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Conference and Retreat Center
A Ministry of the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph Schedule your summer or fall event at the Retreat Center 270-229-0206
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Ursuline Sister Elaine Burke walks the grounds at Maple Mount every day, and still finds something new in the creation around her.
“I come back with a whole new outlook on all that God has created,” she said. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Mount Saint Joseph Farm It gives me great strength and great peace. Nothing can compare with creation being recreated every day. It just uplifts my spirit.”
The holy ground at Maple Mount provides the perfect backdrop to consider the connection between God and nature, which is the focus of the June 19 conference and retreat “Honoring Earth: Celebrating the Sacred Outside and Within” at the Mount Saint Joseph Conference and Retreat Center.
“I was inspired to offer this conference after attending an eco-spiritual retreat and learning more about how science is enriching and adding to our story of faith in an evolving universe,” said Maryann Joyce, Center director. “I’m fascinated with this new story and I think it will enliven and enrich other’s faith and love for creation too. I think this conference will appeal to nature lovers, gardeners and people of faith who enjoy the beauty of the earth.”
The morning keynote address is “Our New Sacred Story: Finding Our Place in an Unfolding Universe” by Kyle Kramer, executive director of the Passionist Earth and Spirit Center in Louisville. The second half of the morning session offers practical Kyle Kramer workshops dealing with solar energy for the home, creating a backyard wildflower garden or health benefits of gardening. Following lunch, Emily DeMoor, a theology professor at Brescia University and an expert in eco-spirituality, will
Dr. Emily spend the afternoon leading an interactive
DeMoor retreat titled “Sacred Spaces and Moments of Grace.” DeMoor had the opportunity to study with Thomas Berry, the famed Passionist priest who spoke of the “Great Work” of enhancing the spirituality of the earth.
“Eastern Christianity has done a better job of preserving God’s presence in the natural world,” DeMoor said. “It’s not revolutionary, it’s grounded in our Christian tradition.”
Thomas Berry said that Christians have a creation-centered orientation and a redemptivecentered orientation that arose simultaneously, DeMoor said. “Creation-centered was the prominent way until the Black Death (in the 14th century) in which Europe lost one-third of its population,” she said. “Life became so sad and tragic that people wanted to transcend out of the earthly tradition. They became more redemptive, more focused on the afterlife than the here and now. That went on for hundreds of years. It wasn’t until the 1970s, when we became more earth conscious, that it began to change.”
DeMoor is concerned that the current pandemic may make people retract from this focus on creation, so this is a good time to appreciate that sacredness.
“Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict both talked about being stewards of the earth,” DeMoor said. “It’s part of Catholic social teaching. I feel like what the Church teaches about the environment is one of our best kept secrets.”
DeMoor led a retreat at the Center in October 2019 for a small group of Midwest Retreat Center directors on eco-spirituality. She finds the grounds at Maple Mount perfect for this sort of retreat.
“I think Mount Saint Joseph is a very holy place,” she said. “When people have lived together and prayed together for decades, it becomes permeated with God’s spirit. The Ursuline Sisters have such a creationcentered spirituality.”
Joyce said she appreciates how the Ursuline community is living out Pope Francis’ call to care for the earth – from operating a farm, to using geothermal heating to their commitment to recycling.
“This conference and retreat should appeal to all people of faith who appreciate the beauty of the earth and want to open their heart to a deeper awareness of God’s presence,” Joyce said. “We’re finding God right where we are, in the sacred spaces around us.”
As with all planned in-person retreats while the pandemic continues, the conference could be postponed if it is determined unsafe to open the Center.
If that is the case, it will be rescheduled, it will not be a virtual retreat.
The cost for just the morning conference and workshops is $30. The conference and retreat, including lunch, is $55. Those interested can register online at ursulinesmsj.org/retreat-center, or call 270-229-0206, or email retreatcenter@maplemount.org.u
Renewing Our Hearts: Hope and Healing with Julian of Norwich
Saturday, May 22 • 9-4 at Retreat Center
Join us as we compare similarities between our own lives and that of Julian (a saint in “lockdown”) and Jesus. Optional: Mass at 4 p.m. Retreat Leader: Sister Cheryl Clemons. $40 fee includes lunch. Sign up: 270-229-0206 • retreatcenter@maplemount.org • ursulinesmsj.org
Discovering Angela and our Belonging to Love
On a warm July morning in 2018, as I watched the sun come up from my back porch, my heart and mind were focused on Saint Angela. I had just “met” her through the Ursuline community, and I looked to her as I tried to discern whether to accept the invitation to come to the Mount to work with the leadership of the Mount Saint Joseph Conference and Retreat Center.
What fascinated me and drew me to her, and ultimately to accepting the invitation, was this “third way” she found to invite lay people into the rich depth of love and life that she found with God, or the one she called her “lover.” This call to poor lay women, to live a contemplative life in the midst of their ordinary daily life, was unique and even revolutionary for her time. Both young virgins and widows were invited into a lay community of prayer and action, just as they were, with no expectation of living in a cloister (although this changed later to conform to Vatican requirements during the Reformation).
This is how her secretary, Nicholas Cozzano, documented her call.
“An active life, but with the mind always raised heavenwards ... Thus (the virgins) live among human cares and troubles, but without losing that special peace of mind of those who constantly place their trust in the peaceful help and consolation of the Holy Spirit ... And so, living in the midst of the world and this active life, they enjoy the contemplative. And, in an admirable way, they synthesis together the two ways of life. The height of contemplation does not distract from daily tasks and these tasks do not distract from enjoying the things of heaven. And the heavenly light does not suppress the activities.”
I believe her call is particularly relevant today to lay people of faith, who desire a life of deep prayer and connection to God in the midst of their daily work and family commitments. It’s an invitation to a life of tranquility and inner stillness in the midst of trials; a quiet mind and open heart that is willing to be transformed as trust and surrender deepens in silence. This is often called “living a life of action and contemplation,” and I set out to discover how the Ursuline Sisters live this out, and how together we can
Sister Cheryl Clemons, left, and Maryann Joyce meet in Sister Cheryl’s new office at the Mount Saint Joseph Conference and Retreat Center on March 9.
encourage and invite all Catholics to embrace the path of living from our deepest center in God.
To accomplish this, I enlisted a few Sisters to help me begin an online community to learn about Angela’s call to contemplative prayer and action, and consider how to live this in our own lives. We began meeting monthly in January and call it “Belonging to Love:
Conversations on Living Praying in the Spirit of
Saint Angela.” I invite you to join us on the second Thursday of each month at 6:30 p.m. CDT.
We have had an enthusiastic response from Sisters, Associates and new friends to the evening of prayer and conversation. Sister Larraine Lauter has led sessions. Sister Cheryl Clemons, Sister Suzanne Sims and others plan to lead sessions. We have discussed what contemplation means to us, and how we make room for prayer in our lives. We talked about the innate capacity for inner stillness and silence that exists in our souls, and how it grows like creativity if we cultivate it. Some want to learn more about quiet prayer or Centering prayer, or experience Lectio Divina together. I hope this affirms and encourages more of us to become aware of the invitation to deep communion with God (and one another) within our life as it is, whether lay or religious.
There is no charge for these gatherings, but we hope you will consider a donation. Please register at www. ursulinesmsj.org/retreat-center and I will send you the Zoom link to join the conversation. I hope to see you there! In Christ’s Peace, Maryann Joyce, Retreat Center Director
