trying to carry on his own: his parents had been separated for a few years, and his dad had moved out. We had spent countless nights watching movies, shooting pool, and hanging out at Tommy's house, but he and his mom had kept this hardship to themselves for years. It took the time, space, and context of that retreat for Tommy to look inside himself and feel ready to share. His sorrow was shared and thus decreased; the joy of our friendship doubled in the new bond we forged.

Finally, we come on retreat to more deeply find our God who is and has always been seeking us. Let me suggest to you a simple metaphor for how you can find Christ in your life, starting with this retreat. Consider the Sign of the Cross (demonstrate): we make a vertical gesture to begin, followed by a horizontal gesture as we finish. We need to open our eyes to Christ in both of those ways. Look for Him by dedicating yourself to a relationship with the God who hears our prayers in Heaven and who watches over us in love. And look for Him also by being attentive to His presence in one another, in all of us gathered here, in everyone at Xavier, and in everyone you encounter in the world.

In college, I went on a week-long retreat for 20-somethings who wanted to better understand how to serve the Church – anything from training to be a priest to just helping out in small ways during free time from business careers. I struck up wonderful conversations with people doing similar searching to me and, in particular, bonded powerfully with two people in particular. Though I plead with you guys not to do this here, the three of us then stayed up until 4am, carrying on a 6+ hour conversation, that started as chit-chat then turned into commiseration over the ups and downs of college social life and romantic problems, and deepened into the ways we doubted our faith and felt strong in our faith. Our life stories unfolded to one another over the course of these late hours. Days earlier we were strangers, but we had now turned into dear friends. Near the end, my friend ended a brief silence with a staggering observation: “You guys, this is gonna sound weird, but you have literally been transfigured before my eyes.” He told us that after all we had shared, there was no way he could look at us the same way as before. We had shared our hearts, our souls, our faith. The presence of Christ had become so apparent that, like the way Peter, James, and John saw Christ in a new, dazzling, immaculate way in His Transfiguration on the mountaintop, Jeremy now had a new visualized appreciation for the Christ he saw in us.

Retreating gives us the time, space, and context to look within, share our struggles with each other, and invite God into it with us. We discover His presence among us through the fellowship of sharing in small and large groups, and the Holy Spirit forges bonds of community between us through the Christ we share. We realize the amazing potential and the inevitable joy of being part of Someone (Jesus!) and Something (our Church) bigger than any one of us.

God says to us through the prophet Isaiah, “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name: you are mine.” Coming here is a small effort we make toward answering our call from God to know Him better. He calls us by name—He calls you (names of retreatants) and you ( ) and you ( ) —to experience our Him through Christ and through one another.
We're here together with an amazing opportunity before us, so here's your chance: bring it all on – your worry that you're the only one experiencing what you're going through, the only one doubting faith, the only one wondering if there is a God, the only one struggling with the challenges of growing up through high school – bring it all on! Bring all of your struggles with you through this experience. The challenges of life can be hard, but they are no match for our God. He is the Light that no darkness can overcome. Let's summon the courage and dedication to share in community, and as we tell God just how big our problems can be, let's also start to tell our problems just how big our God is.

Let me close with a favorite prayer that gives gratitude to God for all He has given us and expresses our excitement for that's yet to come. It can be our commissioning for this retreat : For all that has been, thanks! For all that will be, yes!