Verbum Dei Musuan Lenten Silent Retreat (March 22-24, 2019)

Verbum Dei Musuan had its first ever silent retreat from 6pm on Friday March 22 to lunchtime on Sunday March 24. It was attended by around 20 participants, mostly youth. They did very well with the silence and were very participative. Many were coming from busy schedules and were hungry and thirsty for the Word of God. The retreat was run by an ecclesial team – Pearl (Rebusit) from the misioneras and James (McTavish) from the misioneros.

​The retreat focused on prayer with the Trinity. The participants were reminded of the centrality of the Word in our prayer because we listen to God when we pray with the Sacred Scripture (see Dei verbum, no. 25). Following the advice of Jesus, we entered into our inner room, closed the door and prayed to our Father who sees in secret (Matthew 6:6). The mid-part of the retreat centered our prayer in a dialogue with our loving Father who has loved us with an everlasting love (Jeremiah 31:3). Darwin, one of the participants shared that what helped him most was to experience the mercy of God. Jaime Bonet, the Verbum Dei founder compared the mercy of God to a blood transfusion - “In front of more sin, there is more love of God. The more the mercy of God is poured out over the misery of the sinner who has a very severe hemorrhage! God gives you more blood, more life.”

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​A time of prayer was also had with Mother Mary in the rosary followed by prayer in front of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. The final part of the retreat focused on prayer with the holy Spirit. “In the same way, the Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit itself intercedes with inexpressible groanings” (Romans 8:26). 

For most of the participants it was their first experience of a silent retreat and they discovered God wanted so much to speak to them.
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We continue to pray for the perseverance of Verbum Dei in Musuan!

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With thanks to Pearl, James and the WordNews team