Greetings

Greetings from the

Retreat Master Peace be with you and welcome on behalf of Abbot James and the monks of St. Benedict’s Abbey. In this booklet we share some of the proposals of our monastic life for you to consider taking up during your retreat-at-home.

The 2020 pandemic and the lockdown of monasteries and retreat centers has provoked us to ask the question: What does it mean to go on retreat? It quickly became clear that the term “virtual” retreat only highlighted the need to engage the question more seriously. Though one may use technology to facilitate certain aspects, a retreat cannot actually be virtual. It can only be done where you are. To retreat, in the Christian sense, is to enter more deeply into the truth of things, like taking a step back from a painting in order to see more clearly the whole of its beauty in which shines the harmony of each part. “Jesus himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray” (Luke 5:16), not to escape the task before him but to love it more, by staying with the Father who gave it to Him.

Jesus invites us into the same relationship with reality: “Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me” (John 15:4). We invite you to enter into these holy days with us not to escape our present situation, or to “get through it” until life “returns to normal”, but to enter more deeply into them. It is only in the reality the Father is giving to us hic et nunc (here and now) that we can take up the Lord’s imperative, μείνατε- to remain, stay, await, and meet in Him the source of our lives, who is our happiness.

It is our prayer for you that this is your experience during these days and every day.

Sincerely in Christ and Mary,

Fr. Jay Kythe, OSB Retreat Master