The verb for “retreat” means (of an army) withdraw from enemy forces as a result of their superior power or after a defeat. The noun form for “retreat” means an act of moving back or withdrawing. But I am interested in the spiritual meaning of this word and it means (according to my friend-in-need Wikipedia), the most simplest of terms as a definite time (from a few hours in length to a month) spent away from one's normal life for the purpose of reconnecting, usually in prayer, with God.
Although the practice of leaving one's everyday life to connect on a deeper level with God, be that in the desert (as with the Desert Fathers), or in a monastery, is as old as Christianity itself, the practice of spending a specific time away with God is a more modern phenomenon, dating from the 1520s and St. Ignatius of Loyola's composition of the Spiritual Exercises. Jesus fasting in the desert for forty days is used as a biblical justification of retreats.
So, according to the noun form, retreat means a place you can go to be alone, to get away from it all. And I will be doing exactly that. I am going to Tabor Divine Retreat Ashram for a four-day retreat and prayer from 3rd to 6th November. It was inaugurated on October 7, 1993 at Kamba village, Kalyan, and I am going there with some of my confirmation candidates. As Jesus said in Mathew 11: 28: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest”, I am going there to give all my burdens to Him and find rest for me.
I have heard a lot about this ashram but couldn’t be there earlier than this and so I really pray and hope that I will have a beautiful experience there. Tabor Divine Retreat Ashram, a branch of Potta Retreat Ministry, is a sacred home located at Kalyan in Thane District of Maharashtra under the Mary Matha Province of the Vincentian Congregation.
I am highly excited about it because it is away from the pollution of the city and I look forward to make this four-day retreat extremely memorable for me.
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