By Fr. Patrick Bergquist
The Benefits of a Directed Retreat
Sometimes it’s good, just to seem to run away… to step out of the busy-ness of our lives and step into the gentle flow of God’s grace. Oh yes, sometimes it’s good just to go on retreat, if only to be able to hear again the murmurings of our hearts and the whispering of our souls. But sometimes that soul can seem a frightening place… a wild-ness of its own. So sometimes it’s good to have somebody to listen and to hold that weary soul.
As a spiritual and retreat director of many years, I really can’t imagine any better way to describe the ‘Directed Retreat’ than when Herman Hesse, in his classic novel Siddhartha, writes of the ferryman…
“Vasudeva listened very attentively. Listening, he absorbed everything, origin and childhood, all the learning, all the seeking, all joy, all woe. One of the ferryman’s greatest virtues was that he knew how to listen like few other people… the ferryman took in (Siddhartha’s) words, silent, open, waiting, missing none, impatient for none, neither praising nor blaming, but only listening. (And) Siddhartha felt what happiness it is to unburden himself to such a listener, to sink his own life into the listener’s heart…”
And to me… this is what the Directed Retreat is all about.