The Lake House of Prayer hosted a Global Maryknoll Contemplative Retreat for 8 days the end of July. We were 10 Maryknollers from the 4 entities of Maryknoll: 4 Priests, 2 Sister, 2 Affiliates and 2 Lay Missioners. These 10 missioners represented mission experience in 9 countries: Korea, Japan, China, Cambodia, Latin America, Bangladesh, India, Kenya, and Tanzania.

Why a Maryknoll Contemplative retreat? The challenges of our globalized world today demand a more contemplative approach to mission. Fr Jim wrote the vision and mission statement for such a retreat. He writes: The vision for this retreat “is to foster a more contemplative way of being Maryknoll Missioners that would empower us to be contemplatives in action in our broken world.” Thus, the mission of this retreat was to help create a Maryknoll culture of contemplative mission through a contemplative Intensive Retreat.

The participants sat in silence together for 6 hours a day. In the mornings and last session at night, we sat in our chapel dedicated to Elijah who heard God’s still small voice like a gentle breeze speaking to him in the depths of his being. In the afternoons we sat outside on our covered patio overlooking Lake Victoria, where we could experience the beauties of nature, the sound of the birds, and the cooling breezes from the Lake.

We were blessed to have Fr. Alphonse Kim MM as our retreat leader. Fr Alphonse has had much experience in leading silent contemplative retreats around the world. We were also blessed to have Maryknoll Sr Kathleen Reiley, Zen Roshi from Japan, who shared her experience of many years of practicing Zazen. The participants came from various contemplative practices, reminding us that there are many different ways to be contemplatives in action. What united us was the silence, sitting together in silence with the intention to help create a contemplative culture in the Maryknoll world.

On the last evening of the retreat, as experiences were shared, we were reminded of Maryknoll’s contemplative charism from the beginning, through the spirituality and vision of our Founders. From the very foundation of Maryknoll missioners were to be contemplatives in action. Our Maryknoll Contemplative Retreat was not only an affirmation of our original charism, but brought to light the urgency of the need for a more contemplative response to the overwhelming challenges in our globalized world today.

A few weeks ago, Fr Jim and I took a trip to Ndoleleji Mission where Fr Jim was based the first few years after his ordination. From this mission he would go out to live among the Nomadic Watatu People. Maryknoll Fr Hung Minh Dinh is now Pastor of this mission. The 3 of us drove out to Watatu land to visit the people, some of whom remembered Fr Jim from some 30 years ago. One of the families we visited was Nasoro’s family. Nasoro is an Elder of the Watatu People. He was so overjoyed at seeing Fr Jim after so many years he let out a great yell, and kept rubbing Fr Jim’s head and asking if it were really him. The day after our visit to Nasoro’s home was the feast of the Visitation- Mary visiting Elizabeth- and I couldn’t help but see the parallels in the joy that each experienced in simply being present to one another. After visiting for some tome and reminiscing about Fr Jim’s time with them, Nasoro and Fr Jim parted giving each other a blessing. It was a very moving experience to visit these people and witness what Fr Jim’s presence among the meant to them.