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News & Updates | January 2024

Dear Friends,

In the days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, I made a retreat at Eastern Point Retreat House by the ocean in Gloucester, Massachusetts. One of the retreat directors invited us to make an Examen over 2023 as it came to a close and to look ahead to 2024. 


According to The Ignatian Adventure by Kevin O'Brien, SJ, the prayer stages of the Daily Examen are (pp 75-77):


  1. Pray for God's Help
  2. Give Thanks for the Gifts of This Day
  3. Pray over the Significant Feelings that Surface as You Replay the Day
  4. Rejoice and Seek Forgiveness
  5. Look to Tomorrow


In this case, instead of reflecting over a day, we looked over our lives as lived in 2023.

 

I felt immense gratitude as I considered the blessings of this last year: My continuing and deepening relationship with my spouse as we approach our anniversary, the time we’ve enjoyed with family (especially family members we haven’t seen since before the pandemic), starting the PhD in Formative Education at Boston College, and my ministry as a spiritual director. 


While frequently not aware of it in the moment, I can see the activity of God’s hand in my life as I look in "the rearview mirror" with the Examen. Reflecting like this makes me reconsider the times when I am anxious about "where things are going" or how "this or that" will turn out. Pieces of the prayer below by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ, became present to me in my prayer. I copied it in full into my journal at the close of the retreat.  


In looking ahead to 2024, I pray for the grace to trust more fully in the slow work of God, moment to moment. As surely as the surf that rolls through the day and night and as the tide that rises and falls by the pull of the moon, God has my care (all our care) well in hand.

 

Happy New Year.

Holly Hoffmann, spiritual director for the Retreat In Everyday Life  

Prayer

Patient Trust 


Above all, trust in the slow work of God.

We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.

We should like to skip the intermediate stages.

We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.


And yet it is the law of all progress

that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—

and that it may take a very long time.


And so I think it is with you;

your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,

let them shape themselves, without undue haste.

Don’t try to force them on,

as though you could be today what time

(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)

will make of you tomorrow.


Only God could say what this new spirit

gradually forming within you will be.

Give Our Lord the benefit of believing

that his hand is leading you,

and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself

in suspense and incomplete.

–Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ 

 

Resources

 
 

Upcoming Events

 

Embraced by Love with Sr. Ann Boyle, RSR

Thursdays in February 2024: Feb. 8, 15, 22 and 29

Arrive at 9:30 AM; Begins promptly at 9:45 AM and runs until 11:45 AM.

IN-PERSON, Our Lady of Hope Parish Hall, 492 Ocean Ave., Portland

Suggested Contribution: $100


We are created from LOVE (God), of LOVE (God’s Love) for LOVE (to love). We are created to be in a Love relationship with God, one another and creation. During this retreat, we will reflect on God’s Love, which is unconditional, always present, and ever more than we can imagine. Using scripture, prayer, and song, retreat director, Sr. Ann Boyle, will lead you through 4 sessions over 4 weeks. Take some time to consider God’s love for you, for the world and everyone in it.


Click here to learn more or register.

Learn more and register for Embraced by Love.
 

The Anointing Woman: A Morning of Reflection with Merle Marie Troeger

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

Arrive at 9:30 AM; Begins promptly at 9:45 AM and runs until 12:30 PM

IN-PERSON, Our Lady of Hope Parish Hall, 492 Ocean Ave., Portland

Suggested Contribution: $10


Every Gospel contains a report of the woman who breaks into a dinner party to anoint Jesus with expensive perfumed oil, an act of astonishing intimacy and generosity. Who is this woman and what can she teach us? Come, spend a quiet morning learning from her fidelity, courage, intimacy, and extravagance.


Click here to learn more or register.

Learn more and register for The Anointing Woman.
 

Friends & Faith

Wednesday, January 24, 2024

7:00 PM (arrive at 6:30 PM for socializing)

IN-PERSON, Our Lady of Hope Parish Hall, 492 Ocean Ave., Portland


All are welcome to a new monthly group: Friends & Faith. Meet new friends and greet familiar faces who want to get to know each other and share faith in an informal setting. No experience necessary!


Invite a friend! Please let us know you are coming so we know how many we’ll be welcoming.

RSVP for Friends and Faith
 

Your Story & God's Story

Orientation: Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2024

Meeting Dates: Tuesdays, Feb 20, 27, March 5, 12, 18 and 26

VIA ZOOM, 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM

Suggested Contribution: $50


This 6-week Prayer Experience, based on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, invites you to become more aware of God in your family, workplace, community, and yourself... Those people and places we encounter everyday.


Participants are invited to pray daily with a suggested scripture passage, briefly journal about their prayer, and meet weekly (via Zoom) to process their experience and share with others in a small group setting. All are welcome!


Jennifer Hansen will be your retreat leader.


Click here to learn more or register.

Learn more and register for Your Story and God's Story
 

In Loving Memory and with Grateful Thanks...

Jane Barry Hartwell, 67, of Portland, peacefully entered into the embrace of her Lord on December 7 attended by loving friends and family member and after a protracted struggle with pancreatic cancer.

 

Jane was an empathic, optimistic, and wise woman of deep faith. She trusted in God and in mid-career left a successful law practice to become the Youth Missioner of the Episcopal Diocese of Maine. Over 20 years as youth missioner, Jane mentored thousands of teens.

 

Jane loved the peaceful beauty of nature: looking out at the backyard garden tended by her beloved husband, Davis; walking along Scarborough beach and the shoreline of the Eastern Point Retreat House in Gloucester, Mass.; and swimming in Lake Muskoka in Ontario.

 

In her retirement, Jane trained as a spiritual director and was an integral member of the Ignatian Spirituality Partnership of Maine where she used her gifts and passion to walk with others as they developed their personal relationship with God. She also served as the lay leader of her church, Trinity Episcopal Church in Portland.

 

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This message was sent by the Jesuits East Office of Ignatian Spirituality (OIS) on behalf of the Ignatian Spirituality Partnership of Maine. OIS is pleased to provide communications support to Ignatian Maine.