Joy from the Monastery JoyNotes- July 10, 2013 Feast of St. Veronica Giuliani Vocare – A Vocations Retreat for the Spokane Diocese Good Morning Good People, Last year our Diocese of Spokane sponsored our first Vocare retreat for young women. The word “Vocare” comes from the Latin “to call” and the retreat was designed to offer young high school women a chance to meet the different religious communities serving our diocese. This year the second Vocare Retreat was held on June 23-26. We wanted to share with you just a few highlights from this event. We have seen how excited young people are today to learn about the religious life and to be challenged to bring Jesus more fully into their lives. Recent studies of current religious in formation seem to show that for many, their vocations were generally influenced by attending vocation events in their diocese or college, being asked to consider religious life and for some attending World Youth Day events. We hope this might inspire you to find a vocations event in your diocese that you can attend or support in some way. This being the second annual retreat one might say it is a work still in progress; however, by the reviews it would seem to be a successful work in progress. This year the retreat was lengthened at the request of last year’s participants, and a second track was included for those who attended last year’s retreat and returned this year. Here is a thumbnail sketch of what was offered during the retreat: Each community was invited to offer 1-2 hours of time with the girls sharing their ministries, or lives of prayer or about the history of their community. The girls traveled from community to community and by most accounts had a nice time. (Think of it as a progressive dinner of sorts with time at each community’s convent or monastery) For many of the first time participants, it was their first encounter with any of the sisters who serve here. The young women had a chance to stay and interact with the sisters from various communities at the retreat center for three and a half days. There was time for small group discussion, individual prayer, prayer as a group and of course daily Mass. One highlight this year was one-on-one conversations with religious. The girls were able to ask any questions regarding religious life that they wished. Our community was able to participate in a number of ways: our vocations director was on the Vocare core team for the diocese and one of us joined her for the group discussions one evening. At the monastery we all chipped in by serving lunch prepared by the Secular Franciscans, giving a guided tour of our Catholic radio station, joining the girls in our chapel for prayer, giving the history of the Poor Clare’s and of our community, and one gave her vocation story. The second year attendees had more of a focus in-depth discernment with more prayer and journaling time, service time, time to discuss the vows, and generally being able to ask more questions and finding out more about how to discern a call to religious life. Overall it was a wonderful collaboration between the communities here and many participants both first and second year want to come back for a second and even third time. Today is the feast day of Veronica Giuliani, a Poor Clare Nun, who is the patroness of one of our sisters. We ask her to intercede for more vocations to the religious life and we ask that you also continue to pray for vocations. Join us as we pray for our youth, in particular for those who have attended retreats this summer and those planning to attend World Youth Day. Blessing of Peace and Good to All! The Poor Clare Sisters of Spokane Franciscan Monastery of Saint Clare 4419 N Hawthorne St Spokane, WA 99205, USA
Posted on: Wed, 10 Jul 2013 13:55:01 +0000
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