Pastoral Message – December 22, 2024
At this time of year, we celebrate lots of foundational feasts and seasons! All of these feasts and seasons are meant to help consecrate our time, bring depth of knowledge to our faith, and greater reality to our hope – which all culminates in our love of God. Within this Spirit-led chain reaction of our lives and the liturgical year, it’s good to take a dedicated time to retreat from our habitual activities. It’s good to follow Jesus’ example of getting away to pray. Below you’ll see a report of a recent retreat that our parish retreat team put together.
More than 54 of us, young and old, enjoyed a day together at the Mary and Joseph Retreat Center on our first re-imagined SSJ retreat. Hosted by an experienced retreat leader, Fr. Jim Clarke led us through a variety of enlightening and spiritually uplifting talks ranging from attachments to gratitude. He provided tools for us to apply to our daily lives to bring us closer to God and to each other. The day included a shared meal, time for personal reflection, fellowship with one another, and sacraments. We are grateful!
I know that those who participated enjoyed and profited by the experience. We’ll continue to offer these retreat experiences throughout the year. So, if you’re going to make a New Year’s resolution, consider making a retreat. That can happen through our parish’s offerings, or you can seek out an individual retreat through a retreat house near or far. And if you’d be interested in the next parish retreat, it’s going to be in the summer. It will be a little more of a retreat since it involves overnight stays. Below you’ll see the retreat teams “save the date” message.
Save-the-date for our next SSJ retreat the weekend of August 22-24 at the Franciscan Retreat Center at Mission San Luis Rey in Oceanside. We are blessed to have Fr. Tom Weston, Jesuit Superior of Oakland and internationally renowned retreat leader guiding us through the weekend. He will bring his deep understanding of Ignatian Spirituality and years of experience leading retreats for the 12-step recovery community. Keep an eye out for more information in the bulletin and on the website.
So God bless us all as we take responsibility for our own personal spiritual growth in the new year. And let’s continue to build each other up through prayer, empathy, and God’s grace.
Fr. Reynold
