As I mentioned at the end of my post yesterday, I’m at the Cenacle Retreat House in Ronkokoma, NY, where I’m giving a weekend retreat on the theme of Learning to Love Like God. I was delighted to see so many familiar faces among the retreatants, including several of the women who regularly attended the Women’s Lent weekend retreat I offered for a number of years at St. Ignatius Retreat House.
We began our opening session last night with an introduction by retreat house staff members of the history of the house and of the Cenacle order, after which each of the retreatants introduced themselves. That was followed by our opening prayer, for which I included Daniel Ladinsky’s poem, To See As God Sees. Not wanting to keep the retreatants up too late, since many come tired after a week of work, I then spoke briefly about what it means to love like God. What does this love we are asked to imitate look like? What are its qualities? It doesn’t do us a whole lot of good to be talking about learning to love like God without understanding that what asks of us. Fortunately, our Scripture gives us a good explanation.
I spoke about several qualities of the love we are asked to give – the love we are asked to be in the world: We are asked to give love that is unconditional, love that is universal, and love that is manifest in service, humility and self-sacrifice.
You can access a recording of my talk here or stream it from the icon below. (The podcast runs for 30:19.)
Creo en Dios! 