Holy Week Ignitian Retreat

Date: April 12-16, 2006
Place: Horacio de la Costa Formation Center
Trece Martires City, Cavite

Only grace sustains man thirst, hunger and search through prayer in living out his life in the knowledge and faith in God.

Always God is faithful for those who seek and follow Him in the midst of life’s pains and joy. As days approaching the most solemn days of the Church my desire to spend it with the Lord away from the busy and frenzy life grows intensely through a retreat; a Christian practice of spirituality withdrawing oneself from everything and spending it with God. Since I have been away from this kind of practice for almost eight years though lately I have join a retreat in psychogenetic, the desire and thirst simply won’t go. I have found some difficulty in finding where to spend it. In the most unlikely place I found a retreat invitation through searching in the internet and directed me through an Ignitian Retreat to be led by the Christian Life Community posted in the Ateneo de Manila University website. I reflected for a moment on how to respond this answered prayer. Then suddenly there was a tug of war of the will inside myself whether to go on or just ignore all my desire which the Lord sowed in my heart. Thoughts of spending the Holy Week with friends in beach, mountain, party, staying home invaded this holy desire yet still being aware in all this movements of the Spirit. It seems the alternative is pleasurable than to spend the whole holy week in silent and prayer. Ignitian Retreat is not a foreign practice to me and have been through this during my college and teaching days in Xavier University-Ateneo de Cagayan. When everything made clear to me I have contacted the CLC and made my reservation. Such event can’t be successful unless one would undergo some preparation whether spiritually, emotionally or intellectually and precisely what I have done. God make us successful unless we are open to His leading and we are trying.

I came alone to the retreat with great fervor and zeal with the desire of meeting God and deepening my relationship with Him. I knew no one in the participant neither they do knew me. I met one of the directors who knew my brother in the CLC community when he still a novice in the Society of Jesus. We have an informal gathering on Wednesday night with the other retreatants and our spiritual directors. The group were I belong are diverse which I would call them tatay, nanay and ate of which I am the youngest. Thanks to my/our spiritual directress Tita Sonia who guided and help me in the pilgrimage into myself and into God and to my fellow pilgrims who shared those days with the Lord and have enrich my being. The accommodation is just simply great in simplicity and the food is delicious.

There is a questioner that needs to be answered before the retreat which will determine some aspect of the retreat participant and that must be answered with honesty as to give the retreat directors some idea of the participants spirituality and the journey one is undergoing. The retreat is meant to be a silent and individually directed which combines sacred reading of the Scripture, meditation, prayer and journaling of the whole experience of the exercise.

Part of the greatest gift I have received from the Lord is the sacrament of reconciliation, renewal of my Baptism and receiving and nourish by the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus in the Eucharist which I call a 360 degree slam dunk. Truly God is so Good.
Ignitian Retreat grounded on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola and known for its strict adherence to silence not only externally but most especially the inner person/being as a path in encountering God. It also emphasizes the First Principle and Foundation of the Spiritual Exercise done in the retreat which is to Know, Love God and the consequence is our service to Him and others.

Within the whole of retreat one is immerse in the mercy, goodness, love, beauty and truth of God. The noblest of it is the experience of a deeper relationship of the One True God in three Divine Person: Father, Son and Holy Spirit; a familial relationship.

Fruitfulness of the encounter is not solely determine or identified on the experience of the present moment or during the exercise but also what is coming after those encounter especially in living out that experience in every day life. Fruitfulness becomes a reality when we are grafted to the True Vine which is Jesus Christ and not apart from Him.

The retreat never loses the essence of the season which we have celebrated and lived out just as the whole Church celebrates the Holy Week and Easter Triduum. Never in my life all the Scripture and the Tradition made more sense realistically in my life. And I lived my life what the Lord has done to me during those moment. +ADMG