Jesus is in Galilee. He calls the Twelve and sends them out two by two to the surrounding villages. They preach conversion, cast out demons and heal the sick. They return. They tell the Lord everything they have done and taught. He smiles and says to them: “Come away by yourselves to a lonely place, and rest a while” (Mk 6:31). So great is the apostolic activity that they have no time even to eat. And Mark concludes: “And they went away in the boat to a lonely place by themselves” (Mk 6:32).
In this scene, we see a Gospel forerunner of the retreat. Today too, in the midst of our own overflowing activity, the Lord leads us to a desert place, set apart, to be alone with Him, to listen to his teaching and to rest from the press of daily life. There we find the impulse to return, with a renewed heart, to the mission Christ has entrusted to us. This is how St. Josemaría experienced it; he was keenly aware how decisive this practice was for his own interior life, especially in those years of intense pastoral labour in his youth: “I need retreat, and tears.”[1]
A place of prayer
At the start of his public life, Jesus Himself withdrew into the desert, led by the Holy Spirit (cf. Lk 4:1). What is the desert? It is a hard, rugged place, one of solitude and want of water, but also – because of this – a place of silence, preparation and encounter with God, and purification. The desert offers anyone who crosses it a wholesome lesson: an awareness of utter dependence on God, since in that empty space help can come from nowhere but on high. We possess nothing there. Our feet lead nowhere, our hands can grasp nothing but sand or rock, our voice is lost and useless in that vastness. All that is left is for the heart to speak, upward or inward: "Our Father, who art in heaven…"
This is why, in Sacred Scripture, the desert is bound up with the idea of prayer. It is a bond God Himself establishes: “Behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her” (Hos 2:14). To withdraw into the desert is to withdraw into ourselves, there to find the presence of the One who, as St. Augustine said, is “more inward to us than any secret of ours,”[2] more inward even than we are to ourselves, and who will speak to our heart. The solitude of the desert is a fitting, favourable climate for perceiving the divine presence clearly and entering into communication with God. Even thirst, so characteristic of the desert, is bound up with prayer: “O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where no water is” (Ps 63:1). Our bodily thirst recalls that other, far more fundamental thirst: the thirst for God, the thirst for warm and tender dealings with the Lord, the thirst for friendship and intimacy with Him.
Jesus often withdrew to a lonely place to pray to the Father (cf. Lk 5:16; Mt 14:13). We do the same when we recollect ourselves and enter into our own soul, closing the door on the outside world and remaining alone with God. “But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father, who sees in secret” (Mt 6:6). “So what shall you and I do, then, in these days of retreat? Spend much time with the Lord; seek Him out, as Peter did, so as to hold an intimate conversation with him. Notice that I say conversation: a dialogue between two, face to face, with neither hiding behind anonymity. We need that personal prayer, that intimacy, that direct dealing with God our Lord.”[3]
The desert can also be compared to another biblical image, that of the portion of Azazel[4] (cf. Lev 16:10), a figure bound up with the rite of atonement for the sins of the people. There Moses speaks with God, when God reveals his name to him and chooses him to set Israel free (cf. Ex 3:11–15). It is also the space in which, over forty years, the chosen people were purified of the interior slavery they still carried from Egypt. Elijah, at the start of his mission, hides beside a desert stream (cf. 1 Kings 17:3). And, paradoxically, the desert is also the place where the devil comes to tempt Jesus, and where the evil one is defeated (cf. Lk 4:1–13).
“The desert … for Moses, for Elijah, for Jesus … is the setting of vocation and of preparation. Unless we step outside the daily round, unless we face up to the strength of solitude, we cannot perceive God. (…) A covetous, selfish heart cannot know God. (…) A noisy, bewildered, scattered heart cannot find God.”[5] This is why the intrepid Desert Fathers, following Jesus’s example, withdrew into the desert to do battle with the devil, the “strong man,” by the power of the “stronger one” (cf. Lk 11:21–22). They sought to purify themselves, to unmask whatever evil might lie hidden within: only by recognising it could they confront it and overcome it with God’s help.
We too, in our days of retreat, place ourselves before the truth of our own life. The solitude of the desert makes it easier for us to discover both the gifts God grants us and the weaknesses that need healing. There, in the light of the Holy Spirit, we learn that self-knowledge “requires the capacity to stop, to ‘deactivate the autopilot,’ to acquire awareness of our way of acting, of the feelings that dwell within us, of the recurrent thoughts that condition us, and often unconsciously. It also requires that we distinguish between emotions and spiritual faculties. ‘I feel’ is not the same as ‘I am convinced;’ ‘I feel like’ is not the same as ‘I want.’ Thus we come to recognise that the view we have of ourselves and of reality is at times somewhat distorted. To realise this is a grace!”[6]
Many dwelling-places, one Spirit
From the earliest centuries, the Church lived the spiritual retreat more as a way of life than as a one-off event.[7] The Desert Fathers – men like St. Anthony the Abbot, St. Pachomius and St. Basil – embodied a life of prayer, silence and interior struggle, giving rise to cenobitic monasticism. Although some fifth-century pilgrims sought to spend a few days in retreat alongside the anchorites, the idea of a temporary retreat was not yet common; instead, Lent was like a great spiritual retreat for the whole Christian people, with fasting, silence and the practices of conversion.
With the development of Western monasticism, above all among the Benedictines and Cistercians, the custom of clergy and laity alike seeking out a few days of silence and spiritual direction in the monasteries arose. During the Middle Ages, scattered reflections and methods also appeared: William of Saint-Thierry spoke of the spiritualia exercitia, St. Bonaventure proposed themes for meditation, and Jean Gerson sought to systematise these exercises under the guidance of a spiritual director. The great leap forward came with Cisneros and his Exercises, which decisively influenced St. Ignatius of Loyola, whose Spiritual Exercises are structured in four weeks.
In the twentieth century the popes gave this custom their full backing. Pius XII recommended it while underlining the variety of ways in which it might be practised throughout the Church: “As for the various forms in which such pious exercises are usually practised, let all bear in mind that in the Church on earth, no less than in the Church in heaven, there are many mansions (cf. Jn 14:2), and that ascetical practice can be no one person’s monopoly. The Spirit is one, yet he ‘blows where he wills’ (Jn 3:8), and by different gifts and different paths he leads to holiness the souls he enlightens.”[8]
In the retreats St. Josemaría preached, the constant centre was the life of Christ. From that illuminating core, he would consider the wealth of virtues every Christian is called to make his own, according to the particular vocation each has received from the Lord, and always in the light of the joyful, supernatural reality of divine filiation, the foundation of Christian living and of the spirit of Opus Dei. He always included meditation on the Last Things – Christian eschatology – which, read in the light of the risen Lord and of the Holy Spirit, lead not to fear but to hope. The Christological, encouraging tone of his retreats, which inspired an optimistic, joyful and trusting following of Jesus, led some to say that he preached “exercises of life” rather than the traditional “exercises of death.”[9] By this they meant that he preferred to lay the emphasis not so much on the Last Things – death, judgement, heaven, hell, purgatory – as on the love of God made manifest in Christ, which gives meaning to everything else.
For this reason, in those days St. Josemaría wished to go deeper into the great underlying motivations of our life. This is what is particular to the retreat among the Work’s various means of formation, since each has its own specific character. Thus, the weekly circles keep themes alive and help us put them into practice; the weekly meditations – through prayer – allow us to draw closer to the Gospel and the liturgical year; the annual courses and get-togethers let us go deeper and reflect, with time and serenity, on new approaches to our life. Within this framework, retreats are aimed at strengthening our convictions of faith and of the spirit of Opus Dei, seeking to raise our sights so as to go deeper into what is essential, helping us to reconsider the ultimate meaning of our own life and of the Christian vocation. Although conversion during a retreat usually shows itself in concrete ways, it is above all about strengthening or purifying our underlying motivations, from which the style of our everyday decisions will later flow.
In that same spirit, so as to keep alive throughout the year the spiritual impulse received on retreat, St. Josemaría used to practise what he called, because of its frequency, a monthly recollection. This consisted in setting aside a few hours, one day a month, to calmly meditate on different aspects of the Christian life, so as to revive the desire to identify ourselves with Christ. It is a particularly fitting moment to return to the lights received on retreat and to seek, with realism and perseverance, ways of putting into practice today whatever the Holy Spirit inspired then.
God speaks in the gentle breeze
As for the attitude needed to make the most of a retreat, there survives an outline St Josemaría kept for his introductory meditation, with these ideas: “1: Silence. 2: No sandbags. 3: Make use of free time (examination, resolutions…). 4/:Active: no, passive. 5: Acquire a simple piety, recalling our childhood years. Learn to pray.”[10] As we can see, everything begins with silence, exterior as much as – above all – interior, and with the recollection needed to attain it. On another occasion he advised: “What means do I recommend to you at the start of a retreat? (…) First of all, interior recollection: not pouring our senses outward, mortifying our memory and imagination, not letting ourselves become scattered.”[11]
St. Josemaría used to warn of the risk of distraction during days of retreat by means of an evocative example: he compared the distracted soul to a house in which, through a small open window, worries and distractions creep in and throw open the door to everything that stands in the way of our dealings with God.[12] He would recall that the devil “does everything he can to draw us away from the Lord,” making use of even the most trivial things to rob us of our recollection and lessen or do away with the fruits of the retreat. For this reason he insisted on the value of silence, which he described as “a blessing from God” and “in many ways, a necessity.” If the soul knows how to recollect itself and keep silence – he would say – it is ready to hear whatever the Lord wishes to tell it. In this attitude he saw the key that allows the divine sower to find good soil in which his seed can bear abundant fruit.
We might say, then, that exterior and interior silence each call for the other. Just as we try to get away from the noise and the worries of everyday life by withdrawing to a quiet place, it is only logical that we should make a similar effort so that our senses, memory and imagination do not turn towards the very things we are seeking to leave behind.
It is essential to set aside “moments of silence, moments of prayer, times in which, quieting noise and distractions, we recollect ourselves before God in simplicity of heart.”[13] The prophet Elijah experienced the divine presence not in the hurricane, the earthquake or the fire, but in the “still small voice” (1 Kings 19:12). God speaks softly. Only through silence will we be able to catch the divine inspirations, to listen to the Holy Spirit, and so make the most of our days of retreat. That silence calls for an effective decision on our part to avoid sources of distraction – social media, emails, conversations, the news, irrelevant reading – to recollect ourselves and bring our faculties to bear on the matters we hope to take up with the Lord.
Each of us will, of course, work out this recollection according to our own circumstances. It will not always be possible, for example, to do without a phone altogether, given the responsibilities we carry: young children, caring for a sick relative, urgent work matters that necessarily depend on us… Yet even in such cases we can look for a way of cutting back on the incidental, keeping to what is truly necessary and avoiding whatever scatters the heart. It is a matter of creating an interior climate conducive to listening: setting aside times free of interruption, turning off notifications, leaving the phone out of sight when it is not needed, or letting those who might need us know in advance so that they contact us only when truly necessary. The aim is not always total disconnection, but the sincere disposition of one who wants to give God real space, without letting the urgent eclipse the important. In this way, even amid unavoidable responsibilities, exterior silence helps bring about that interior silence in which God, who speaks in the gentle breeze, can be heard.
Back to Galilee
Retreats are a privileged occasion for a deeper examination of our life. “Watch what happens in the life of the body,” St. Josemaría would remark. “A person starts to feel unwell. ‘What’s wrong?’ Well, I don’t know; I just feel strange, somehow… So they are taken to the doctor, and the doctor examines them, runs the necessary tests, looks them over carefully, and at last concludes: ‘Ah, here’s the trouble: it’s something to do with the liver, or the stomach, or your blood pressure is high…’ and prescribes the right remedy. Well, in the spiritual life, a retreat is what a medical check-up is for our physical health. We come ready to make a deep examination, to discover the cause of that lack of enthusiasm in the fight, of that listlessness we sometimes notice.”[14]
With this aim, certain examinations of conscience are prepared to help us reflect on our own particular way of following the Lord and on how we might identify ourselves more closely with Him. Unlike the examination proper to confession – centred above all on the acknowledgement of sins – here it is a matter of calmly rereading our own history and discovering what it is that truly satisfies the heart. This examination is not mere introspection, but a dialogue with the Lord; a fitting occasion, too, to go back with Him over those moments in our life when we have felt his presence in a particular way, and the gifts He has granted us. This prayerful remembering helps us rediscover that God never abandons us and sustains us with his grace, even in the most difficult situations. As with the apostles, the Lord invites us to go back to Galilee (cf. Mt 28:10), to the place of our first calling, where it all began. “To return to Galilee means above all to return to that blazing light with which God’s grace touched me at the start of the journey. From that flame I can light a fire for today and every day, and bring heat and light to my brothers and sisters. That flame ignites a humble joy, a joy which sorrow and distress cannot dismay, a good, gentle joy.”[15]
In making this deeper examination, God can enlighten us with ideas that guide our following of the Lord, with concrete resolutions for our spiritual struggle, with renewed hopes that kindle the heart. These are days in which we may perhaps have perceived certain aspects of our vocation with greater clarity. This is why St. Josemaría used to suggest treasuring the graces we receive, so that we can return to them often in prayer:
“Make the most of these lights. Have you seen what people do to make use of river water, in countries where water is scarce in summer but the rains are frequent in winter? They build places to dam up the water so as to release it later, in the dry season, and thus have electric power and irrigation for the fields.
“Well, I tell you that during retreats, abundant grace reaches the soul (…). You must remember these things now, gathering them up as though into a great reservoir, so as to release – when the moment is right – that driving force which produces light and makes it possible to water the dry fields, which helps us to work later with such satisfaction, which stops our own effort from flagging. Build up now a good store of divine grace, (…) and draw on these waters whenever you need them throughout your life.”[16]
A practical way of holding on to these lights is to write them down in some form. In this way we will be able to return to them later, in our daily prayer or during our monthly recollections. This matters, because God does not usually ask us to change everything at once, but rather to advance as along a gentle slope. Patience and perseverance are essential if a retreat is to bear all the fruit it has to offer over time. The opposite attitude – wanting to transform everything at once – can lead, when we find we are not able to, to discouragement, frustration, or even abandoning our resolutions prematurely, judging them impossible.
Even so, it is worth bearing in mind that, beyond whatever concrete goals we may set during these days, the chief value of a retreat lies in what we have lived through during it. The time spent with the Lord, keeping Him company before the Tabernacle, grateful prayer for the gifts we have received, sincere contrition at the recognition of our faults and sins, acts of faith, hope and charity we have renewed, and loving words addressed to his Mother, are already, in themselves, a treasure. All of this remains, even if some of our resolutions should later weaken or need to be reshaped. This is, in a sense, the most valuable thing a retreat gives us: it moves us to return to ordinary life with the desire to seek that same intimacy with God in the midst of our everyday activities.
* * *
After the Lord’s Ascension, we find the apostles once again in the upper room. Luke tells us: “All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers” (Acts 1:14). Mary is present at the young Church’s first retreat. In the same way, she is always present at our own days of retreat. Her motherly presence sustains us so that, as then, we may persevere in prayer and make ourselves ready for the mission the Lord entrusts to us.
[1] Intimate Notes, no. 28.
[2] St. Augustine, Confessions, 9, 1.
[3] St. Josemaría, Notes from a meditation, 25 February 1963, in While He Spoke to Us Along the Way, no. 214.
[4] Some authors and traditions hold that Azazel is a fallen angel.
[5] J. Ratzinger, The God of Jesus Christ, Sígueme, Salamanca 1979, pg. 21.
[6] Francis, General Audience, 5 October 2022.
[7] For more on this, see J. A. García-Prieto Segura, Diccionario teológico de san Josemaría, entry “Retiro espiritual.”
[8] Pius XII, Mediator Dei, no. 223.
[9] See A. Vázquez de Prada, The Founder of Opus Dei, vol. II, pg. 675.
[10] St. Josemaría, Notes from a meditation, quoted in P. Rodríguez, Camino. Edición crítico-histórica, Rialp, Madrid 2004, pg. 438.
[11] While He Spoke to Us Along the Way, no. 199.
[12] Ibid, no. 200.
[13] Leo XIV, Homily, 20 July 2025.
[14] While He Spoke to Us Along the Way, no. 104.
[15] Francis, Homily, 19 April 2014.
[16] While He Spoke to Us Along the Way, no. 110.