The annual lenten retreat for the Pope and the curia is not at the Apostolic Palace. This year, the Spiritual Exercises are being given at a retreat house of the Pauline Family, in Ariccia [site of the composition of the Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World of Vatican II], a town about 20 miles southeast of Rome. Msgr. Angelo De Donatis, a popular spiritual director and Roman pastor in the city center of Rome. The retreat runs March 9-14.
Like Pope Francis and others, we need to sit and listen to the Word of God. Are you spending time in prayer?
“Those who live a retreat in an authentic way,” the pope recently said, “experience the attraction and fascination of God and return renewed and transfigured in their daily lives, their ministry and their relationships.”
Francis met March 3 with an Italian federation of spiritual directors and those who run retreat houses throughout the country, offering Christians “space and time to listen intensely to the word of God in silence and in prayer.”
May the Holy Spirit be with those making the Exercises.