THE BLOG OF THE BON SECOURS RETREAT & CONFERENCE CENTER
Retreat with Us
Welcome to the Bon Secours Retreat & Conference Center’s blog! This blog will extend our retreat ministry by bringing prayers and reflections into your home ‘retreat.’ Many of our presenters and staff share their homilies, favorite prayers, and reflections through this medium. We encourage you to comment, pass it along to friends or simply take a moment to pray with us. We hope that this will serve as a moment during your day when you can ‘retreat with us.’
Mary DeTurris Poust The following article by regular Bon Secours retreat presenter Mary DeTurris Poust was originally published in the National Catholic Reporter on July 5, 2025. As I drove down the New York State Thruway, headed toward what promised to be an inspiring event on the legacy of Trappist Fr. Thomas Keating and the Centering Prayer movement, I was anything but centered or prayerful. The state of the world and the state of my own interior life felt chaotic,…
By Linda Mastro “…every gardener is an apprentice of the good Gardener of creation. Gardening teaches us that we belong to nature and are also responsible for it. Human culture and nature’s destiny are inextricably intertwined. What we add to nature can contribute to its well-being, as well as our own.” ~ Vigen Guroian in Inheriting Paradise, page 61. Every month the Bon Secours Associates of Marriottsville meet to pray and discuss a topic that inspires us to live the…
By Gordon Creamer “He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matt 22:37-40, NRSVUE) & “Love…
By Carl McColman Who are the mystics? They are found in every religion and every era of history. Many are people we might recognize as saints, and quite a few were monks or nuns — but mystics come in all shapes and sizes, and many were surprisingly down to earth and accessible. What they all seem to have in common is an unshakeable conviction that it is possible for people — even the most ordinary folks — to have intimate and…
By Ginny Novak, MA "Finding God in all things.” ~St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits “Contemplation is a long, loving look at the real.” ~Walter Burghardt, SJ, theologian "Mathematics is the language in which God has written the universe.” Galileo, scientist Using these three seemingly unrelated phrases, I’d like to suggest a deep connection between mathematics and spirituality and share how awareness of this link has been a gift for me. Of course,…
By Kathleen Duffy, SSJ In his spiritual treatise, The Divine Milieu, Teilhard shares his place of solace, a place where he found the healing and comfort he needed so desperately given the difficulties that confronted him in life. He treasured the heightened consciousness he found there, its deeply personal charm. He often returned to the Divine Milieu to bathe in the light of Christ’s palpable presence, the only atmosphere in which he could truly breathe. Moved to adoration, he would…
By: Mary DeTurris Poust Our world demands that we be productive, hit benchmarks, achieve goals. I’ll be the first to admit that I am always ready to take on a new challenge, sign up for a new class, or earn yet another certification in my eternal quest to make “progress” in this life. Unfortunately, that Type A approach can bleed over into our spiritual lives as well, and before we know it, we’re turning the path to God into an…
Community Living and the Garden By Sr. Elaine Davia, CBS It’s amazing what a garden teaches us about community life and relationships. Consider how each of these observations about gardening also apply to community and our relationships. It takes preparation and careful tending to keep a garden healthy and fruitful. And there’s the need for creativity, to tend and care in organic ways that don’t pollute or contaminate. The variety of colors, shapes, and sizes is…
Shifting By Jenifer Kirin “One thing we know for sure doesn’t work: just telling yourself that everything is okay now. Completing the [stress] cycle isn’t an intellectual decision; it’s a physiological shift.” ― Emily Nagoski, Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle There seems to be a lot changing rapidly these days. It can be challenging to process it all. How are you doing? If you are finding that your stomach is in knots, it could be stress. The digestive and reproductive systems tend to…
by Linda Mastro and Amy Kulesa “If we truly want to know the secret of soulful travel, we need to believe that there is something sacred waiting to be discovered in virtually every journey.” ~ Phil Cousineau in The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker’s Guide to Making Travel Sacred A pilgrimage is a way of seeing, being, and doing as much as it is a journey to a collection of sacred sites. When you choose to live life as…
