We offer silent retreats with individual spiritual direction in different sizes to suit different needs. Maybe you are pressed for time or just want a brief taster? We have weekend retreats that begin on a Friday with evening meal and finish mid-afternoon on the Sunday. Want a deeper draft of the retreat experience? We have midweek retreats which run from the Monday evening meal until after lunch on Friday and 8-day retreats (as seen in the BBC2 programme The Big Silence).
Stamping … punching … scrapping … not words you’d usually associate with a weekend retreat at Loyola Hall. However this was the first Contemplative Scrapbooking retreat being run here and it was a great experience of praying in a different way.
Some retreatants had never scrapbooked before whilst others had some experience but everyone entered into the silence and the contemplative scrapbooking and found it very enriching. Here are some quotes from the retreatants:
‘A wonderful chance to spend some time blending prayer and creativity.’
‘A complete scrapbooking novice, I am amazed at the depth I travelled in prayer.’
‘I was a little nervous as I’m not the least artistic. I shouldn’t have been. It was amazing, deeply spiritual and I think we learnt a new way to pray and a new hobby.’
‘I’ve used scrapbooking for journalling and this has taken me into using it for prayer – it’s been a revelation and a joy.’
If you missed the opportunity but still wish you could have taken part, then put next year’s Contemplative Scrapbooking weekend in your diary and book yourself in: 28th – 30th October 2011
The BBC2 series The Big Silence kicked off last night. The Loyola Hall team gathered to watch, not only because it covers the experience of a silent retreat — our main work — but also because our own Ruth Holgate was one of the four retreat directors featured.
This weekend should give everyone a really good sense of who the Jesuits are and what they do. There’s such a lot richness in our history, in the life of St. Ignatius, and in what we are currently doing here in Britain and all over the world, and we’re convinced if more people knew about it, they’d want to share in the mission, some, we hope as Jesuits — we really need more vocations — and some as lay colleagues in our works.
Fr. Matthew Power SJ, who will be running the weekend.
The weekend will begin on the evening of Friday 5th November, with supper at 6.45pm, for those who can arrive in time, and the opening meeting will be at 8pm. The weekend closes with a 3pm Mass on Sunday.
During the weekend we will:
Look at the Life of St. Ignatius
Consider aspects of Jesuit Spirituality and the Jesuit ‘way of proceeding’ that arise out of the life of St. Ignatius
Experience two ways of prayer typical of Jesuit Spirituality
Look at the particular contribution the Jesuits make in the mission of the Church
This event would be particularly suited to someone who is at the early stages of thinking about whether or not they have a vocation to the Jesuits, but is also open to others.
If participants wish to make a donation to the costs of the weekend, it would be gratefully received.
For further information, please email Fr. Matthew Power SJ: matthew.power@jesuits.net
The long-awaited BBC2 series The Big Silence will be broadcast on BBC2 on the three Fridays of October 22nd and 29th, and November 5th at 7pm.
The Big Silence is a series about five men and women challenged by Christopher Jamison, OSB to build silence into their daily lives, first with a glimpse of monastic silence at Worth Abbey, and then with an Ignatian silent, directed retreat. Their journeys though not smooth proved fruitful.
As a companion to the series, the Growing into Silence web site and booklet provide more help in finding silence in a busy schedule with practical resources and exercises and articles by the four retreat guides who took part in the TV series: Ruth Holgate of Loyola Hall, Tom McGuinness of the Ignatian Spirituality Centre, Glasgow, Brendan Callaghan of Campion Hall, Oxford, and Renate Dullman of St Beunos in Wales.
“The result is a journey that takes them from the depths of sadness through anger and frustration to the heights of contemplative bliss,” writes Paul Nicholson in the introduction to the booklet. “All of them were profoundly changed by the experience. This booklet offers you the chance to follow up their experience in your own life. You can find out about the spiritual exercises that they undertook and consider following them yourself.”
