Benedictine had their third annual Theology of the Body retreat Saturday Feb.21st where students discovered how to naturally thrive and flourish as a human person in relationships while living a human life.
Fr. Stefan Zarnay, DCJM guided the retreat. Zarnary dove into profound and complex themes, such as discovering authentic happiness, living a great life, what it means to truly love and identity.
Throughout the retreat, students with Zarnay’s spiritual guidance discovered the paradox of happiness. “All people desire to be happy,” Zarnay said. He added, “However, happiness is different for each one of us.”
One way students can (re)discover their happiness is by transforming their perspective about work. “Our life must retake our work as a mission, as a way of holiness, which can take you to places you do not suspect,” Zarnay said.
An interesting concept Zarnay explored was “the order of love.” The natural order of love begins by loving people for their own sake and culminates in loving people for God’s sake. When a person struggles to love a person for their own sake and recognizes that they are a gift of God, the virtue of charity transforms this human love which heals relationships.
As the retreat progressed, students questioned the concept of identity which correlated with the theme of human flourishing. Zarnay said, “[The stage of] adolescence is a question of identity. Who am I?”
His response flipped the original question on its head. “But the question of the human life is the flourishing, the fecundity, of the fruitfulness, not of ‘Who am I?’ Youth is the age [of] trying to find out who I want to give my life to,” Zarnay said.
Every person wants to thrive and flourish as a human being. Let this retreat in this Lenten season serve as a call to live a fruitful life, become a self-gift daily to the community and beyond.
