SACRED PLACES

CLOISTERS

ON THE PLATTE SEEKING GOD IN SILENCE

MAKING A PILGRIMAGE TO NEBRASKA — IT’S NOT SOMETHING MOST DETROITERS WOULD CONSIDER OFFHAND.

DANIEL GALLIO writes from Ann Arbor, where he is a member of St. Francis of Assisi Parish.

NOW, WITH THE OPENING OF AN OUTSTANDING NEW RETREAT COMPLEX, DETROITERS MAY WANT TO LOOK WESTWARD AND TAKE A JOURNEY OF THE SPIRIT TO THE NATION’S HEARTLAND.

LISTENING WITHIN

The Cloisters on the Platte sits like a shining retreat city on a hill, halfway between Omaha and Lincoln, overlooking the Platte River Valley. It is the newest of 28 retreat centers in the U.S that specialize in the spirituality of St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) and his inspired life-work, the Spiritual Exercises.

During the Cloisters’ four-day silent retreats, held 47 weekends per year, attendees become immersed in this nearly 500-year-old method of interior discovery. Assisted by expert guides, they learn to listen for the voice of God within, “to find intimacy with God,” in the words of St. Ignatius, “through all created things.”

WHY NOT EVERYONE?

The Cloisters on the Platte exists solely because of the passion of entrepreneur and philanthropist Joe Ricketts.

Nebraska native Ricketts, 80, is co-founder of what is now TD Ameritrade, the online brokerage

firm. In a conversation we had in early March, Ricketts describes how he never lost hold of the Catholic beliefs bequeathed to him by his working-class parents and nurtured by the Catholic schools he attended.

He admits, though, that he had “grown away from my religion” as his business success grew.

What recharged Ricketts’ faith, fortunately, were the yearly retreats he began attending in the 1990s. Based on the Spiritual Exercises, the retreats taught him the art of meditative prayer, to seek the face of God first amid the daily free-for-all of family and work life.

“They gave me the time to be quiet,” he explains, “to think about my relationship with Christ.

“It was exactly what I needed.”

If the silent retreats helped him so much, Ricketts surmised, wouldn’t they help everyone? From this spark of an idea evolved a monumental decision. Using the wealth the Lord had allowed him, he would develop — and fund — his own Ignatian retreat center, as a gift to the people of Nebraska and the nation.

THE OUTDOORS IN

Simply put, the Cloisters on the Platte retreat complex is an architectural stunner.

Visitors instantly notice the Cloisters’ unique sense of place. The offsite underground garage is built into a hillside to blend with the rolling terrain. A shuttle bus transports retreatants to the campus, passing by groves of oaks, aspens and elms. No unsightly parking lot mars the natural splendor of the grounds.

“The oaks have been here since the pioneer days,” Ricketts says with quiet pride. The complex, in fact, is just across the Missouri River from Council Bluffs, Iowa, a starting point of the Oregon Trail.

Cloisters’ staff members warmly welcome retreatants inside the Spanish Revival-style main building, with its stucco walls, red roof tiles and arched entryways. Beneath the building’s massive ceiling timbers are meeting rooms, a dining hall, library and resident rooms. A glass solarium is a favored place for retreatants to relax, meditate or just be.

The Cloisters’ chapel, clad in limestone and cool gray slate, suggests a simple Gothic country church. Natural light pours in from sliding panels in the outer halls; bells ring out each morning from a soaring tower for 7:15 prayer.

“I wanted to bring retreatants into an environment unlike anything they may have at home,” Ricketts explains. “To be in a beautiful place that puts them into a mode of contemplation” was the guiding architectural principle.

Home for the weekend is one of seven rustic lodges, each with a different look. Some lodges hug the shoreline of a lake; others back up against a shady woodland. The use of rough natural materials — bark and log siding, fieldstone accents, floors of reclaimed wood — exemplifies the Prairie-style design concept “of blurring the lines,” explains one architect, “between the outside and the indoors.”

Healing nature becomes part of the retreat experience. So does the communion of saints. Each lodge is named for a famous Jesuit, such as St. Jean De Brebeuf, missionarymartyr to Canada, and Father Peter De Smet, evangelist of the U.S. western territories. No doubt, many retreatants petition the help of their lodge patron during times of reflection.

FLEEING TOWARD CLARITY

The beauty of the grounds and buildings is the face of the Cloisters on the Platte, but the heart of the complex is the Ignatian retreat experience.

On Thursday evening, attendees gather for an opening conference by the retreat director, often a Jesuit from Omaha’s Creighton University, as well as directors from across the U.S. and even overseas. Then begins the Grand Silence. Retreatants maintain a prayerful quiet, listening for the Lord’s promptings, until Sunday afternoon.

“Clarity emerges from silence,” St. Ignatius teaches.

Educator Father Robert McTeigue, SJ shares this insight: in the silence of an Ignatian retreat, you are not fleeing away from something. Instead, you are fleeing toward something — that which will “feed you, heal you, enliven you, console you and perfect you.”

Supporting this process are spiritual talks, Mass, confession, Liturgy of the Hours and eucharistic adoration. Retreatants have more than enough time to wander the landscaped grounds of the Cloisters’ 292 acres, listening for God’s “still, small voice” in the quiet. (1 Kgs 19:12)

“The Lord will speak to you. He always shows up,” retreatant Sharon Doran says, describing her own Cloisters experience.

HOW IT WORKS

But what makes the weekend an Ignatian retreat?

The Spiritual Exercises have four sections, or “weeks,” modeled after the periods of Christ’s life. Briefly, in the first week, retreatants go “into the desert” to root out patterns of sin. The second week examines how to hear the call to follow Christ. Making sense of suffering is the focus of week three.

Living a life of joyful service is the hoped-for result of week four. The retreat director abridges elements from each section to suit the Cloisters’ four-day timeframe. Private spiritual direction might include learning about St. Ignatius’s “daily examen”: how to discern God’s will through emotion, imagination and all created things.

WAY OF SORROW

An important part of the exercises is mental visualization: imagining walking step-by-step with Christ as a disciple. Retreat attendees are helped in this practice by encountering the morethan-life-sized figures along the Way of the Cross walking path.

Ricketts commissioned 10 of the best sculptors for the project. These masters designed 60 individual images cast from bronze, each about 7 feet tall, to portray the 14 traditional episodes of Christ’s Passion.

“They show Christ in all of his agony, the Roman soldiers in all of their brutality, the empathy and sympathy of the crowd,” Ricketts describes.

“I like to think that each artist [has been] moved by the Spirit,” Deacon Alan Spears expresses in one of the outstanding Cloisters’ videos. An example: sculptor Martin Eichinger began design work as a religious skeptic. He casually attended a Cloisters’ retreat and became “profoundly moved,” which led him to reconnect with his father — and take Communion for the first time in 50 years. (Learn about the sculptors’ collaborative design process at stationsofthecross.com.)

The Way of the Cross meanders over streams and footbridges for about 2,500 feet, the traditional length of Christ’s Way of Sorrow. The stations have become a national destination. Thousands of day pilgrims per year take the shuttle from the parking area and make their own self-guided tour.

“In just three years, I think we have had visitors from 47 states,” Ricketts relates.

NONE EXCLUDED

Learn more about Cloisters on the Platte retreats at cloistersontheplatte. org. Although most weekends are booked for 2022, add your name to a waiting list; the names move up quickly. The cost is free will. No one is excluded.

To Detroiters traveling along Interstate 80 near Omaha, Ricketts holds out a personal invitation: “Turn off the Gretna exit and come and see the stations. They are some of the most magnificent in the world.”

To those considering an Ignatian retreat, his advice is straightforward: “You ought to do it once.”

“It’s very profound. It changed my life,” retreatant Paulette Paprocki shares. “I would recommend it to everyone.” IGNATIAN RETREATS — HERE IN DETROIT

Can’t make it to Nebraska? Detroit has its own center of Ignatian spirituality. Manresa Spirituality and Retreat Center has been welcoming seekers of the spirit since 1926. Located in Bloomfield Hills on a 39-acre former estate, the center’s Jesuit priests offer weekend and weekly retreats, days of reflection and individual spiritual direction. A Lourdes grotto and rustic Way of the Cross enhance the retreat experience. Manresa-sj.org, 248.644.4933.

WHO IS ST. IGNATIUS?

A hotheaded, swashbuckling aristocrat found himself knocked off his horse and into a hospital bed after a horrendous battle injury. Months of pain and devotional reading began a conversion process that led Spaniard Iñigo Lopez de Oñaz, St. Ignatius of Loyola, to found the Society of Jesus religious order, the Jesuits, in 1534.

Ignatius’ great contribution to the Church’s mystical tradition is his manual of Spiritual Exercises. For this military man, the spiritual function is “exercised” through a rigorous 30-day silent retreat. The result is new spiritual freedom, described by one Jesuit as “the ability to be less pushed around by the movements within us that are not from the Holy Spirit.”

Sixty years after his death in 1556, more than 1,000 Jesuit “contemplatives in action” were ministering worldwide. Today, there are 27 Jesuit universities just in the U.S.