Sacred Space Advent Retreat 2024
Let us begin our Advent journey together, praying each day with scripture and in the Presence of the One for whom we are waiting. Advent is an opportunity to spend time quietly resting in God’s loving arms and ponder the wonder and mystery of Jesus. It is a perfect time to renew our faith, hope and love, reflect on our relationships with ourselves, others and God, and focus on what matters most in life. May this Advent retreat bless each one of you who prays with it and remind you that you are part of the Sacred Space family, united in prayer with brothers and sisters all over the world. Let us remember all those suffering most deeply across the planet at this time, especially those in areas of conflict and war, and offer up our prayers for them.
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Praying with the Retreat
This retreat will have new prayers and reflections daily. The retreat can take as little as 3-5 minutes, or 15-20 minutes, or more, depending on how much time you have and how deeply you want to enter into prayer. The retreat is also available in an audio version, which you can listen to by clicking on the 
icon. We would encourage you to spend as long as you can with anything that jumps out for you from the reflections or the scriptures themselves and let them settle deeply into your heart, mind, and soul. Use this retreat in whatever way suits you, taking notes or journaling, staying with a word or phrase that resonates most strongly with you. If you miss a couple of days, you can either join in at the point the retreat is currently at or go back and catch up if you prefer.
The Retreat begins on the December 1st 2024
About the Author
Helen Gallivan is a recruitment and selection interview consultant, based in Dublin. She is a co-founder with John Dundon of the New Pilgrim Path website which introduces fellow Christians of all denominations to the wealth of spiritual resources available on the Internet. The site, now in its 8th year, has followers from across the English-speaking world. She is the author of two books, The Temple Within (Columba Press) and Dawn without Darkness (Veritas). She has a long association with Sacred Space and previously chaired the Sacred Space Advisory Group, which provided strategic direction for the continuing expansion of the site.
Images: © Hannah-Alice Loughlin https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannah-alice-loughlin/
We Need Never Walk Alone
“Be comforted. You would not be seeking me if you had not already found me.” We begin this Advent retreat secure in that thought, expressed by the 17th century French mathematician and religious philosopher, Blaise Pascal, after a profound mystical experience in November 1654. Since then, his words have been a beacon for many in the darkest of times. And these are indeed dark times in our world.
In a time of enormous change, a connectedness with a shared past can be enormously helpful in helping maintain our stability. We can, however, become possessed by our own past, our past failures especially, which drain us of the confidence to move forward.
The journey we make from birth to death and rebirth has been made over and over again for countless millennia. Nobody can make it for us, even though countless people have made it before us. While only I can walk my own journey, I do not need to walk alone. In any journey, it helps to have a guide.
The Bible provides us with a large and very mixed company of those who made the salvation journey before us – including Abraham, Moses, Jonah, Jacob, Nicodemus, King David, Job, Elijah, Lot’s wife, Mary Magdalene. It is all here – the seeming absence and the silence of God, the prosperity of the wicked, the broken spirit, the raging against fate. But, underlying it all is the refusal to give up, the refusal to be silent – the same capacity of endurance that marked even the most flawed of the Biblical protagonists. We will also encounter more recent guides, including Meister Eckhart, Teresa of Ávila, St John of the Cross, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and CS Lewis.
What all these journeys have in common is that they each feature a crisis, in the original meaning of the Greek word, “turning point”- something to be welcomed rather than feared, something that the philosopher Ivan Illich described in his book, The Right to Useful Unemployment, as “the marvellous moment when people become aware of their self-imposed cages, and of the possibility of a different life.”
The experiences these people lived, the conflicts they encountered, the routes they mapped, are as relevant today as they were when their stories were first told. As we embark on this Advent journey, we will push open the doors of our own cages, guided daily by their knowledge and experience
At the end of Advent we hope we will hear the words of Moses to the Israelites as they emerge from the wilderness after 30 years, and understand that: “The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.” (Deut 33:27). We will know that angels have ministered to us without our realising it. And, because Christ went through the same desert experience, we will be able to take comfort in the knowledge that he is both the Way and the Wayfarer.
