From the evening of Sunday, August 17, to the afternoon of Friday, August 22, the religious in the final stage of initial formation of the three Recollect Provinces with a presence in Spain celebrated their annual spiritual exercises under the direction of the Augustinian Recollect Felipe Sada (Ablitas, Navarra, Spain, 1946).
Spiritual exercises are a mandatory religious practice for all Augustinian Recollect friars at least once a year. They involve taking appropriate time and space to pause, enter the “desert” of the heart, and renew oneself spiritually through an evaluation of one’s personal situation and resolutions for growth.
The director of the retreat invited everyone to experience silence not as an escape, but as an opening. Thus, stripping away external noise and bustle leaves room to listen to God within the depths of one’s being.
Each day included spiritual talks lasting between half an hour and an hour, along with a written guide to direct personal meditations. To enrich the experience, communal prayer meetings were held each evening with Marian meditations, the rosary, and Eucharistic adoration.
The basic purpose of silence was to provide an opportunity for discernment, seeking to understand God’s will in each person’s life. It also encouraged the promotion of values such as humility, selflessness, and abandonment into God’s hands, while always keeping an eye on returning to daily tasks.
“Being the same, but not in the same way” was the proposal; that is, that the experience of the spiritual exercises would entail a new active commitment to living out personal and communal commitment to the Augustinian Recollect vocation they have chosen.
