top of page

30-day Retreat

During the retreat, participants experience God’s invitations to be loved, reconciled and called to live in companionship with Jesus’ Spirit. This entails some type of sharing in Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection. The paschal mystery is tasted through the image of God, alive in the retreatant’s heart, being placed in dialogue with the experience of the Holy Spirit’s consoling activity in the Scriptures.

It is a mystery to be lived out in day to day faith following the retreat.

 

The Spiritual Exercises are a type of map for the human heart to follow in prayerful meditation and contemplation. To follow these exercises brings one into intimate contact with the risen presence of Jesus Christ who reveals the Father of all mercy and consolation. If the book called The Spiritual Exercises is read, the experience is dry, like reading a manual. To actually experience The Spiritual Exercises one must follow the guidance of a spiritual director who provides guidelines for a deeper encounter with God at work amid the inter-dynamic of human desiring. In the 30 day format the retreatant prays four to five hours daily and sees the spiritual director for an hour each day. Eucharistic liturgy is also celebrated on a daily basis.

​

View the brochure for more information.

2025

July 2nd to August 4th

Location: Conference Center

                     University of St. Mary of the Lake,

                     1000 E. Maple Ave.,
                     Mundelein, IL 60060

​

Grateful to the generosity of benefactors we
are pleased to offer the rate for the 30-day
retreat: $3,800.

 

This includes all materials and the stipend for spiritual direction.

IMG_0622_edited.jpg

As I began the retreat, I was a priest entering my 7th year of ordained ministry. I wasn’t experiencing a crisis, nor “discerning” some major life decision. Thus, I was uniquely prepared by grace to simply receive the love of Christ for me simply as me.

 

The whole retreat was well set up both practically and spiritually, and my spiritual director, Fr. Thomas Pulikcal, was very well prepared to form me in the Ignitian Spiritual Exercises. The retreat was like a 2nd honeymoon of sorts, where amidst the busyness of ordained ministry and the beginning of a new stage of priesthood after the stage of being a “new and young” priest had begun to wear off, I was able to be rekindled in my relationship with Jesus as my friend and lover, and my ministry was more deeply revealed as what he is inviting me to, not reliant on my skills or efforts, but his working through me. 

 

I very much died on this retreat and my life is now hidden with Christ in God, no longer I but he who ministers through me. Although I am not a contemplative in a monastery, I seek to contemplate God in the monastery of my heart and day by day be more united with him in love.

Fr. Dominic F. Bouck, 30-day retreatant 2024

bottom of page