How does our retreat work?
Go through all the content in this newsletter from top to bottom:
- Start by viewing the opening video.
- Offer the prayer and listen to the music.
- Read the two scriptural reflections.
- Respond to journaling prompts.
- Consider sharing some thoughts with us from your journaling.
Estimated Time: 45-minutes
(can be done in multiple sittings)
In Case You Missed It…
Here’s a link to Week’s One Retreat
Opening Video
Opening Prayer & Music
Come Beautiful Spirit, come…
Still my thoughts.
Caress anything racing through my heart.
Draw me into celestial realms of sacred imagination.
Please bring me into direct contact with Jesus, my Lord and Savior. Grant me quiet refreshing time to relish Jesus’ promises of everlasting Peace and Joy.
Fill my mind with the Light and Wisdom of Jesus. Instruct me and guide me along new paths that will deepen my participation in God’s Great Love for me and for all of humanity. Ask the Father to create in me a clean heart.
Wrap me in warm blankets that soothe every part of me in need of healing. And Beautiful Spirit open the eyes of my heart to revel in every surprising Grace you have for me. Thank you for receiving me.
I surrender this time to You and seek the guidance of my guardian angel. I make this prayer with confidence in the Power, Glory, and Majesty of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. AMEN
This week’s musical reflection is from the opera Amahl & the Night Visitors by Gian Carlo Menotti. This has a special place in my heart. I had an unforgettable experience playing the part.
Amahl is a crippled boy that lives with his widowed mother. They are poor and have eaten their last meal. They will need to go begging in order to survive. The Three Magi/Kings who are on their way to find the Holy Child show up at Amahl’s house to rest for the night.
The first piece of music is a beautiful quartet. Amahl’s mother sees the gold the kings are bringing to the Holy Child and asks them about this child.
Try to soak in the words. This Holy Child they speak of is a SURPRISE in every way!
The second piece of music occurs after Amahl’s mother is caught taking a piece of gold. She is assured this child does not need the gold.
“On Love alone He will build His Kingdom His pierced hand will hold no scepter. His pale head will wear no crown… The keys to His City belong to the poor.”
WEEK 2 THEME: SURPRISE REFLECTIONS
Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
for I am meek and humble of heart;
and you will find rest for yourselves.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.
Matthew 11: 28-30
Come Unto Me
by Michael Doherty
One of the appropriate themes for advent is surprise. The surprise is in regard to the child born—and what a child He was! But the real surprise of Him extends into His teaching and His ministry, and the surprise that keeps on giving is two-fold: his nature and his person.
The surprise of his nature: This “Come to Me” verse in Matthew shows Christ’s character through the compassion He has toward the whole world and toward the people who are hearing Him. There is a meekness in Him and in His manner. He desires to give His followers the experience of knowing peace within their souls, hearts, and lives. Yes, there is the call to take up his “yoke” (the harness which animals of service wear) but the outcome of this relationship is desirable, an outcome that is deepest peace and rest.
The Matthew passage is a triumph verse, is it not? I have often secretly celebrated interiorly when reading it, “This is my Jesus!”
I have thought. It is a verse that should be sung everyday in the ritual of liturgy. It is the single verse that makes me trust Him more than any other, makes me want Him more in my life than any other idea. He wants to give me a life worth living, and I want the life He is offering. But there is also a subversive element in this verse, as well.
The subversive element of this verse is the implication it makes as to His Person. Who would dare make such a statement? And for that matter, how does He get away with it? “Come to Me?” Come to You?? Who on earth do you think you are? CS Lewis rightly observed that people who say such things should be considered like those with the mental capacity of a poached egg. And if you think about it, Lewis is right—except if . . . except if the implication of His statement is true. The weird thing is that even those who don’t accept Him often let Him get away with these statements. The only Person who could possible have credibility to say “Come to Me all you who are heavy. . . “ is divinity itself, right?. And the strange thing is that we do let Christ get away with this statement even when we don’t believe in Him. Why not celebrate it all the more when we do believe in Him?
“Never has anyone spoken like this Man,” (John 7:46) the guards, attempting to arrest Him, are reported to have said, and their statement rings true 2,000 years later. His words are baked all through with compassion and frightful tenderness. Should I fall at His feet or take Him for a mad man? His death and suffering makes me all the more able to trust Him, somehow. Only monsters kick a man when he’s down.
He implies that He is Lord, but He makes Himself the ultimate underdog in this world. The weakest of mankind feel a kinship with this defeated but then resurrected One. Could He be someone I can put my trust in? The history of believers through the ages and the record of His life in the Gospel make it reasonable and even compelling for me to do so—surprise upon surprise: I not only welcome His advent birth but His claims upon my heart. Somehow, He gets ahold of my heart, a hold that we can feel, a hold that we value and want to preserve and protect.
Bob Dylan has a beautiful song with the same title: “Someone’s Got a Hold of My Heart”. It is often the effect of contemplating Christ promising us peace and rest as we come under His “easy” yoke and “conjoinment”
Christmas contains within itself the theme of surprise—but it’s a surprise of Christ’s nature and person that keeps on “giving.” The Jews of His day were surprised by His nature (strong and rebuking to self-satisfied power, painfully tender to those broken hearted by life), but it is the surprise of His Person (Divine and embracing) that has reached into the deepest part of our hearts down through the centuries of time since His birth.
For My Yoke is Easy
by Terrence Gargiulo
God is relational. Consider the Trinity… the Father and the Son are separate but one. They are bound together by the Holy Spirit’s ceaselessly creative Movement of Love. This begs the question: if God is relational then how is God relational with us? Doesn’t He seem aloof? We don’t see Him in the same way we see objects in the world. Yet, despite our human experience of sometimes feeling abandoned we’re never alone.
The surprise of the incarnation is its Life-giving force of turning upside down our solitary experience of isolation. If you’re anything like me, you’ve had more than your share of “Woe is me,” moments. You know what I’m talking about. These are the times when we:
- feel sorry for ourselves,
- battle life’s injustices,
- manage overwhelming stresses,
- face challenges head-on,
- stare at grief,
- wallow in our regrets,
- feel paralyzed by shame,
- stumble in our weaknesses,
- lose battles with the demons that haunt us,
- let our emotional wounds consume us,
- define ourselves by our traumas, or
- feel overwhelmed by any of life’s painful situations.
These are real. And many of these “real things” follow us throughout our lives. Our human experience seems to be more about how we live with these challenges and in the process become deeper more committed disciples of Jesus and His Unconditional Love then about eliminating them.
Jesus promises to stay yoked with us and never leave us alone. Picture the yoke:
Here are two animals side by side diligently tilling the soil preparing it to be impregnated with seeds that will transform the barren ground into fertile possibilities. Jesus promises to remain by our side and work with us. If we pause, He pauses and stays with us every step of the way. Through His Grace and Love we grow in our faith and trust in Him that in whatever field we find ourselves in, He will ensure it yields a rich harvest.
Our lives’ details become the medium in God’s petri dish in which we work out our salvation.
Let’s unpack another piece of scripture that sheds more light on why Jesus wants to remain yoked with us.
I, the LORD, am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be their slaves no more, breaking the bars of your yoke and making you walk erect.
Leviticus 26:13
Wait a minute, what’s going on here? Isn’t this opposite of what Jesus said in the previous scripture? Remember: the Hebrews were enslaved by the Egyptians. It’s interesting to note that they become so accustomed to their lives of hard labor that they’re not even fully aware of the repercussions of being oppressed. God breaks the bars of their yokes and allows the Hebrews to walk free and erect. But where does that lead them? Are they ready and able to embrace the freedom given to them?
Here’s where Jesus and the gift of His incarnation and the atoning sacrifice of His Precious Blood tell the real story.
Left to our own devices, free of being yoked to anything or anyone, we walk astray. Oblivious and stumbling along we discover the wide path that leads to destruction:
“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and those who enter through it are many. How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life. And those who find it are few.”
Matthew 7: 13-14
So, here’s the deal: we’re not ready to walk erect. We’re still crawling on all fours. We need the yoke of the narrow gate. Our world consumed without Jesus leaves us high and dry. Life with its beautiful possibilities becomes more like an “all you can eat buffet” promising a never-ending parade of self-serving pleasures. Our broken ways prevent us from becoming inebriated with the sweet fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5: 22-23).
As Isaiah prophesizes, we can look forward to the day when we are anointed by Christ our King:
“…it shall come to pass in that day, [that] his burden shall be taken away from off thy shoulder, and his yoke from off thy neck, and the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing.” Isaiah 10: 27
Through Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection we are set free from the enslaving yoke of sin.
For freedom Christ set us free; so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery. Galatians 5:1
We replace our yoke of sin with our yoke of fidelity in Christ. We’ll continue our earthly battles drawing water from the wells of Mercy repeatedly until we are granted our final and last purification in the Blood of the Lamb. In the meantime, we do our awful best to offer Him our every struggle, our pains, our trials, and our sufferings. We rest in our confidence in His presence. With Jesus’ yoke we have dignity with Him and in Him. His Peace will reign in our souls, and our Love for Him will consume our hearts.
Let’s surprise our Lord with our radical faith and shout from the mountaintop, “Thank you Lord for every struggle, every pain, and every tear because it brings me closer to your Gorgeous Sacred Heart!”
JOURNAL PROMPTS & CALL TO ACTION
Some Suggestions for Getting Started…
There is no “right way to journal.” Do what is comfortable and natural for you. It could be notes, phrases that either struck you or that are coming to mind, it might be a narrative of a memory, or it could be a drawing.
Journaling in whatever form it takes for you, is an exercise in discovering insights and recording them. The goal is to allow the content you’ve been consuming and the things you’ve been thinking about find an expression.
Invite our Lord to sit you with as your teacher. Say a simple prayer. You can count on Jesus to bring something new to your attention. The prompts below are meant to get your juices going but trust the process.
PROMPT
- Think about a time when God surprised you. What were you expecting and what did He do that surprised you.
- Reach out to a person who you either haven’t spoken to in a while or whom there may be difficult feelings between you.
CONSIDER SHARING SOMETHING
FROM YOUR JOURNAL
