Quality Time with God

Quality Time with God

By Marichelle Ligon, with Emy Abaya

The long weekend of June 9 to June 12 was well-spent by 18 participants who attended the retreat “I eagerly desire to be with you” in the Verbum Dei Retreat house in Tagaytay. Despite the warnings of the active Taal Volcano, there was no stopping the eagerness of 18 participants to attend this special retreat facilitated by our very own Fr Filipe Vaz Pardal with the support of misionero in formation, Bro. Gelo Balsita. Marichelle Ligon, who was instrumental in organizing this disciples’ retreat tells us the fruit of her experience.

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With many challenges going on in my life, I really welcomed this retreat. Still, with Alert level 1 up because of Taal Volcano’s activity, fear kind of crept in. But I told myself, I have been waiting for this retreat and looking forward to this time alone with my God. So I said, I will just go and leave everything up to Him.

To my surprise, when we arrived in the place, the weather was so nice and pleasant When I got to our room, I felt at peace right away. I could hear the birds chirping. It was a perfect atmosphere for me. It would rain from time to time but we didn’t mind because the rain helped us pray silently.

Fr. Filipe led us to prayer and gave us many readings to pray with. I started with this:

“We should try to put our minds and hearts on God as a Father and as a friend, a God who loves us and is always waiting for us to share a silent moment with Him. As the retreat theme says “I have eagerly desired to be with you (Lk 22:15).”

​That set my silent retreat!

I have learned again and again about God’s love and mercy for us, but this time in a deeper way. How he loves us is something so hard to grasp or to contain! It is such an outpouring of love. The prayer time and the music were a perfect combination. It was a different experience!
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I had questions in my head before we started the retreat, and without me really thinking about them, those questions were being answered …through the WORD of God!

God was really therewith me!!! I cannot explain the feeling but WOW!! He is really there and heard everything that I had in my mind and what I had to say. My take after this was: To pray is not to talk much, but to learn to listen and to surrender our lives into God’s loving hands.

Every moment of the retreat was like magic. A lot of my personal issues re-surfaced on their own, and got answered on their own. I realized that GIVING TIME ALONE with God is when we see the miracles in our personal life, and when we grow deeper in our faith and our love for him, and this humbles us. Like they say, more of Him and less of us. I was so happy that I had much needed quality time to be alone with Him.

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​This article is part of the 4th issue of the Verbum Dei newsletter in Quezon City, Philippines (page 11).
​You can read the whole newsletter at this link. 
​Verbum Dei QC Word News - Issue 5