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CIS
NEWSLETTER
I am often asked, ‘When will you give the next “walking retreat”?’ The phrase – walking retreat – has become a handy expression for a particular spiritual experience inspired by and based on the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises. ‘Walking retreats’ are the fruits of a common interest and a friendship between Fr Paul Zammit SJ and myself. Both of us are keen walkers: we delight in exploring townscapes, and landscapes, harbours and seascapes, often with others. Landscapes are filled with signs of God’s grace at work, ‘overshadowing’ human society; they also bear numerous signs of humanity’s sinfulness as well as of its greatness as the redeemed image and likeness of God. Thus, our walks ‘in the Lord’s shadow’ rarely fail to offer some spiritual insight, or reminders about the lingering power and effects of sin, or the on-going work of creation and redemption. Six years ago, when Fr Paul was Director of Dar Manresa in Gozo, it occurred to us to share with others these experiences of friendship, exploration, delight, gratitude, hope, sober reflection and reconciliation; we wanted to do so within the framework of The Spiritual Exercises, particularly the First Principle and Foundation (#23), as well as key contemplations such as the Incarnation (#101-109). Not long after, the first ‘walking retreat’ was offered! It is reassuring to know that others have had the same intuition and responded in the same way (see for example, M. Silf, Sacred Spaces: Stations on a Celtic Way, Oxford, Lion Publishing, 2001; B. Fuglistaller SJ (tr. J. Gagnier SJ), ‘A new approach to the Spiritual Exercises’ in Jesuits: Yearbook of the Society of Jesus 2006, pp.106-108).
The pattern of a ‘walking retreat’ A typical retreat consists of a weekend experience, beginning Friday evening and ending on Sunday with the noon-day meal – a powerful symbol of Christian fellowship on the day of the Lord’s resurrection. The time and the theme are divided into three half-days – Saturday morning, Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. In turn, the exercise assigned to each half-day begins with a short exposition of the theme based on one or two scriptural passages and suggestions to aid meditation or contemplation. The retreatants then walk together in silence (not always easy to maintain), for about forty minutes, to a designated quiet landscape. The walk symbolises our individual journeys towards God, as well as humanity’s collective pilgrimage to the Father’s house. At the designated landscape, each retreatant deepens the theme, alone with God, using the setting to aid the ‘composition of place’ and the scriptural narrative that lies at the heart of the exercise. In choosing a landscape, the retreat directors look for something more than an aid to the imagination: we point out features that could help the retreatants to recognise the biblical story unfolding here and now within individual lives or the collective life of humanity. Thus, we have utilised sweeping natural landscapes such as woodland, cliffs and bays; built landscapes such as the Citadel in Gozo; ‘pocket’ landscapes such as wayside chapels and gardens; and ‘mental’ landscapes, such as legends associated with particular sites. At the close of the prayer period, typically forty-five minutes, the retreatants are invited to share insights, prayers or unanswered questions, before walking back to the retreat house, this time in twos or threes on the pattern of the disciples at Emmaus. Morning and evening prayer, generally the ‘Prayer of the Church’, mass and time for individual consultations with the retreat directors supplement the major divisions of the retreat.
Who are the retreatants? ‘Walking retreats’ are emphatically not solitary! Groups of approximately twenty five retreatants comprise people from different walks of life, ranging in age from mid-twenties to mid-eighties. Single people and married couples are numerically balanced. In May 2006, Fr Paul and I led an eight-day ‘retreat holiday’ for fifteen visitors from the UK and Ireland: the group included lay people, women religious and diocesan clergy, as well as Anglican, Quaker and Presbyterian retreatants. It was a simple but deeply felt experience of ecumenism. Similar groups will travel to Malta in May and October this year. Children are always welcome: far from disrupting the retreat, they generate the feeling of fellowship that is an important characteristic of this experience. Children play a large part in the Eucharistic liturgy; their handiwork adorns the principal meeting room; and at least some of the major divisions of the theme are adapted to suit them. Although ‘walking retreats’ are certainly not solitary or silent experiences, the programme allows individual retreatants to seek greater solitude and silence. The experience is not a ‘light’ or a ‘pretend’ retreat – a sight-seeing holiday, complete with guide, but with prayer added! Rather, we strive to offer an integrating experience, in which work and rest, sacred and profane, solitude and fellowship, mental prayer and the senses, intellect, imagination and emotions are suffused with God’s presence. One ‘walking retreat’ is offered each autumn in the programme of the Centre for Ignatian Spirituality; we also accept invitations to lead retreats for prayer groups and similar associations, especially in Advent or Lent. On a personal note, the fact that ‘walking retreats’ are the fruit of a valued friendship has taught me that every aspect of our lives – including leisure, friendships and shared interests – can be turned to the benefit of others and of the Church. Indeed, the challenge of offering these experiences has helped me to feel closer to the Church; it has encouraged me to take spiritual formation seriously and to cultivate a sense that, whether guiding retreatants on a windy cliff or simply walking to work, I journey in God’s shadow. Edward Warrington
Book Review
Body and
Soul. A Spirituality of Imaginative Creativity
For several years, books on Celtic spirituality have been filling publishers’ lists and a couple of them have even made it to the top of best-seller lists. Although the same cannot be said of books on Ignatian spirituality, one can still claim that bibliographies of recent publications on the Spiritual Exercises would run into hundreds of titles. Notwithstanding this wealth of books on Celtic and Ignatian spiritualities, Fintan Creaven’s is the first book I have come across that brings the two together, showing how the main elements of Celtic spirituality also characterise Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises. Fintan Creaven, a Jesuit from the Archdiocese of Glasgow, brings out the similarities between these two spiritualities in order to highlight the wholeness and unity in creation, a unity that is unfortunately undermined by dualistic spiritualities that tend to oppose body and soul, mind and spirit, heaven and earth. As Gerry Hughes writes in the Foreword, “Both Celtic and Ignatian spirituality delight in the extraordinariness of the ordinary and see the spiritual in the material and the material as the spiritual seen from without.” In six short chapters Creaven offers a way of seeing creation imaginatively as a gift of God; as a sacrament of the presence of God in the here-and-now of everyday life with all its small delights and deep sorrows. If one ever wondered whether it is possible to write beautifully about suffering, one should read the fourth chapter on the spirituality of brokenness. And if one ever wondered whether a “sensual spirituality” is a contradiction in terms, one should delve into chapter five on the pedagogy of the senses. The book concludes with a refreshing interpretation of the Contemplation to attain love. All this is written in very beautiful language and the author acknowledges the influence of two great Jesuits who where deeply in touch with the heart of matter and the pied beauty of creation; namely Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Gerard Manley Hopkins. The author himself ends each chapter with a poetic summary typical of Celtic literature. May God find joy in what he has created! Natalino Camilleri
The
Canticle of the Creatures From the CIS Programme
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