On Retreat

We are on retreat. On Ash Wednesday, I suggested that we might think of Lent as a time for all of us to be on retreat, a time for the church to withdraw from business as usual and seek a deeper relationship with God. How many of you have actually been on a retreat? I don’t mean what is called a “retreat” in corporate or academic circles. Those are usually just extended business meetings that happen to take place in a hotel or resort, where you have drinks and good meals instead of the usual coffee and doughnuts, and where the emphasis is often on “team-building.” True retreats are just the opposite of business “retreats.” They usually take place at retreat houses, perhaps monasteries or convents, with simple accommodations and meals. They can be corporate, but they emphasize vertical, not horizontal ties, i.e., our relationship with God rather than with each other. They are mostly silent. Many last a week, although some, especially those focused on the spiritual exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, can last for thirty days.

My own first silent retreat was for two and half days at the convent of the Community of the Transfiguration, an Episcopal order of nuns whose motherhouse is in Glendale, near Cincinnati. That retreat was simply one of unstructured prayer and reflection. Since then, I have made two week-long silent retreats, both at Our Lady of the Pines, a Catholic retreat house in Fremont, Ohio. I will return there again this summer. Often we make retreats like these for discernment, i.e., we go asking God’s help with a decision, a question, or a request. And they usually include daily spiritual direction, i.e., conversation with a wise guide who can help us discern how God is acting in our lives. In the right place, with the right spiritual guide, such a week can be life-changing, or, at the very least, a deep experience of God’s presence and grace.

Jesus was on retreat. Just like all those who go to the desert, a monastery, or a retreat house surrounded by a pine forest, Jesus was on retreat. All three synoptic gospels record that he was led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness. If you remember the video we watched during Lent last year, “In the Footsteps of Jesus,” you remember the barren hills above Jerusalem that Jesus must have wandered through and the caves where he must have spent the night while he was on retreat. Why, immediately after his baptism in the Jordan River, did the Spirit send him on retreat?

In the church, we tend to focus on Jesus’ divinity. After reciting “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God,” in the Nicene Creed, most of us slide right over “and was made man,” i.e., became a human being. We forget that Jesus really, truly, was a human being, and that he might have wrestled with doubts and questions about his identity and vocation, just as we do. If indeed Jesus was truly human, then he too entered into discernment as he hiked the Judean hills. As he sought God’s presence in deeper silence, perhaps he also sought to discern more clearly God’s will for him. Perhaps he especially wished to understand the words he had heard after his baptism, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” What could it mean to be God’s Beloved Son?

What might it been like for Jesus out there in the barren hills? Perhaps he had taken a knapsack with him. Well before forty days were past, though, he would surely have run out of the food he had brought with him. The caves might have provided shelter but little comfort, even if he had a blanket with him. Could he have bathed or washed his clothes? Unlike those of us who make retreats with others, Jesus was utterly alone. Perhaps he was also spiritually bereft. Perhaps he was experiencing a “dark night of the soul.” Perhaps he felt that God had utterly abandoned him. Perhaps he felt paralyzed, unable to discern what lay ahead and what might be demanded of him.

Mark provides no detail about what Jesus actually experienced on his wilderness retreat. Matthew and Luke suggest that, in this exhausted state, Jesus grappled with three deep questions, three temptations, if you will. The first question was whether he should be a miracle worker. Should he use his God-given powers to create food and other material objects? Should heal everyone who was sick? Should he exorcise all the demons that plagued people? The second question was whether he should call on God’s protective power to keep him safe from all harm. And the third question was whether he should seek to defeat the powers that be through exercise of superhuman political power. In other words, was Jesus really willing to be fully human? As Debie Thomas suggests, “If those forty days in the wilderness was a time of self-creation, a time for Jesus to decide who he was and how he would live out his calling, then here is what the Son of God chose: deprivation over power. Vulnerability over rescue. Obscurity over honor. At every instance in which he could have reached for the certain, the extraordinary, and the miraculous, he reached instead for the precarious, the quiet, and the mundane.” This is the paradox of Easter, she reminds us: that “Jesus’ ‘free gift’ to humankind is rooted not in his power but in his sacrifice.”1

Perhaps, just perhaps, Jesus didn’t come to an understanding of his vocation all at once. Perhaps it took him forty – or more – days of wrestling with it for him to understand his vocation and truly embrace it. However, the Gospel accounts tell us that, once his initial time of discernment was completed, he emerged from his retreat willingly embracing his human limitations and his vocation, and ready to follow God’s lead wherever it took him.

We are on retreat. We have not physically removed ourselves from our ordinary lives. We have not come away to a retreat house, although I heartily recommend the experience of extended retreat for anyone who has the chance to do it. We are not in silence, although silent prayer and contemplation are always commendable. But we do have the gift of Lent to go on a kind of retreat. We can perhaps let go, for a time at least, of those things that distract us from God. We can think about how we might simplify our lives. Even if all you do is clean out a closet or a drawer, or say no to some obligation that no longer feeds your spirit, or say the short form of prayer at the end of the day, you have come closer to a simpler life. We can take advantage of the opportunity to grow in faith together, through our Lenten study sessions. Most important, we can attempt to discern more clearly where God might be leading us.

So here’s my invitation to you. Go on a virtual retreat. Follow Jesus into the wilderness. Take some time today to think or pray about what you might want to discern during this Lent. What question do you want to ask of God? What do want to request from God? With what decision do you seek God’s guidance? Write down somewhere, perhaps in a journal, your question, request, or object of decision. Find some extra time in your day or week to pray about it, and to deepen your trust in God’s leading. At the end of Lent, see whether you have any clarity about what is on your heart. If you need any special help with discernment, there are many different materials out there, which I’ll be happy to recommend. I can also provide, or direct you to, appropriate sources for spiritual direction and retreat centers. If it is helpful, use this prayer, perhaps even daily. Let’s pray it together.

O Lord
I do not know what to ask you.
You alone know my real needs,
and you love me more
than I even know how to love.
Enable me to discern my true needs
which are hidden from me.
I ask for neither cross nor consolation;
I wait in patience for you.
My heart is open to you.
For your great mercy's sake,
come to me and help me.
Put your mark on me and heal me,
cast me down and raise me up.
Silently I adore your holy will
and your inscrutable ways.
I offer myself in sacrifice to you
and put all my trust in you.
I desire only to do your will.
Teach me how to pray
and pray in me, yourself.2

Most important, accept God’s gift of Lent. Let God’s gift of Lent draw you into fuller acceptance of Jesus’ humanity and your own. Let God’s gift of Lent lead you into a deeper understanding of the One whom we profess to follow. Let God’s gift of Lent draw you closer to God’s heart and more deeply into God’s love.

1. “My Flannel-Graph Jesus,” Journey with Jesus, March 9, 2014, http://www.journeywithjesus.net/
2. Vasily Drosdov Philaret, c. 1780 – 1867, http://www.cptryon.org/prayer/special/discern.html