Retreat 2021

This year our annual 8-day retreat was accompanied by Fr Isaac Keeley, OCSO, a monk of St Joseph's Abbey, Spencer.

The presence of our brother monk with us was such a blessing, since we have not seen as much of our brothers as we usually would, because of COVID precautions.  Fr Isaac was a joyful and nourishing presence among us.  One sister nicknamed him "Father Laughter" for his easy and lighthearted manner, although he might also  be called "Father Gift of Tears" for his readiness to share things that moved him a great deal.  His conferences touched on themes of the deepest self not made by hands: God's goodness sown within us as our birth-gift, the greatest gift to another of seeing their inner beauty and goodness, relationship with the crucified Christ: God's goodness incarnate, the central importance and difficulty of living and maturing in relationships, the shame that atrophies relationships versus the vulnerability that gives life, and the call to live wholeheartedly and die wholeheartedly.

Fr Isaac closed with a conference on forgiveness as the power that vivifies relationships for a lifetime and makes community possible.  Perhaps the most moving element he shared was a prayer-blessing found on a scrap of paper tucked away in a shed at the Nazi concentration camp of Buchenwald.  Its author is unnamed, presumably a Jewish man or woman awaiting annihilation wth thousands of others.

"Peace to all men of evil will!
Let there be an end to all revenge, to all demands for punishment and retribution.
There are already too many martyrs....
Lay not their sufferings to the torturers' charge to exact a terrible reckoning from them, Lord.
Instead, put down in favor of all men of evil will the courage, humility, dignity, love and spiritual strength of the others.
Let it be laid before Thee for the forgiveness of sins....
And may we remain in your enemies' memories not as their victims...not as haunting specters but as helpers in their striving to destroy their criminal passions.
There is nothing we want more from them."

This breathtaking human rendition of divine forgiveness is both humanizing and divinizing.  We may be far from such sentiments, but that some human being has been been capable of them gives us hope for the renewal of our Church, our nation and our world, our communities, families and ourselves.