Opening to Compassion:
An Ignatian Weekend Silent Retreat Online
March 15, 2024 @ 4:30 pm – March 17, 2024 @ 12:00 pm PT
Image by Pikrepo, Creative Commons
Compassionate God,
your generous presence
is always attuned
to hurting ones.
Your listening ear
is bent toward
the cries of the wounded
Your heart of love
fills with tears
for the suffering.Joyce Rupp
Join spiritual directors Jan Evans and Esther Hizsa for a silent, guided prayer retreat opening to the desire to encounter God’s compassion personally using Ignatian prayer practices such as Lectio Divina, Imaginative Prayer and Prayer of Examen.
March 15-17, 2024 (Online)
TIME: Friday, 4:30 pm PT (7:30 pm ET) to Sunday, noon PT (3 pm ET)
COST: $100. Register early. Spaces are limited. Register here.
FORMAT:
- Silence is observed after the first session on Friday until the closing sharing on Sunday.
- Four group input sessions exploring various dimensions of this theme.
- Four or five 45-60 minute periods for assigned personal prayer spaced throughout the retreat
- Three 15-minute one-on-one spiritual direction sessions with Jan, Esther or another spiritual director.
Participants are encouraged to retreat in a physical space conducive to maintaining silence while they vacation with the Lord. More details will be sent following registration.
FACILITATORS
Jan Evans has accompanied many persons through the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises in Daily Life (Annotation 19) over the past 12 years. She received her Ignatian training through workshops offered by Loyola House – Ignatian Spirituality Centre in Guelph and a supervised practicum with a Loyola House spiritual director. She currently offers spiritual direction from her home in London, Ontario and teaches in the Ontario Jubilee Spiritual Direction Training Program.
Esther Hizsa has completed and accompanied people praying the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises Retreat in Daily Life (Annotation 19) with JSAV (Jesuit Apostolate Spirituality of Vancouver). She has an M Div from Regent College, co-facilitates Living from the Heart and is on the Leadership Team of SoulStream. She posts weekly on her blog An Everyday Pilgrim and is the author of Stories of an Everyday Pilgrim, Seed Cracked Open, and In the Heart of the Beloved. Esther attends St. Stephen the Martyr Church in Burnaby.
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SoulStream presents a course in
Living from the Heart offers a learning community that invites participants to deepen their experience of intimacy with Jesus. Biblically, the heart is the very core of life out of which intellect, emotions, and intentions flow. Opening to God’s heart of love with our whole heart, especially in our most broken places, brings a healing integration within and provides the courage to offer our lives in loving compassion to the world around us.
Course Content
The Way of the Heart: opens us to encounter God personally, integrates body, soul, mind, and spirit, and helps us live out of who we truly are in Christ.
Spiritual Awareness and Receptivity: We explore ways to become more open to respond to God’s presence in all of life and identify what inhibits our receptivity.
Spiritual Transformation: We gain a deep sensitivity to the dimensions of spiritual transformation into Jesus’ image, coming to freedom in our deepest truth in God, dealing with the masks we hide behind, and cultivating spiritual practices that support our life in God.
Contemplative Prayer and Discernment: We come to understand that prayer is responsiveness to the living and active presence of the Holy Spirit, learn ancient contemplative practices, and discover how prayer is integrated into all of life and deepens our ability to discern God’s will.
Contemplative Living: As Jesus’s friends, we are called to love our neighbour, care for the earth, and seek justice. With joy, we discover that our response to the world becomes a natural outflow of contemplative prayer and practice.
Learning and Teaching Approaches
A variety of collaborative learning and teaching approaches are used including mini-presentations; short, structured written personal reflections on assigned reading; demonstrations; small group discussion and activities. Participants will be invited to engage their imaginations with the use of textures, colours, music, poetry, prayers—and plain old fun! Between teaching times, we encourage mutual support among participants through community gatherings. The small team of facilitators provides feedback on reflection papers and offers what they teach honestly and vulnerably, sharing experiences from their own lives.
Requirements for Participants
- Full participation in the teaching days or intensives
- Full participation in monthly small group sessions
- Reading and reflective book response
- Receiving regular spiritual direction
For testimonies of past participants, course locations and other details go here.
An Everyday Pilgrim 
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