Interested in joining this 5-day retreat at Saint Thomas More Priory?
To register, download, fill in, and send the following form >
or contact:
St. Thomas More Church - 550 Riverview Ave - Sanford, FL
(407) 212-3032
email: [email protected]
Limited space is available on a first come first serve basis.
The deadline for registration is June 1st, 2023, with no exceptions.
Retreat Participation: $350 (including a $50 non-refundable deposit.)
What is to be expected from an Ignatian Retreat?
The first part of the retreat involves an intense look at who we really are and what we are made for. It allows us to discover and acknowledge all those many weaknesses, fears, and failures in our moral character.
Let us face the fact. In spite of all of our efforts, each of us has felt dissatisfied at times with the way we live our lives. Some things make us uncomfortable because we are too attached to them. We love them too much or in the wrong way. A career, a girlfriend or boyfriend, a recreation, comfort or pleasure, a personal idea or goal, the list goes on and on.
Others make us uncomfortable because deep down inside, we fear them too much. A debt that needs to be paid, a controversy, a daunting task that needs our attention, an apology that needs making, a dilemma of conscience that we have not found the courage to tell to a priest, a serious look at the possibility of our be called to the convent, monastery or seminary, the prospect of adding to the family yet another mouth to feed. We fear too much to face the problem, or we dread having to give up the object to which we have grown attached somehow.
This first part of the week is spent in locating and addressing these hyper-sensitive areas of our soul so that we can finally find peace. We will never fix the source of the problem the way we are going or only once we have suffered for far too long. Enough of this!
How we all long for true peace! It can and will be found on retreat. At the end of this part, we are given the opportunity of a good confession.
The priest, step by step, helps us prepare an excellent and complete confession, one that solves all the doubts and fears of the past. Did I make a bad confession in my youth? Do I need to confess certain things more clearly? Did I fail to make the proper precisions out of shame? I think that deep down, I knew how very wrong this or that was, but I failed to ask the priest because I was not ready to change my ways. To live with such fears is no way to live. The retreat and the priests preaching it are equipped for these kinds of concerns, and they are there for you.
Throughout the rest of this one-week retreat, the priests help the retreatant improve his method of prayer. Taking the life and Person of Jesus Christ as a topic, the priest will help you step by step to find the prayer life you thought outside your reach. Picture prayer, far from any longer being the distracted burden it seems at present, becoming a rest and reprieve from the hectic world in which we live ... a moment to breathe deeply of realities that will never change. The priest will help us learn to pray; he will tell us what to say and give us ideas of how to say it.
Finally, there will be instructions on how to make wider choices in life prudently and adequately. How necessary that is, especially when it comes to decisions that, once made, cannot be changed! The choice of a spouse, a vocation to the priesthood or religious orders: those are choices for life. They had better be properly considered before they are made, or we will be the ones to bear the consequences. It is on such retreats that the best of our youth here in the USA find the courage to choose a direction for their lives. You can too.
Have you already made an Ignatian Retreat? Then you know very well that you must return!
