Over the years, I have been blessed to serve the Church in many different ways. Some ministries carried a great deal of responsibility. Others were quieter and much more personal.
Retreat ministry has been one of those places where I have been reminded again and again that ministry is often less about what we say than about our willingness to listen.
Making Room for God
When people come to a retreat center, they bring their lives with them. They bring their families, their work, their joys and disappointments, their questions about God and sometimes wounds they have carried for many years. We do not always know what is going on inside another person when they arrive.
That is one of the gifts of retreat ministry. We are given the opportunity to make room for people to listen — to God, to themselves and to what is really happening in their lives.
Ministry Begins in Community
I have always believed that ministry grows out of community. As Passionists, we do not simply go off as individuals to do our own work. Our prayer, our life together and even the challenges of living in community, form us for ministry.
Community teaches us something about patience, forgiveness and the importance of being present to another person. It supports us when things go well and carries us when they do not. Our ministry, our mission, comes out of our community life.
That is one reason retreat ministry has been so important to the Passionists. Retreat centers give us a place to welcome people into the heart of our spirituality. To step away from the noise of everyday life, to pray and to recognize God’s presence in the joys and sufferings they carry. The Passionist tradition asks us to remember the Passion of Jesus and, through that memory, to remain close to people in the realities of their own lives.
A Place to Meet Reality
Retreats give us a chance to become quiet. We spend so much of our lives talking, planning, worrying and trying to figure things out. A retreat gives us permission to stop long enough to listen.
And when we listen, we may discover that prayer does not take us away from our lives. It brings us more deeply into them.
Prayer is where we meet reality — not simply the reality we would prefer, but the reality that is actually before us. Sometimes prayer gentles us. Sometimes it stirs us up. Sometimes it simply gives us a place to rest.
Simply Making Room
That is why I continue to value retreat ministry. A retreat center can become a place where people discover that God is already present in the life they have brought through the door.
Our task is not to manufacture that encounter.
Sometimes our task is simply to make room for it.
