Do y'all remember that I'm part of a retreat team right now? Some folks from the retreat program at my parish are working with the central office of the national retreat program; five of us will be part of a mission team offering the first retreat to women in a town about 3 hours away.
It's been about 70% more work than I had anticipated.
Some of the additional work was voluntary -- I didn't have to give a talk, but I volunteered to. Some of the additional work was not voluntary -- the music coordinator quit and I was promoted from musical dogsbody to musical co-lead-dog. I was happy to plan Mass music and teach songs as needed but I have been less happy about planning and providing a bunch of recorded music. I'm too middle-aged for all of this Spotify playlisting and downloading and Bluetoothing. (Also, if I were the sole musical lead-dog I could decree "We're not doing that song because it's irredeemably cheesy" instead of saying diplomatically "I would prefer not to do that song." But then I would have even more work, I guess. Life is full of tradeoffs, man.)
Anyway, it will all be over a week from now. I believe it has the potential to bear good fruit in the lives of the women who attend and in their parishes. It's just been kind of painful getting it together.
Every time I go to Mass out of town I am filled with gratitude for our church here in Gladlyville. We visited the town where the retreat will be held three weeks ago and spoke at all the Masses there. They were, I suppose, perfectly ordinary Catholic Masses. We are awfully lucky here, blessed with a pastor who believes with his whole heart that he has been entrusted with good news, who calls us to go deeper in homilies that are full of truth, and almost always thoughtful and witty. Our music directors are faithful and reverent without taking themselves too seriously; they are very clear that our focus is on worship, not performance. Our leadership team is unified; they stand with Pope Francis and the Magisterium in their efforts "to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of [them]."
This morning's Mass left me with a fiery little glow inside, grateful for the gift of the Word and the homily and the Eucharist and also for the power of community. When we go to church these days we are surrounded by friends from the retreat community, people who have encountered Jesus in a new way through the retreats and who are determined to "press on toward the goal," sharing good news as they go.
SO. Maybe I need to stop thinking about all of the (plentiful) annoyances associated with taking this retreat on the road. Maybe I need to do some pressing onward toward the goal myself.
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