The Well: Encountering Jesus and Finding Ourselves
Friday, October 28 – Sunday, October 30
Retreat begins at 6:00 pm Friday and ends at 1:30 Sunday following Mass and Lunch.
Presenters: Fr. Mark Dean, OMI, Fr. Salvador Gonzalez, OMI, Karen & Scott Seaborn
Cost: $350 per couple
Price includes overnight accommodations for 2 nights (Friday and Saturday) at the OLS guest house-hotel. And includes 6 meals beginning with dinner Friday evening.
After so many months of pandemic, isolation, global strife, illness, and uncertainty, we find ourselves thirsty—thirsty for community, thirsty for “normalcy,” thirsty for that which refreshes and revives.
Come and join us at The National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows to both pray with and experience some refreshment and revival as we retreat together at “The Well.” Through the story of the Woman at the Well, this retreat will offer an opportunity for you to come away for a time and quench some of the spiritual thirst that has accumulated these past several months.
On the first night of retreat, we will simply have an Encounter with Jesus at the well, joining our sister as she travels in the heat of the day to simply gather that which she needs. We will begin the retreat by simply arriving together at the place where Jesus is awaiting us, sharing the experience of encountering him in the midst of our everyday activities, and realizing that he has a conversation he wants to have with us. Together, we ready ourselves for that encounter.
The morning conference of the first full day of retreat will allow us to reflect on Water and Wells. When we are craving something life-giving, when we are thirsty for something more, what is the water we seek? What is the water we need? What is the water Jesus provides? And finally, what are the true sources of that water, the wells at which we find ourselves when we go in search of refreshment?
The afternoon conference on this day will focus on Buckets and Disciples. When we travel to the well, we bring a vessel with which to carry that which is given. What in us needs filling, and how do we receive that which Jesus offers us? Are we able to engage in such a way that we ourselves become a receptacle for the life-giving words of Christ? Can we accept the words he offers and in turn speak them to our own communities? What is the quality of our receptivity to the encounter?
On the last day of the retreat, a presentation on Coming & Becoming will ready us to be sent back into our own realities, drawing meaning from our encounter with Jesus, realizing that coming to the well has provided us an invitation to become someone new, someone transformed by the experience we’ve had. We have not just received water, we have received a commission to proclaim that Coming to the well fills us so that we are forever Becoming ever-more faithful disciples of Christ.
During our retreat The Well: Encountering Jesus & Finding Ourselves, we will have time to celebrate the sacraments of Eucharist, Reconciliation, and Anointing of the Sick, as well as time to gather in silent prayer before the Blessed Sacrament.
Register online