November 17, 2024

Dear Friends in Christ,

In the Gospels Jesus is often with crowds of people – teaching, healing, praying. We heard this last weekend when our Gospel from St. Mark began by saying, “In the course of his teaching Jesus said to the crowds…”. But we know there are numerous times in the Gospels where Jesus goes off to pray by himself as well. Times before or after big events such as after the multiplication of loaves, before the choosing of the twelve apostles and in the Garden of Gethsemane. This back and forth between Jesus being with crowds and going off to pray by himself shows us that we need communal prayer, like what we do every weekend when we come to church, and we need time for personal prayer as well.

This upcoming week I will be going on my annual retreat. I will be leaving on Sunday afternoon, after our 3:00pm Thanksgiving Prayer Service at Congregation B’Nai Israel where we will be joining our Jewish friends in prayer, to head to my priest friend’s parish in Chester, PA. Then we will be heading out on Monday and returning Friday. The retreat house I will be going to this year is down in Virginia and I’ll be going with two priests from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia whom I know from my seminary days. It is a retreat for priests and it will have ample opportunity for that quiet, personal prayer (it’s mostly a silent retreat) but also a communal aspect with Mass, communal prayer and talks by the retreat leader. Retreats give us a great opportunity to think about our lives, bring things to prayer and hopefully have a fresh way of seeing things when it is over.

If you have an opportunity to attend a retreat week, a weekend retreat or even a day of recollection to put aside the business of our lives, I would highly recommend it. It’s such a great way to spiritually “recharge.” I will be keeping all the people of The Church of Nativity in prayers during my retreat.

God Bless,
Fr. Chris