Silent retreat template allows guests to optimize and customize personal retreat

A personal retreat is meant to be time away in spiritual communion with the Lord. Having a retreat plan in place allows guests to best use the available time for the most rewarding experience. 

Recently, two sisters created a five-day silent retreat for themselves and conducted it in our St. John of the Cross cabin. They graciously shared their plan and schedule as a template for others considering a personal retreat. 

This template could easily be modified for a weekend retreat or even utilized during the retreat center’s monthly, unstructured Get Away for a Day retreat. 

“About four weeks prior to the retreat, we discussed ideas for retreat themes,” said Rachel Applegate. “Among the ideas were: What happens after death?, Christian humility, social justice, the Eucharist and confession. We coalesced on confession for this retreat.” 

Their retreat was built around nine sessions for scriptural meditation and contemplation and nine sessions for spiritual activities like reading, the labyrinth and the rosary. 

Then, they prepared 24 scripture readings for the retreat and created a non-scriptural reading list as a resource for spiritual activity time. 

“Because neither of us are formally trained spiritual directors, we did not lay out a prescribed order to the scripture readings,” Applegate said. “This is something that a director would probably do, in order to have a progressive focus to the retreat. Being obedient to someone else’s directions as to the progress of readings is in itself a good thing, but we chose instead to choose the type of scripture (a scene or phrases) and specific scriptures as we felt called to do at each time.” 

The two participants differ in what spiritual activities they find useful at any given time as well, so spiritual activity time was meant to be flexible and individual. 

“Having scripture readings was essential, but having self-directed spiritual activity added variety to the retreat.” 

In addition, one of them already does morning and evening prayer (Liturgy of the Hours), and the other does not. Applegate added including this practice, utilizing the Universalis app, could enhance the retreat. 

The pair divided meal prep responsibilities. In addition, they scheduled time in both the mid-morning and evening for discussion. 

The mid-morning session served as logistics discussions, ie is anyone is going over to the main building?, what’s the meal plan?, anything the other person needs to know? The evening discussion was designed for joint reflection time—a chance to share spiritual thoughts about the day and the retreat.  

“It was really valuable for us to decide ahead of time when we would be silent so that we weren’t constantly negotiating silence during the retreat,” Applegate added. “But we could adjust using our ‘admin’ times to make decisions on the fly if we needed to.” 

It was their preference to observe silent mealtimes. However, it would be easy to blend meal prep with discussion--either of practicalities or sharing of insights.  

“Our goal was to have true silence and deep prayer, but also not to burn out!” Applegate shared. “Overall, we believe we succeeded.” 

Click here to see the Personal Silent Retreat Template. 

Learn more about the St. John of the Cross cabin or the Nazareth House on our website.