Posted: May 23

A time for retreat

(Monte Cucco) This name might sound like a mountain town where clock makers live, but it actually refers to a small hill in what has become the suburbs on the south side of Rome. A group of Spanish sisters run a retreat house there that offers Ignatian spiritual exercises offered only by Jesuits. It is a pretty good deal: they run the house and we Jesuits get to do the talking. I come here once a year to give an eight-day retreat to sisters from all over the world. This year my group is 20 women from India, the Philippines, Australia, England, Indonesia, Canada and the United States. It is a pleasure to do face-to-face communication for a change and to spend my day talking about Jesus rather than bit rates, podcasts, photographs or communication strategy.

The Roman weather has been variable, which means alternating between glorious sunshine and monsoon rains. Fortunately, the retreat house is a large building with enough space to wander around inside without going crazy. Since I have given this retreat four times now, I am getting into the groove. We meet once a day in the morning for about a 45-minute talk where I sketch out a theme for the day and explore the gospel reading that will serve to guide the retreatants through the day. Most of the rest of the time they are on their own and I meet with them individually to talk about what is happening during the retreat. The stories are pretty fascinating, but fortunately for the retreatants I cannot talk about them since whatever they tell me is confidential..

I know that concrete examples help people to understand the point, so when I started giving these retreats, I hit on the idea of talking about movies that illustrate the day’s theme. Movies are public domain, after all, and you can talk about the characters in them as though they were real. And in the best movies the people are real, if the actors and director do their jobs right. This year I tried an experiment and actually showed two movies. Babette’s Feast tells the story of a French woman who escapes the Revolution and seeks refuge with two Danish sisters whose father was pastor of a strict Protestant sect. The movie has multiple themes that touch a retreat, especially the question of how we imagine God’s dealing with us—in great abundance or very strict and demanding. The second film was Dead Man Walking which recounts the true story of a sister from New Orleans who accompanies a condemned murderer during his final days up to and including his execution. That movie helped us see the broader meaning of conversion as taking responsibility for the consequences of our decisions; in this case Sister Helen Prejean had to follow out all she believed about God’s mercy and forgiveness in order to minister to someone who was not at all appealing or easy to be with. .

I think the experiment worked well and that both movies helped my retreatants to pray better. They certainly gave me a lot to think about. I know that other Jesuits have written about movies as related to a retreat, but I was not sure if actually showing the films would help or hinder the silence and prayerfulness of the eight days. The answer—they helped it a lot.