Afternoon Mini-Retreat with Vincent Pizzuto
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A Love Unflinching:
Keeping Vigil in a Broken World Online Guest Presenter: Father Vincent Pizzuto, Ph.D. Saturday February 26th 1:00 - 4:00 p.m. CT Via Zoom (link will be sent out prior to event) Suggested Offering: $30 Father Vincent Pizzuto , who led our fall retreat this past October, invites us to join him in an exploration of the questions: How do we as modern contemplatives prepare for the season of Lent in a way that opens us to real interior and social transformation? How do the ascetic practices of Lent, the season’s familiar spiritual disciplines, relate to our practice of Centering Prayer?
In this afternoon retreat, Vincent will open by leading us in a session of Centering Prayer. Then, he will present on the relationship between meditation and ascesis, drawing from Chapter Four of his book Contemplating Christ: The Gospels and the Interior Life. Like the Road to Emmaus exercise from the Fall Retreat, he will guide participants through exercises of self-reflection and mutual sharing in groups of 2 and 4. All are welcome. The themes that Vincent helps us uncover will then be taken up by the Sunday Morning Gatherings group to explore further during their meetings throughout Lent.  Fr. Vincent Pizzuto
Father Vincent Pizzuto, Ph.D. is Professor of New Testament Studies and Christian Mysticism in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the (Jesuit) University of San Francisco. He serves as Vicar of St. Columba’s Episcopal Church and Retreat House in Inverness, California, working for the advancement of contemplative Christianity through the introduction of contemplative eucharistic liturgies, public lectures, online courses, directed retreats, thought provoking sermons, and an online blog.
Through the Peace Chapel, Vincent leads a weekly online study of his book, Contemplating Christ: The Gospels and the Interior Life. In it, Vincent seeks to bring his readers into a lived realization of the Christian doctrine of deification – that is, the affirmation that through the Incarnation, we have all been made partakers of the Divine Nature. |
(click the image to download printable bookmark)
Father Vincent writes:
The gospel of John tells of three women who, after the apostles had scattered, stood unflinchingly at the foot of the cross, keeping vigil as Jesus died the agonizing death of crucifixion (Jn 19:25-27). They were unable to physically comfort him, they could not take his place, they were powerless to change the outcome. Still, they remained in loving solidarity, even as their own hearts broke with his. In a world in which we increasingly encounter Christ crucified yet again through the suffering rendered by war, poverty, pandemic, violence, and racism, what might these women teach us about the contemplative practice of keeping vigil – learning how to hold out a perpetually broken heart as a healing balm to the world? |
