The Regnum Christi Silent Retreat was during fall break, from Oct. 16-20.
Maria Vogel, senior, who is in charge of the retreat, said it is a place where students can go into a time of silence and prayer in a way that Saint Ignatius of Loyola did.
“It’s a series of meditations in silence where you really dive into the Gospels on the life of Christ,” Vogel said. “It’s just a personal encounter and deepening of your relationship with Christ.”
Benedictine College’s RC Chaplain, Fr. Ryan Richardson, said silence is important in order to hear God’s voice.
“We block or put aside all our distractions and all the noise that clutters our life in order to simply be before God to really hear his voice and better discern what he’s asking us to do,” Fr. Ryan said.
Saint Ignatius started what is called the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, where he would contemplate which thoughts were from God or from Satan.
“He started figuring out when he would talk about these famous things, this knightly character, he would get really excited and then he would get really depressed,” Fr. Ryan said. “When he thought about Christ and being a saint, he would get these other kinds of feelings of desire and joy, but then they’d never fade away, they’d stay with him.”
Eventually it became what Fr. Ryan calls the Discernment of Spirits.
“That was kind of the beginning of the spiritual exercises of basically writing down a program or retreat to help people discern what is the voice of the Lord and what is not,” Fr. Ryan said.
The silent retreat has been extended compared to previous years, devoting more prayer time and silence to the extra time available.
Mary Dillenburg, senior, agreed the extended time will be beneficial.
“As we got into prayer, it seems like we got out of prayer, because we only had that one full day of complete silence, and the next day, that’s when the silence end,” Dillenburg said. “It’s hard to initially go from the world to the silence and cutting everything out and just focusing on God.”
“The more time you give to the Lord and just uninterrupted communication like a five day silent retreat, I think so much more fruit is able to come from it,” Dillenburg said. “I’m here to get to Heaven and get close to Heaven. I’m need to form myself in order to do that.”
