“Where AM I?” I wondered. It was dark. Traffic on the four-lane beltway had ground to a stop. There was a fair chance the congestion would keep me from getting to the retreat house on time. That is, assuming I was where I thought I was. The route was unfamiliar.
After about ten minutes, a traffic sign told me I was on track for my destination. In another few minutes, the congestion ended once I crept over the Mississippi River on a narrow bridge. Geographically, I was on track, after all.
Spiritually, the “Where AM I?” question still hit home. I had been so busy with work and family matters in recent months that I hadn’t been able to keep a consistent focus on the Catholicism I craved. A working spouse and two growing daughters, plus plenty of work at the office had seen to that.
But I couldn’t wait to get to the Jesuit Retreat House on Lake Demontreville in the suburbs of Minnesota’s Twin Cities. I had been there once before, a little over a year ago, on a retreat with over sixty male Catholics. Now, at age 49, I was much in need of what I hoped they would offer.
The retreats begin at dinner on Thursday night and end after dinner on Sunday night. In this rapid-fire world, that may seem like an eternity. In fact, it’s far too short. I’m sure I wasn’t the only retreatant who hated to see his first retreat there end.
The retreats are silent, except for a short period after dinner every night and when one meets in private conference with a priest, and retreatants have private rooms. No TV or telephones allowed. I was very much in need of silence. Little did I realize what spiritual messages lay in store for me in the midst of it.
Our retreat director, Father Dick Rice of the Loyola Center in Saint Paul, informed us at our first meeting that this was his ninety-fifth retreat. A warm, sensitive and lively man of sixty, he revealed the openness many of us hoped to find in a retreat director. As we worked through a series of impediments to spirituality on Friday, I felt my crusty distance from the spirit beginning to disappear.
Father Rice indicated that the key period in the retreat for us would probably come late in the day on Saturday. After a good confession on Saturday afternoon, I thought my climax had occurred. Not so.
At 7 PM on Saturday evening, I had fifteen minutes reserved for silent prayer in a small chapel at the retreat house. I arrived on time, and headed in. In front of the altar were a place to kneel and some devotional material. I didn’t really know how to begin. I could also hear men talking in the hall. I felt myself growing distracted.
After a few initial petitions, I picked up the prayer books and found myself reading prayers that asked Jesus to come and be present with me.
My time was running out, and I suddenly found a bound copy of the King James Version of the Gospels in the materials before me. “Let’s just open it and see what God will say to me,” I thought. In this edition, it turned out, the words of Jesus were printed in red ink.
So I opened to gospels and my eyes immediately fell on a red-ink passage from Luke 5:4: “Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught.” Jesus was telling me to keep seeking.
I was stunned by the directness of the instruction, and curious for more. “What, I thought, would result if I did this?” I closed the Gospels and opened them again. This time my eyes hit the red ink in John 1:51: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.” Jesus indicated that my seeking would lead me to know him as I hadn’t known him before.
My time was up. As I left the chapel, I knew I had had an important conversation with Christ – two revelations, really. But there was more to come.
Back at my room, I lay on my bed reading a book by Bernard Basset, an English Jesuit, called How to be Really With It that I had discovered in the retreat center library. I soon came to an extended quotation from Saint Augustine’s Confessions. In response to hearing children nearby calling “take up and read,” Augustine picked up the Bible and opened it to a passage that prompted his conversion: “Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and make not provision for the flesh in concupiscence.” As Augustine put it: “No further word would I read, nor needed I; by the light, as it were, of serenity infused into my heart, all the darkness of doubt vanished away.”
Opening the Bible and taking its instructions seriously made Augustine one of the greatest saints. Now I had my chance to follow his example.
This was message number three, all in the space of about an hour. I had received two explicit messages from Jesus in the Gospels and then been given Augustine’s model response to a Gospel directive. Would someone as worldly as me be able to get and stick with this important instruction? I wasn’t sure.
The next morning came message number four, in conference with Father Jim Kubicki of the retreat center staff. The Pope put strong priority on the instructions I had received last night. Father Jim informed me that the “put out into the deep” passage from Luke 5:4 was Pope John Paul II’s main thematic quote in his Apostolic Letter on the mission of the Church for the new millennium (Novo Millennio Ineunte). As the papal message declared: “These words ring out for us today, and they invite us to remember the past with gratitude, to live the present with enthusiasm and to look forward to the future with confidence.”
Well, after four related spiritual messages, the words did begin to ring out. At our final retreat mass, we were invited to share experiences from the retreat, and I listed my messages. I had received divine instruction, if I was smart enough to realize it.
In the weeks since the retreat, I’ve found that my four revelations have helped me focus on God at times when the tug of the world is strong. But it’s a constant struggle. I do know, though, that I should keep going in my Catholic faith in order to get the “catch” of spiritual rewards that I need. The call is clear, but the path will continue to present its share of challenges.
Go on a retreat if you can. Find a way to God in the silence. It is there, and He is there, just waiting for you to catch your breath for a conversation. Slow down in the quiet and you’ll be amazed what you find. It might even change your life. I’m working to insure that it changes mine.
Steve Schier is a professor at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota and is currently in formation in the Secular Franciscan Order. He is a life-long Catholic who is finally figuring out the importance of his faith. You can reach him at seschier@yahoo.com.
