Through the week there has been a missionary priest, Fr. Carlo visiting the parish. He delivered a sermon at the weekend mass and has been conducting an evening session each day this week as part of a retreat. It is a program of bible reflection, prayer and health, and advertised in the church bulletin as a “retreat on eucharist & the word of God for healing life’s hurts”.
At the weekend mass Fr. Carlo had spoken about modern life and all the strains and stresses that go along with that, causing issues with health – depression and loss of mental energy. I thought what he had to say was very interesting so I went along to the Monday night session.
There was a good turn out – maybe 40 or 50 people, mostly elderly or retirement age, I seemed to be the youngest one there. There was music, Fr. Conway was hovering in the background. I took my seat about halfway down the church, not far from where Dad and I normally sit.
Fr. Carlo shared his reflections on various parts of the bible, the book of Ecclesiastics (Ecclesias?) in particular seemed interesting, kind of a philosophical bent – you can have all the riches on earth but without faith they mean nothing. He pulled out various tracts which talked about prayer as a quiet, meditative experience. He taught us meditative techniques – thoughts and deep breathing. Breathe in the spirit, breathe out anxiety, depression, fear, anger, jealousy. We spent about a third of the evening in meditation and came out more relaxed than I’ve felt in ages.
I found this web page about Catholic meditation and it explains the rationale behind the meditative techniques from Fr. Carlo’s retreat http://rickmk.com/rmk/Cath/meditation.html.