Ritiro Annuale

The Sisters "choir"--the cloistered part of the chapel where they pray. I preached to them here for the past ten days (the curtain is closed here behind the grill but for the conferences it was open). The statue above is of St. Teresa of Avila. The statue on the left is St. Anne, with a young Virgin Mary as a girl.

The high altar prepared for this morning's Mass for the Feast of Christ the King.

The side altar prepared before this morning's Mass.

Dear Friends and Family,

Blessings on this feast of Christ the King! It is a wonderful feast day. After Mass I exposed the Blessed Sacrament for 15 minutes of Adoration, the litany to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the solemn consecration to the Sacred Heart written by Pope Leo XIII and that Pope Pius XI asked that it be prayed in every parish throughout the world every day on this feast of Christ the King. It is a beautiful prayer, and much needed today, consecrating the whole world to His Sacred Heart so that He might guide all things according to His will.

Today is also the last day of the sister's annual 10-day retreat. The last conference was this morning and in a few minutes I'll head down to hear their Confessions. Thank you very much for your prayers. I made it through! And as far as I can tell they understood almost all that I said in Italian. No doubt they had to stifle laughter at times due to my pronunciation or poor grammar but they seem to have understood.

It was a blessing for me to give the retreat. Starting several months ago I worked my way through the majority of St. John of the Cross's writings, praying about them and making some notes. The bulk of this retreat came from a book compiled back in 1925 that put together selected texts of St. John for a retreat. But about half of the conferences were either texts I selected from him or from St. Teresa of Avila, or some were made up of my own preaching (a small number of conferences). It was nonetheless more challenging than I had anticipated to speak so much in Italian. Even preparing to deliver well a 30 minute text of St. John in Italian took me more work than I thought. But I also feel that I learned a lot in the process of preparing and giving the retreat--for one thing it helped improve my Italian! But especially it helped me get to know St. John of the Cross and his teaching better.

One of my favorite teachings of Carmel--that actually is best expressed by one of St. Teresa of Avila's writings, and so I focussed a conference on this passage, is from her autobiography where she talks of the absolutely essential role of the "sacred humanity of Jesus" in the spiritual life. She says that one should never ever abandon, in our thoughts and approach to the spiritual life, the sacred humanity of Jesus and should strive to live each moment of each day focussed on Him. I believe that this is at the very heart of what Carmel is: to live at the school of the Virgin Mary, who wants to share with Carmelite nuns the same education that She herself received in the spiritual life: the education that was given to Her by having Jesus within Her womb, then as a little baby, then a boy, then the daily life with Him at Nazareth as a young man and grown man, then the public life and passion, death, and resurrection.

Again, thank you very much for your prayers. For the month leading up to this I was rather nervous about whether or not I could really accomplish effectively the preparation and giving of these talks in Italian. Even when I gave the first talk or two I wasn't quite sure if this would work. But it seems that it did.

Lastly, as some of you had inquired to make sure I was eating well enough I can assure you that I'm being well taken care of here. In fact a current challenge is that the mother superior seems to think that, since I got sick a few weeks ago, I need to eat abundantly every day. I've tried to convince her that if I keep eating the full meals the sisters pass me each day I won't after a while be able to fit into my cassock! I think I finally convinced her to cook less for this coming week. We'll see. And then the families that come here are looking after me. And as one of them runs a bakery and a farm there is no shortage of pastries nor good food from the farm. In fact last night I was out at the farm, a rare break during the retreat, for a festive meal with them and some guests.

Well, I need to prepare for the final part of the sisters' retreat: their Confessions.

Praying for you all. Thinking particularly of you all in Texas and the beautiful fall days there.

In Cordibus Iesu et Mariae,
Fr. Tony Pillari