Jacksonville 2015 Retreat

On the weekend of January 30th – February 1st, 38 Members, candidates, and spouses gathered at the Marywood Retreat Center in Jacksonville, FL.  Led by the Rev. David Caron, we took a deeper look at the Our Father prayer, its words, its meaning, and our prayer practices.

 

We had four separate sessions that focused on specific parts of the prayer that Father Caron coined “the four Rs”:  Relationship, Reveal, Reaffirm, and Resolve.

 

We started the first session with the first word of the prayer. “Our” indicates a relationship.  The relationship with God is mine, it is yours, and it is ours. We are brothers and sisters within a large community. Discussion questions reflected on whether our relationship with God is all that God wants it to be. We noted that Jesus finds himself on the fringe with the lepers, the Gentiles, the tax collectors, and many of the other less popular/proper. So if Jesus finds himself on the fringe, is the fringe really the center?  Father Caron challenged us to be ready at Mass each week so that we say the “Our” instead of joining in partway through the first sentence. The “Our” is a critical part of the prayer.

 

“Father” focuses on the specific relationship with God.  Father Caron helped us see that Jesus chooses to reveal His Father to us through the Our Father.  Discussion led us to think further about how the relationship that we have with our earthly father can affect how we view or approach the relationship with our heavenly father.  God our Father never stops providing or teaching.

 

In the third session, we focused on how each time we say, “Thy will be done,” we are reaffirming a decision to trust in God’s will. Like Mary’s fiat, we have a decision to make to follow the path God has for us. By devoting time to prayer and spiritual growth, we can better tune into a spiritual GPS to guide us to God’s will. 

 

Our final session touched on strengthening our spiritual resolve through the Amen. By saying “Amen,” we are stating that we believe and we confess it to be true with our whole beings. It is important to pray the Our Father with resolve rather than as a routine in Mass or in the Rosary.  Discussion questions helped us review what our personal Amen is worth. Are we praying with presence?  Are we saying “Amen” with our whole lives?

 

Outside of the four discussion sessions, the retreat provided opportunities to worship and pray together in Mass, morning and evening prayer sessions, the Rosary, Confession, and Stations of the Cross. Deacon Hal Jopp led us along the beautiful outdoor trail for the Stations of the Cross, and we leveraged the moving words of “Everyone’s Way of the Cross” by Clarence Enzler that had quite an impact on all participants.

 

Any opportunity to live together, eat together, pray together, learn together, and worship together provides a unique experience to further develop confraternal relationships within the Order. This retreat certainly furthered many existing relationships and developed multiple new ones.  The Jacksonville Region is grateful for all of the volunteers and participants that made this retreat possible. We hope everyone will consider joining us for the 2016 retreat.