From the Retreat Master

Welcome!

Welcome to the 20th annual St. Benedict’s Abbey Holy Week Retreat! Normally this retreat is for the students of Benedictine College, but the COVID-19 pandemic forced its cancellation. Thus, we used the internet to make it possible for anyone to join us! On behalf of Abbot James Albers and the monks of St. Benedict’s Abbey, we welcome you to this stay-at-home retreat.

You may notice we are not inviting you to a “virtual retreat”. This is a fundamental distinction. Though we will be using technology to connect, a retreat can only be done where you are. To retreat, in the Christian sense, is to enter more deeply into the truth of things, like taking a step back from a painting in order to see its beauty more clearly. “Jesus Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray” (Luke 5:16), not to escape the task that was given to Him but to love it more, by staying with the One who was giving it to Him. We are inviting you to enter into these holy days with us not to escape our present situation, or even to persevere or overcome it until life returns to normal, but to enter more deeply into them, through the reality the Father is giving to us. This is the only place we can be in relationship with the source of our lives, who is our happiness.

Acknowledging that God is in our midst, doing something right now, in the here and now of our lives as we stay in our homes, we can ask: How am I being changed? How is He laboring to draw us close to Him and to save us and the world as we face this drama in our lives, in which the limits of sickness and death seem insurmountable? This is the Paschal Mystery.

In his chapter on humility in the Rule, St. Benedict states that “God is always with us, for All my desires are known to You (Ps 38:10)” (RB 7:23). In this holiest week of the Church’s year, we bring all of our desires to God as we meditate on the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of His only begotten Son. The intersection point- the crux- is that of the Cross. In that horizontal beam we place all of our fears and anxieties, knowing that this is truly a lifechanging and world-changing moment in human history. In the vertical beam is the God-man who comes to save us and to bring us back to the Father. He meets us there, at the intersection of the two, where our lives are pulled into His. We are called not to just endure this time but to come to a place of gratitude for all God is doing right now, which includes death but also Resurrection.

As Pope Francis reminded us at the extraordinary Urbi et Orbi blessing on March 27th:

The Lord asks us and, in the midst of our tempest, invites us to reawaken and put into practice that solidarity and hope capable of giving strength, support and meaning to these hours when everything seems to be floundering. The Lord awakens so as to reawaken and revive our Easter faith.

And so on this retreat in your home we invite you to pick up the monastic tools for keeping watch in these hours together.

• First, we invite you to live our Horarium of prayer, recreation, and silence together with us and those in your household. We suggest you live it, as much as possible, at the same time with us (all times given are Central

Daylight Time (UTC -5:00)), or at that same hour of the day in your own time zone, as a sign of our unity in prayer. Of course, availability will vary and so we will explore below the “Why, What, and How” of taking up this proposal as it applies to our circumstances. • Second, we will livestream daily conferences offered by the monks of St. Benedict’s Abbey, and two different panels with witnesses of the lay and monastic experience during these times. If you are viewing them live, you will have the opportunity to participate in Q&A’s by typing in the chat section. Otherwise, you will be able to watch them later via Youtube. • Finally, we suggest different resources to help us live Christ’s paschal mystery.

These suggestions come from our monastic life, so you can take a little bit of monastic life into your home. Those of you that have been on an Abbey retreat before will recognize this as one of our typical goals- the difference this time is we are all living in monasteries now!

We invite you to participate in whatever way helps you enter into Holy Week. It will look different depending on each participant’s circumstances, but in living this together we will help each other draw closer to Our Lord. And please know that the monks of St. Benedict’s Abbey are praying for you! Keep us in your prayers as we live out our monastic life during these dramatic days!

We are all--monks and laypeople--invited to embrace Him during this time, since He so earnestly desires to embrace us! May we not miss Him in our midst today!

Sincerely in Christ and Mary, Fr. Jay Kythe, OSB Retreat Master Fr. Jay Kythe joined St. Benedict’s Abbey in 2013 after 11 years of service as a priest of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. He currently serves the Abbey as

Retreat Master and Novice Master.