Nextweek I will be gone for a few days on retreat. Each year, a priest is required to make a retreat as part of his regular duties. This year I am heading up to a place north of the Twin Cities called the Pacem in Terris retreat center. This is a hermitage retreat center that is run by a group of third order Franciscans. A hermitage retreat is a bit different from other types of retreats that you may be more familiar with. More commonly, a retreat will have a director who will offer a number of talks on a certain topic over the course of a day or two. A more intense retreat will have individual meeting with a spiritual director in order to guide the retreatant to some spiritual end.

A hermitage retreat has none of that. When I went to this place the first time, I asked one of the Franciscans who would be my spiritual director and she responded “The Holy Spirit.” I asked her what books she would recommend I read during my retreat and she said “none of them.” I asked her if I should journal and she said, “nope.” This was unlike any other retreat I had ever been on. I was welcome to celebrate Mass with the community each day and have supper with them, but the rest of the time was to be spent in silence and contemplation.

The thing about silence is that it allows you to hear God speaking to you in a very powerful way. We can hear God speak to us at Mass, through prayer, and at retreats, but there is nothing quite like silence to really get at the root of our spiritual well-being. I found that those days spent in silence were some of the most profound in my life. I made great progress in my spiritual development on that first retreat and now I return there hoping for a similar experience. Now as for you, can you find time each day to spend in silence with God? Can you hear him speaking to you in your heart of hearts?

-Fr. Appel

  Next week we will celebrate a holy day of obligation, the Feast of All Saints. On October 31st we will have a Holy Day Vigil Mass at 6:30 pm. On the feast day itself, November 1st, we will have morning Mass at 8am as usual and Latin Mass at 6:30 pm.

All Saints is a great old celebration, but is too often co-opted by its commercial version, Halloween. I enjoyed trick-or-treating as a kid, getting a good fright once in a while, and celebrating with costumes, pumpkin carving, and lots of candy. However, there is a way you can transform even this most “commercial” of celebrations into a holy exercise. The tradition of dressing up on Halloween (All Hallows Eve) actually comes from an old tradition used to honor the saints. On this day, people would dress up as their patron saint as a way to honor their life and seek their intercession. I would love it if on the Holy Day Masses the children would take the time to investigate the life of a saint and dress up in a “holy” costume. I know this may involve a bit of extra work, but I think it would be a great exercise to try out this year and get in touch with a neat old tradition.

Following All Saints Day is All Souls on November 2nd. This is a day to remember, pray for, and honor all those who have gone before us in the faith, even if they weren’t saints! This is a great day to visit the cemetery with your family members and pray for deceased relatives and friends. I will make a visit up at Calvary cemetery to visit the priest’s circle and say hello to some old friends. Right up the hill here on the West End is Holy Family cemetery, where many Redemptorist fathers and sisters of Saint Francis are buried. Perhaps you could go and say a prayer for one of the old pastors?

In all this we remember that Christ is Lord of the living and the dead- membership in His Church does not end on your last day here on earth, but continues to the end of time!

-Fr. Appel