The Church's Annual Retreat
by Fr. Roger Landry - April 3, 2009
One of my great joys is to preach retreats and parish missions. In my first decade as a priest, I've given about 30 of them, to priests, seminarians, religious sisters and cloistered nuns, those discerning religious life, college students and high school confirmandi and more. The ones I've loved the most, however, are those I've given for "ordinary" lay people, whether "away" at retreat centers or at "home" in their parishes.
I think this predilection comes partially from my experience as a guide in the Vatican, when I was privileged to witness how deeply people's lives were changed by a pilgrimage through an ancient necropolis to the tomb and bones of the fisherman Jesus chose to tend and feed his flock. So many people would tell me afterward that the 90 minute tour was "like a retreat" that brought them to re-examine their relationship with the Lord and commit themselves to imitating Peter's fidelity to Christ in the midst of all their daily activities. I got so used to seeing deep conversions — among non-Catholics, fallen-away Catholics, and even among practicing Catholics — that it was really hard for me to transition to normal parish preaching, because I would seldom notice similar fruits.
I responded in a couple of ways to that frustration. The first was through leading pilgrimages to the holy sites of our faith. I discovered that getting people out of their customary pews, taking them on an international journey to special shrines and sepulchers of saints, had the effect of "tilling the soil" to receive the seeds of conversion and holiness that the Church teaches is the point of all priestly work. It didn't hurt, of course, that these action-packed spiritual adventures with people who love to travel are always great fun as well!
The second way I responded was through another type of pilgrimage. It was during one of my first retreats to lay people, several years ago at the retreat center of the Carmelite Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Alhambra, California, that I discovered how similar the work of a retreat master is to what I loved as a tour guide. Just as when I was a guide, I needed to speak for hours — eight 45-minute talks in a 40-hour period. Just as with pilgrimages, I was physically exhausted but spiritually refreshed at the end of each day from the more than eight hours of hearing confessions. Just as during my time at the Scavi, I routinely saw great fruits of conversion and hunger for God. I soon began to grasp that the work of a retreat master is to guide people on an interior pilgrimage, an internal exodus, from where they are to the internal sanctuary where God longs to enter with them into a transforming union of love. I've been using my vacation time to preach retreats ever since.
At the beginning of Lent, I went down south to preach a retreat and a parish mission. The retreat was in Irondale, Alabama, in the shadow of the EWTN studios, where the Sister Servants of the Eternal Word run a great retreat center called Casa Maria frequented by Catholics from across the country. In past years I've preached there during the summer, but I figured that this year I would try to escape the New England winter and get in a retreat on St. Paul before the end of the Pauline Year in June. I achieved the latter objective, but as to escaping winter, I totally failed. On Sunday morning there was what the sisters called the "the Blizzard of Birmingham," a whole two-and-a-half inches of snow, which was the largest snowstorm that part of Alabama has received in 16 years. The snow, however, was like frosting on the cake of our collective pilgrimage following St. Paul's footsteps as he faithfully followed Christ's.
After the retreat, I traveled to Mamou, Louisiana to preach a parish mission in the heart of Cajun country, the one place in the land where the name Landry is like Smith. On the way from the airport in Lafayette, we passed dozens of institutions bearing the world's most illustrious surname. The main county on the way to Mamou, and the principal Church of the city of Opelousas, are both named after St. Landry. the bishop of Paris who died in 661. During the mission, I had the chance to meet many of my long-lost relatives. It was rather striking to see how consistent the Landry genes are: apparently all of the descendents of Guillaume Landry who emigrated to Canada in 1611 — both those who went to Acadia and then to Louisiana, as well as those who went to Quebec and then to New England — are vertically-challenged and all of the adult men have prematurely protruding foreheads.
The mission exceeded all of my expectations. Even though Mamou is a town of about 4,000 people, about 700 filled the church to capacity each night. The pastor had asked me to speak on St. Paul's thoughts on life according to the Holy Spirit versus life according to the flesh and, with long, blunt and "powerful preaching," to challenge his people to choose God over the flesh. He had put a great deal of work into promoting the mission, the first that the parish had had in decades, and his labors bore fruit. Often parish missions today draw only the most fervent Catholics; in Mamou, the zealous were there, but so were the people who hadn't seen the inside of a Church for quite some time, invited or shamed there by their family members and friends. The pastor had recruited two priest friends to join us in hearing confessions and we heard for an hour before each night of the mission and for an hour or more after each night's talk. The confessions were sincere and profound and many who had been distant from God for sometime committed themselves, with his help, to leave the life of the flesh behind. To me the whole experience was what parish missions once were and hopefully one day, in all parishes, will be again.
As may be obvious, the main difference between a retreat and a mission is that during a retreat, people generally leave their parish to go away with the Lord; during a mission, the retreat — and through the retreat, the Lord — is brought to them. It is meant to be a re-evangelization of a community, which is treated first like a "mission" territory and then, with God's assistance, transformed into a missionary band. It is an opportunity for the whole parish, and not just individuals, to reflect together on their living out of the faith and rededicate themselves, individually and as Christ's body, to building up his kingdom.
On Sunday, all Catholic parishes and missionary territories of the world will begin the most important annual ecclesial mission or weeklong retreat of the year. Holy Week is meant to be a time in which all of us make an interior pilgrimage with Jesus to the upper room, to Gethsemane, the praetorium, Calvary, and the tomb. Like a retreat, it's meant to be a week of silence and prayer; like a mission, it's meant to be a prayer we do together.
We go with the twelve and each other to the Last Supper on Holy Thursday, where Jesus has earnestly desired to share that Passover meal with us. We accompany the Blessed Mother, St. John, and the holy, indomitable women on Good Friday, as we keep vigil with Christ as he mounts the deathbed of the Cross. We enter the darkness of the tomb with Christ through death to self and allow the light of his resurrection to ignite us as living tapers at the Easter Vigil. It is the time that we participate in the greatest, and most important, pilgrimage of all time, Christ's Passover from death to life.
Holy Week is a time during which Christ, as guide, master and mission preacher, leads us on an inner itinerary of conversion and holiness. Like the people of Mamou, let's make sure we sign up for the pilgrimage and try to bring to all nights of the mission those we know and care about.
Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.
