Perfect seven

I just returned from my first silent retreat yesterday. I was in Chiang Mai at The Seven Fountains, a Jesuit Spirituality Centre. It was a week of total grace!

The number seven represents spiritual perfection in the Bible.

Seven are the gifts of the Holy Spirit* endowed upon us in Baptism and strengthened in Confirmation.

If you are interested, the seven gifts are wisdom, understanding, counsel (right judgment), fortitude (courage), knowledge, piety (reverence) and fear of the Lord (wonder and awe).

I spent seven days at Seven Fountains, and this was after seven years of my initial conversion experience so I see a lot of symmetry in the timing and I know that how I was led there is a God-incidence (thanks B., it was really you who inspired me to go) and no accident.

If you have been following my blog, you will note that I have been experiencing a season of spiritual dryness and desolation for some time now.

People are funny, or maybe I am funny, it's not as if I did not know what I needed to do, but I could not muster the effort to do the necessary, which was put aside time for prayer, but instead decided to desiccate in the aridity of the desert.

In the battle of flesh versus spirit, the spirit must win from time to time and this was one of those times. Thank God!

I was just telling D. this morning to expect obstacles to commitments that will bring us closer to God for the devil will try to hinder such commitments.

Lest we forget, there is a spiritual battle going that goes beyond flesh and blood so we must guard the gift of our faith well if we seek to remain true every step of the way, but I won't bore you with details beyond saying Paul says it best in Ephesians 6.

Obstacles aside, I experienced such a revelation of God's love and mercy that I was, still am, overwhelmed and beyond awed.

I told my spiritual director Fr. Olivier (a lovely, lovely man) that I finally understood why the Bible is known as God's love letter to us.

Consolation upon revelation, I could not stop singing Him praise and paeans of gratitude as He spoke to my heart with such tenderness and perspicacity.

The format of prayer was simple. Four daily meditations based on Scripture. Take 30 minutes for each meditation and an additional 10 minutes before commencing the meditation to still the mind, heart and body.

To maintain the spiritual ambience, silence was observed throughout the day apart from the meeting with my SD and the peace offering during evening mass. This includes keeping any form of communication to a bare minimum, and preferably at the end of the day, for if we carry the baggage of our daily lives with us, we will not get very far...)

It was very liberating for me to maintain the disciplines of prayer for my days were made simple and focused. And the only person I spoke to was God, who, in the silence, responded in kind and proved quite talkative.

I did not lack for companionship and I was never bored.

Dorothy Day, one of our modern day saints, was a woman of action who always took regular time-outs for contemplation, for she saw it as being vital for her spiritual life.

After my Seven Fountains experience, I begin to see why she was so diligent about retreating from the world in silence. I am convinced of the efficacy of an annual retreat to refresh the soul and I intend to make another next year, instead of waiting another seven years.

Spirit, and God willing.

* Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1831.