Mothers’ Retreat
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Leaders:
- Jeanine Cavanagh
- Mary Beth Jordan
- Debbie Scott
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Photo Albums
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Mothers' Retreat
5 Photos
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Annual Mothers' Retreat
Each year a team of Parish Moms meet once a month to pray together with the goal of creating, planning and bringing to fruition an annual Mothers’ Retreat. The retreat typically takes place toward the end of February. It is geared towards providing Mothers’ with a chance to retreat from the chaos of their day to day lives and be “still” with the Lord. It is a wonderful occasion to come together with other moms to share common experiences, wisdom and our spirituality. We are afforded the opportunity to pray together, listen to mothers give talks on themes related to motherhood, reflect, journal, meet in small groups, and experience some quiet time. A penitential service is always included in the retreat and priests are available to celebrate the sacrament of reconciliation. The retreat closes with a beautiful celebration of the Liturgy. This retreat has been one of the greatest gifts moms have given themselves throughout the years as it lifts us in our journey to know the Lord in a deeper way through the most awesome calling our ministry of motherhood. It is a profound experience for both Moms of young children as well as for Moms of older children. Approximately one hundred Moms participate in the retreat each year.
Mothers' Retreats from Previous Years:- 2020 A Mother's Sorrow is Mary's Sorrow - Hope and Strength in Time of Suffering
- 2019 The Spiritual Friendship of Mothers-Encountering God in Our Shared Vocation
- 2018 Living Motherhood in the Spirit Here and Now
- 2017 Everday Sacraments
- 2016 A Mother’s Recipe for Joy
- 2015 A Mother’s Path with Purpose
- 2014 The Cup of Motherhood
- 2013 The Gifts of Motherhood
- 2012: The Quest for God Through Motherhood
- 2011: The Garden of the Mother’s Soul
- 2010: Mothers of the Beatitudes
- 2009: The Liturgy of Motherhood
- 2008: Sacred Dwelling
- 2007: Amazing Grace In A Mothers’ Life
- 2006: Seasons of a Family’s Life
- 2005: God’s Whisper in a Mother’s Chaos
- 2004: Traveling Light for Mothers
- 2003: Symphony of Motherhood
Our Virtual Mothers' Retreat 2021
Dearest Marvelous Mammas,
Words from God that came to me in prayer this morning… “When you don’t like the way things look in your world, close your eyes and gaze at who I am”. These are indeed powerful and comforting words spoke from a Father, Son and Holy Spirit who IS love… and love for us! I find such joy and security in these words. Be assured that when I close my eyes to gaze at who God is, for certain I see you! I can place myself in the sacred space of our Saint Francis Retreat House and gaze at you and my heart wells with love and inspiration. I see you… I am seeing you and speaking YOUR name in my heart… because this is one of the most glorious ways that I experience God’s love. I will be finding rest in you this weekend, despite our physical separation, we are always closer than we think in love and prayers.
Despite the pandemic…Easter came, and we proclaimed Alleluia! Christmas came and we sang Joy to the World! Birthdays were celebrated! We rejoiced in Graduations and for our many milestones we declared “This is the day the Lord has made”. We don’t miss the mark, because we are called to make it… and you do so in such a glorious way, because you are Mothers and you live in the love of God. You have been a majestic gift to each of us, throughout the years and at every Mothers’ Retreat. For this reason, we could not let this weekend pass us by without acknowledging the sacred celebration of our cherished vocation and YOU.
Out of our deep and tremendous love for you, we have assembled a mini retreat/prayer video for us to pray through together. While 100 plus One of us could not be physically present today in our wholly, holy Saint Francis Retreat House, we can come together in prayer. I believe in many ways that the pandemic has brough us together. We could be at mass ‘virtually’ with people we love throughout the world. While our annual retreat always limits us to accepting 100 Momma retreatants… our virtual video will bring perhaps quadruple the number of mothers together in prayer. All are invited to participate… perhaps your family members may desire to pray with us, if for no other reason, to get a miniscule glimpse of “what the fuss is all about”. Fussing over you has been our joy these many years, and we pray that you feel our love of God encompass you throughout this video. So, pour a cup of coffee or tea and sit back with your prayer shawl wrapped around you and light one of your many retreat candles. If you participate in portions, perhaps at some point pour a glass of wine. Whatever settles your spirit to connect with the Spirit is our aspiration. It is powerful to ponder that each time we pray a Hail May or an Our Father, we are praying at the same time with hundreds or thousands of people around the earth simultaneously. This is powerful proposition… to reflect, pray, ponder, cry and rejoice together through this prayer video. We pray that our joy be your joy as we pray together…
For you viewing convenience, we impart that the video contains the following:- A brief introduction
- Slideshow of past retreats to the music of our Opening Prayer
- Dub of the Day
- Prayer Service with Team
- Other Team Greetings (those attending our meetings via zoom)
- Special guest videos: precious Priests who we have come to know and love
- Prominent Pastor Message ~ Monsignor Joe Celano
Be assured and comforted by the scripture that re-marks of this truth…that this time of pandemic was not for naught. While I ponder the most difficult times in my life, I would have rather not endured them, however, looking back and forward I know how they have changed me and helped me to grow in love of God. “As the rain and snow come down from the heavens and do not return without watering the earth and making it yield...so the word does not return to me empty, without carrying out my will and succeeding in what it was sent to do” (Isaiah 55:10–11). The wet rain and the icy snow can ruin an event, and even cause damage to the earth… simultaneously it waters the earth and life flourishes. It is as simple as taking the bad with the good. The challenge is seeing the good despite the bad. Closing my eyes to set my gaze on God… I see you… I pray for you… and it is all good!
Looking forward to seeing many of you on May 8th! We will be sending out an email soon with information and registration.
With love and great gratitude,
Jeanine
Jeanine Cavanagh
Director, Social Ministry
Immaculate Conception Church
35 Mountain Avenue
Somerville, NJ 08876
(908) 725-1112 x1126
Opening Song: Slideshow
Opening Prayer
Leader: As we gather to pray in this sacred space and for many in the sacred space of our homes, our domestic church, we reflect on the difficulties that we have endured and the challenges that lie ahead. We realize and take to heart that one of our greatest challenges is change, our ever-changing days and the call to relinquish what we believe to be our control… to trust God and “let go”. Let us reflect on the succinct words of Father Richard Rohr as he expresses, “The word change normally refers to new beginnings. But transformation, the mystery we are examining, more often happens not when something new begins, but when something old falls apart. The pain of something old falling apart—chaos—invites the soul to listen at a deeper level. It invites, and sometimes forces, the soul to go to a new place because the old place is falling apart. Most of us would never go to new places in any other way. The mystics use many words to describe this chaos: fire, dark night, death, emptiness, abandonment, trial, the Evil One. Whatever it is, it does not feel good and it does not feel like God. We will do anything to keep the old thing from falling apart. This is when we need patience and guidance, and the freedom to let go instead of tightening our controls and certitudes. Perhaps Jesus is describing just this phenomenon when he says, “It is a narrow gate and a hard road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matthew 7:13–14). Not accidentally, he mentions this narrow road right after teaching the Golden Rule. He knows how much letting go it takes to “treat others as you would like them to treat you” (7:12). So, a change can force a transformation. Spiritual transformation always includes a usually disconcerting reorientation. It can either help people to find a new meaning or it can force people to close down and slowly turn bitter. The difference is determined precisely by the quality of our inner life, our spirituality.” May this reflection resonate with in us and let us pray…
ALL: Dear Lord, I so much want to be in control. I want to be the master of my own destiny. Still, I know that you are saying: “Let me take you by the hand and lead you. Accept my love and trust that where I will bring you, the deepest desires of your heart will be fulfilled.” Heavenly Father open my hands to receive your gift of love. Amen.
Goals? Dreams? Hopes for 2021? Stuck? How to Get Unstuck
~Anne Voskamp
So, I want to give you this story, and maybe it should rightly start like the best one does: “In the beginning.” Because it was right in the very beginning of a brand spanking new year that my farming man asked me to go for a ride down to the river. To make tracks through the fields of snow, to wind down through the woods hushed under its blanket of white and make our way to where the river winds slow under the willows, laced in this skirt of ice.
But just south of this grove of gnarled apple trees, huddled close in the January winds, the field wasn’t frozen a solid safe, but was actually this soggy bog under an unsuspecting cloak of snow. Which meant that?... My farming man and I went down like a stone in a winter quicksand. Yeah: mud spinning up, and ATV sinking down in a muck sea and there we were: In the beginning of a new year, with all its new goals and plans and resolutions, already kinda mired down and — stuck.
You know that of which I speak? But you’ve got to know that the Farmer had a cable winch at the ready, at the front of that all-terrain vehicle. So, he slogged up to one of those gnarled apple trees, slung the cable around and he engaged that electric winch, and that all-terrain vehicle churned and dug and spun and the Farmer rocked that ATV and gunned it and the winch kept hauling in the cable, which was what kept hauling that ATV, inch by muddy, sloppy, mucky inch, out of the mire till it finally just lurched free.
And then, not to be undone, now that he had gotten unstuck, my farming man turned and grinned and asked me to get back on our all-terrain vehicle and ride on down the riverbank with him. Past where the cattle tracked down to the water’s edge to drink, down past the low river crossing, down through the cedars heavy with snow. And when he revved the ATVs engine to run us through a snowy tangle of neck high grasses just where the river curved north, I’d shook my head and, over the revving of the engine, I’d leaned close to his ear, just to pull his leg, and said: "You just think you can go anywhere now, do anything, just because you’ve got a winch on the front of this thing, don’t you?”
But he was already shaking his head, pointing across the barren clearing filled with this knee-high snow. "Absolutely not. Because look around you: You can only get unstuck if you’re close to a tree." And he cut the engine, and everything stilled, and I could hear the river running and the truth of things running through everything.
+There is no getting out of any mire without an anchor.
+There is no hauling out of muddy messes without Tree of Christ.
+There is no way to traverse all of life’s terrain without the Cross Tree of Calvary.
In the beginning of a new year, when our goals, our plans, may not be going as we expected, and when the terrain in a pandemic may be different than what we hoped, we can become more disoriented than what we’ve ever known. When what did work, now doesn’t work, when what we envisioned, isn’t what now we’re living, we get stuck.
When we are deeply disoriented, deeply disillusioned, deeply stuck, our immediate default is to return to our old ways of doing things, reorient to our worn-out ways — the way that got us stuck in the first place.
The way that got you stuck — can’t be the way that will get you unstuck. The way you came here — is not the way out of here. Who we will need to be for the unknown future, is different than who we were in the known past. The terrain under all of our feet has forever changed, because of a global pandemic, that has caused economic tidal waves, that has shaped societal shifts & and if we honestly look at the geography of reality, the truth is: This ain’t Kansas anymore, and we ain’t ever going back to that Kansas, because Kansas as we knew it doesn’t exist anymore.
We get to grieve. We get to, and we need to, pause and acknowledge and lament and feel and deeply grieve. After the season we've all had, it's worth noting that there is only one emotion that becomes a title of a book in all the Bible: Lamentations. Lamentation is the emotion that brings motion to our pain, moves the stress of the grief through our own souls and moves us toward God.
We lament the losses of the last year, and we grieve the chaos that a pandemic has wrought and pause to acknowledge that our goals for this year may be off to a stumbling start, but we are absolutely not getting stuck -- because all of our emotions can be our very soul in motion, moving us toward God. When you are stuck, the way free is proximity to the God-Man who hung on the Tree because if you don’t have something, Someone, to hold on to you, you get mired down and forget your true identity.
When you feel like you're failing, it's the Tree of Jesus that says you are safe and found.
When you feel like you're behind, it's the Tree of Jesus that says you are held forever in His hand. When things look impossible, it's the Tree of Jesus that says nothing is impossible and hope can rise. And in the deep snow quiet, I can hear the river rippling on with this very real hope, no matter what the messiness or terrain: Keep calm & just keep coming back to Jesus.
When you are personally trying to change, when the fabric of a country is trying to change, when the whole world is dealing with unparalleled change, when we are all headed off the only maps we’ve ever known, what is key: In uncharted territory, the one thing you’ve got to chart out is how to daily maintain proximity to Jesus’ Tree.
The primary way to navigate unknown territory is to commit to the knowness of relationships, to choose to intimately know, and to be known. Unless we make time to know, and to be known, in our relationship with God, and with our relationship with each other, there’s no way across unknown terrain. Because, whatever our terrain right now: Trust is traction. Trusting Jesus with our messes, trusting each other with our vulnerabilities — and trusting Jesus to tell us who we are, and show us the Way to who we are all called to be.
Trust fuels all travel. And where there isn’t the truth of Jesus — to anchor who we really are, to determine our truest identity, to root you in realest reality — there is no trust, and thus, there’s no way through. There is no way through without truth — so you’ve got to stay close to Jesus who alone is the Truth, the Way, the Life.
There is only one way ever to get unstuck and that is to stick close to the One who hung on the Tree at Calvary. If we hold on to Jesus and each other, there is always a way through. And in the beginning of a new year, after we got unstuck, after we meandered down by the water, after we heard the river singing hope through the cold, the Farmer and I followed the road through the snow like a story we trusted held good things up ahead. And I held on to my farming man all the sure way home under trees.
Intercessions from Retreatants ~Leader: Let us take a moment to close our eyes and bring our hearts and memories to the sacred space of our Saint Francis Retreat House which has become near and dear to our hearts through the years. Imagine yourself in this holy of holy space where you most closely encounter Christ…Your retreat with the Lord… imaging the beautiful chapel, setting your gaze on Jesus in the Monstrance or Tabernacle…Reaching out to Jesus and touching the humeral – the “cloak of Jesus” … or entering into the powerful mosaic of Saint Francis…the glorious stained glass with story after story… or perhaps one of the statues of our Lady where you connect to our Mother of all Mothers, our Mother of Sorrows and Joy…Perhaps spending time in the quiet of your room, resting with the Lord, or with a chosen roommate who radiates the love of God… perhaps you will imagine yourself praying the Rosary led with love and images… or the Stations of the Cross in the brisk and beautiful outdoors… and the beautiful statue of the Holy Family outside can only warm your heart with love as they embrace – Jesus, Mary and yes, Joseph, dear Joseph…The magnificent canopy where the Pieta is displayed clearly showing us that Mary knows and understands… the many nooks of house where our small groups emanate warmth, openness, and love of God… the Upper Room, the Library, even the rest rooms adorned with flowers, messages, and amenities… the joy of sharing meal and not having to wash the dishes… a social where camaraderie and laughter are on the rise and a toasts spoken of our stellar vocation… even waiting on line is a joy when standing with another Mom who stands with you in faith… and there is the main room, which displays our love in countless way, gifts, displays, images… and family pictures which tell tale of our where we are from and why we are here… a puzzle put together in togetherness… the peace of coloring mandalas… countless images… a decorated elevator with thematic messages…prayer services… prayer exercises… tangible prayer… and the peace and liberation of reconciliation… Christ Jesus who reveals himself thought our wholly holly priest’s and this holy Sacrament…remembering our mothers who have given to us in abundance in our Mothers Book of Remembrance… prayers spoken in our hearts and aloud in a million different ways … in a million different places…closing it all out with the source and summit of our faith… the Holy Eucharist in which we come together with our closing Liturgy… in which we truly celebrate and give “Thanksgiving”. Let us dwell in this place and BE together. In honor of our Franciscan retreat home, I share with you that the greeting that characterized Francis’s encounters, “May God give you peace” is one we can pray presently and together. Let us pray, “May God give you peace” in response to your heartfelt petitions send our way via email…
Response: May God give you peace
Team takes turns reading prayer petition
Closing Prayer
Leader:
In closing, let us reflect on the words of Sue Monk Kidd who speaks of “letting go”, this relinquishing control to the “unknowing”. “What has happened to our ability to dwell in unknowing, to live inside a question and coexist with the tensions of uncertainty? Where is our willingness to incubate pain and let it birth something new? What has happened to patient unfolding, to endurance? These things are what form the ground of waiting. And if you look carefully, you’ll see that they’re also the seedbed of creativity and growth—what allows us to do the daring and to break through to newness.”
Trust in the slow work of God. If we try to control our life, we will never be at peace. Wait with openness and unclenched fists. Receive fully what God has for you without grasping.
ALL: Dear God, your incarnate life on earth is a continual openness to the will of the Father. Teach me to receive and be open, rather than clenching tightly to what I want. May I learn surrender from you, knowing that deep surrender brings deeper freedom. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
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