Silent Retreat for Men and Women, Nov 17-20th, at the Moye Center

Sponsored by the Diocesan Retreat Society, Diocese of West Texas

The Moye Center, Castroville

The Silent Retreat is the oldest non-parochial ministry in the Diocese and the only Diocesan retreat where silence is the primary spiritual practice. The Silent Retreat community comes together for the Daily Offices of Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer and Compline. Holy Eucharist is celebrated each day in the convent Chapel.

Communal silence is nourished by sharing the holy space of this former motherhouse of the Sisters of Divine Providence. Silence begins on the first evening after Compline and ends with the Peace at Sunday’s Holy Eucharist. Silence is also practiced during all meals in the community dining room and throughout the Moye Retreat Center buildings and adjacent grounds.

The Retreat Conductor offers five meditations on a theme not as discussion forums, but rather as support for individual reflection. Abundant free time fosters solitary meditation, deep rest and renewal throughout the sixty-hour silence. The Retreat Society also has a large library of books available for retreatants to borrow during the retreat. Although Daily Offices, Eucharists, meditations and meals are scheduled at particular hours, the individual retreatant is free to discern how to spend his/her time in the silence that begins after Thursday Compline.

Each year’s Retreat Booklet includes the following guidance on the practice of silence written by the late Colette M. Kohler, who directed the Silent Retreat for over 40 years:

Silence is not merely the absence of words. If you write a note, you break your silence. Unless you are long practiced in the discipline, to quietly help in the kitchen will probably break your silence. Reading certain books can break your silence…. because it is God before whom you are silent. If your mind is scurrying after business at hand, it is not silent before God.

Only if your own voice inside you is silent can you hear God. He never forces Himself and if, while in retreat, we do not love God enough to put down our daily interests, necessities (good though they may be) in order to give Him ourselves —without reserve or other priorities – He will not speak loudly enough for us to hear.

And every time we fail to hear, we die a little.

The Rev. Mary Earle once offered the following insight in an interview:

Our lives are harried, and we have no sense of being able to rest in the divine silence, the Source from which we come and to which we will return…. Simply sitting in silence… is like getting a drink when you are really thirsty, so thirsty you had forgotten what water tasted like.

2016 THEME: “I Am Becoming: Embracing Christian Ethics”

Dates: November 17-20 (Thursday pm--Sunday am)