{"id":2858,"date":"2007-02-24T09:10:02","date_gmt":"2007-02-24T09:10:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/lenten-retreat.html"},"modified":"2007-02-24T09:10:02","modified_gmt":"2007-02-24T09:10:02","slug":"lenten-retreat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/lenten-retreat.html","title":{"rendered":"Lenten Retreat"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Thavis on this year’s papal retreat:<\/a><\/p>\n

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Cardinal Biffi, who is 78, will preach on the theme, "The Things Above," which refers to St. Paul’s letter advising early Christians to "think of what is above, not of what is on earth."<\/p>\n

If the cardinal wants some guidance, he could look back to Pope Benedict’s own words last year about the same passage. The pope said St. Paul was not telling people to cut themselves off from their earthly responsibilities, but to orient their daily lives toward the supernatural.<\/p>\n

Then again, Cardinal Biffi is not required to follow the pope’s lead.<\/p>\n

The retreat opens with adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, an evening prayer service and an introductory talk. Each day afterward, the retreat master gives three meditations in morning and afternoon sessions, accompanied by prayer and reflection.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

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As the retreat goes on, the Roman Curia machinery winds down. Not everyone attends the entire program of spiritual exercises, but the top officials in each office are encouraged to do so, and the pope’s Redemptoris Mater Chapel fills up quickly.<\/p>\n

The pope disappears for a week, too. No private audiences, no liturgies, no working lunches. Even the Wednesday general audience is canceled, to the disappointment of pilgrims who chose this week to be in Rome.<\/p>\n

Pope Benedict certainly has plenty to do: the final review of a long-awaited post-synodal document, a book on Jesus due out this spring, a backlog of "ad limina" appointments with bishops and a string of homilies and talks to prepare for the coming weeks.<\/p>\n

But taking time out of a busy schedule is precisely the point. Pope Pius IX first instituted the papal Lenten retreat in the 1920s, and in 1929 he issued an encyclical promoting spiritual exercises for the entire church, saying that "the most grave disease" of the modern age is lack of spiritual reflection.<\/p>\n

He said people’s insatiable search for riches and pleasure "so entangles them in outward and fleeting things that it forbids them to think of eternal truths, and of the divine laws and of God himself."<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Thavis on this year’s papal retreat: Cardinal Biffi, who is 78, will preach on the theme, "The Things Above," which refers to St. Paul’s letter advising early Christians to "think of what is above, not of what is on earth." If the cardinal wants some guidance, he could look back to Pope Benedict’s own…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nLenten Retreat - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/lenten-retreat.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lenten Retreat - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"John Thavis on this year’s papal retreat: Cardinal Biffi, who is 78, will preach on the theme, "The Things Above," which refers to St. Paul’s letter advising early Christians to "think of what is above, not of what is on earth." 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2858\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}