From my experience of praying the Examen regularly twice a day, I had an insight. A 2-day Ignatian retreat was needed for some years to help people get their feet wet with God and prayer, and at Georgetown, this is a great need. I wanted to leave people with something they could do at home. It would be my hope to offer the program twice a year locally for Georgetown students, faculty and staff and four times a year for alumni clubs around the country. Another reason I was eager to add this new 2-day Ignatian retreat is that I have a long range goal of developing a full compliment of retreat experiences.
Academic departments cover everything from general survey to graduate level courses.
Just think of the dynamism we could create in Catholic higher education if we really took faith development seriously. People here, perhaps everywhere, seem to lock themselves into a job track and commitments without doing any real reflection on how God might be calling them to live in peace and freedom. A good retreat can help God break into those poorly processed but tightly knit plans we all make. Stepping back in prayer and allowing God s grace to work on one s heart can open a person to look at why they desire what they desire and how they re making choices based on those desires. A retreat, especially an Ignatian-based program, can also aid someone to encounter the person of Christ for the first time.