Each year, just after Easter, Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete and Communion and Liberation
leads a retreat for priests. This year’s theme is “Priests of the New Evangelization.” In 2009, the retreat for priests is being held at The Malvern Retreat House (Malvern, PA) from 13-17 April 2009.
Yes, it is very early to think about events in 2009. But sit too long on making plans for your retreat in 2009 and you’ll miss a great opportunity to meet the Lord and to be guided by Msgr. Albacete. Act now!!!!
The notes from the 2008 retreat are now available. Visit the CL webpage.
What is Communion and Liberation? In short, CL is a group of friends seeking the face of Jesus and working out their salvation, as St. Paul says, together. It is an ecclesial movement founded by Monsignor Luigi Giussani in 1954 and officially approved by Pope John Paul II in 1982; it is made up of laity, priests and sisters.
The essence of the charism given to Communion and Liberation can be signaled by three factors.
· first of all, the announcement that God became man (the wonder, the reasonableness, the enthusiasm for this): “The Word was made flesh and dwells among us.”
· secondly, the affirmation that this man – Jesus of Nazareth dead and risen – is a present event in a “sign” of “communion,” i.e., of unity of a people guided, as a guarantee, by a living person, ultimately the Bishop of Rome;
· thirdly: only in God made man, man, therefore only in His presence and, thus only through – in some way – the experienceable form of His presence (therefore, ultimately only within the life of the Church) can man be truer and mankind be truly more human. St Gregory Nazianzen writes, “If I were not Yours, my Christ, I would feel like a finished creature”. It is thus from His presence that both morality and the passion for the salvation of man (which is mission) spring up.