August 9, 2026 - Pastor Message
August 8, 2026“Rising very early before dawn, Jesus left and went off to a deserted place to pray” (Mark 1:35).
“Rising very early before dawn, Jesus left and went off to a deserted place to pray” (Mark 1:35).
The practice of going away to a “deserted place” to pray predates Christianity, but was certainly familiar to Jesus. Today, we call this making a spiritual retreat. We know that the practice of leaving the ordinary setting of people’s daily lives in towns and villages and going to deserted places to cultivate the spiritual life was well known to people of the ancient Near East, practiced by Old Testament prophets, like Elijah, and the community of Jewish monks at Qumran, from which came the famous Dead Sea scrolls. This time away often also involved acts of asceticism, denying themselves luxuries, fasting, and living simply to remove any distractions from their focus on God. These early retreats from the world could be temporary, as we see in Jesus’s 40 day journey into the desert at the beginning of his public ministry, or they could be for the rest of a person’s life, as we see in John the Baptist’s dwelling in the wilderness near the Jordan River.
In early Christianity, the practice of retreating to the desert or mountains to focus on spiritual growth developed into the earliest forms of consecrated religious life. Whether living alone as hermits or in small religious communities, these people were considered to be wise and holy, and other people would often trek out to the desert to join them for a time to seek their advice. This remained a very informal practice until the 16th century, when St. Ignatius of Loyola developed a formal program for spiritual retreats called the Spiritual Exercises. He developed this program while himself on a sort of retreat, convalescing from wounds he received in battle (he was a soldier). He took advantage of that time to engage in spiritual reading and intense prayer, and, when he was well again, he left the military life to form a new kind of missionary religious community called the Society of Jesus, or the Jesuits. Undertaking the Spiritual Exercises was mandatory for anyone wishing to join the Jesuits, and St. Ignatius also encouraged their use for other clergy and even lay persons.
Thus a more structured and formal approach to making retreats began to spread. In time, other religious communities developed their own forms of retreat, and norms were issued by the Church requiring all clergy to make an annual retreat, norms still in effect today. Over the centuries, various forms of retreats have grown in popularity among all Christians - clergy, religious, and lay people - and we are all encouraged to make going away to a deserted place to pray a regular part of our spiritual lives.
During this season of summer vacations, time to get away and have some fun, it would be good for all of us to also make the time to get away and renew our spiritual lives by going on retreat. Whether an organized retreat, like Ignatius’ spiritual exercises, or going off by ourselves to a deserted place (at least as deserted as we can find these days) and spending some time with a good spiritual book or simply reflecting on the beauty of God’s creation, summer is the perfect time for a retreat. Let us make the time to go away with Jesus this summer, be renewed in faith, and so come back in the fall ready to hit the ground running, continuing the mission of the gospel here at St. Boniface.
Fr. Marc Stockton
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