Online Advent Retreats
The global online spiritual website, Sacred Space, presents an Advent retreat with a difference, beginning on 1st December, the First Sunday in Advent.
The journey we make from birth to death and rebirth has been made over and over again for countless millennia. Nobody can make it for us, even though countless people have made it before us. While only I can walk my own journey, I do not need to walk alone. In any journey, it helps to have a guide.
The Bible provides us with a large and varied company of those who made the salvation journey before us and who have much to teach us. Every day this Advent, you are invited to make a journey through the unknown in the company of one of these, including Abraham, Moses, Jonah, Jacob, Nicodemus, Job, Elijah, Mary Magdalene, and the unknown woman who washed the feet of Jesus in the house of Simon the Pharisee. More recent sources of inspiration include Meister Eckhart, St Teresa of Ávila, St John of the Cross, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and CS Lewis.
What all their journeys have in common is that they each feature a crisis, in the original meaning of the Greek word, “turning point”- something to be welcomed rather than feared, something that the philosopher Ivan Illich described, as “the marvellous moment when people become aware of their self-imposed cages, and of the possibility of a different life.”
Click on the image to access.
The journey we make from birth to death and rebirth has been made over and over again for countless millennia. Nobody can make it for us, even though countless people have made it before us. While only I can walk my own journey, I do not need to walk alone. In any journey, it helps to have a guide.
The Bible provides us with a large and varied company of those who made the salvation journey before us and who have much to teach us. Every day this Advent, you are invited to make a journey through the unknown in the company of one of these, including Abraham, Moses, Jonah, Jacob, Nicodemus, Job, Elijah, Mary Magdalene, and the unknown woman who washed the feet of Jesus in the house of Simon the Pharisee. More recent sources of inspiration include Meister Eckhart, St Teresa of Ávila, St John of the Cross, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and CS Lewis.
What all their journeys have in common is that they each feature a crisis, in the original meaning of the Greek word, “turning point”- something to be welcomed rather than feared, something that the philosopher Ivan Illich described, as “the marvellous moment when people become aware of their self-imposed cages, and of the possibility of a different life.”
Click on the image to access.
The English Jesuits offer a superb Advent retreat on their excellent Pray As You Go website.
Advent is above all a time of hope. Isaiah chapter 9 speaks of the people who walk in darkness seeing a great light. The last five years have seen times of deep darkness over our world with a global pandemic and the outbreak or continuance of devastating conflicts. You may also have been through times of personal darkness through bereavement, illness or losses of different kinds.
This year's Advent retreat has been written by Gemma Simmonds of the religious Congregation of Jesus. One 20-minute session is released every Monday during Advent. You are encouraged to mull over the retreat material and pray with it throughout the week. Notice what is staying with you during the Advent season.
As pilgrims of hope our Advent journey this year invites us to travel in confidence, looking to the birth of Jesus as the source of all hope for our world.
Click on the image to access.
Advent is above all a time of hope. Isaiah chapter 9 speaks of the people who walk in darkness seeing a great light. The last five years have seen times of deep darkness over our world with a global pandemic and the outbreak or continuance of devastating conflicts. You may also have been through times of personal darkness through bereavement, illness or losses of different kinds.
This year's Advent retreat has been written by Gemma Simmonds of the religious Congregation of Jesus. One 20-minute session is released every Monday during Advent. You are encouraged to mull over the retreat material and pray with it throughout the week. Notice what is staying with you during the Advent season.
As pilgrims of hope our Advent journey this year invites us to travel in confidence, looking to the birth of Jesus as the source of all hope for our world.
Click on the image to access.