Retreatants Can Find Harmony By The River

PRISCILLA GREEAR, Staff Writer

Published: December 9, 2004

ATLANTA—The curled brown leaves shivered as they dangled from the twigs in the cold November wind atop the nearly bare Japanese maple and other trees in the woods above the waters of the Chattahoochee outside of the Ignatius House Jesuit Retreat Center.

Director Bob Fitzgerald, wearing a cozy red cotton sweater, stood on this blue sky November morn by the main entrance of the retreat center off of Riverside Drive in a large patch of cleared dirt with only tree stumps. He pointed to a knot high on a nearby tall and skinny pine tree and explained that the ceiling of the future chapel will begin at that height, about 13 feet, and project upward to about 18 feet back into trees.

It will be around 1,800 square feet and also will bring the outside in with large glass windows, Tennessee fieldstone walls that harmonize with the tall tower on the property and nearby paths and fountain. The purpose, he said, is not to draw people’s attention to the building but rather to instill in them a sense of quietness and gladness about being present there at that particular moment in time.

While the retreat house has 49 neat and clean small bedrooms, including some for couples, the chapel will seat about 75, giving retreatants both space for private prayer in community and space for liturgies now held in a conference room. There will also be a deck that faces the woods, as well as a reception area, bathroom, office, equipment room and sacristy. The building is being constructed by Lusk & Associates and the architect is Jimmy Smith. A covered walkway will connect it to the main center.

“(It’s) just to create this sense of stillness and quietness … offering (retreatants) an intimate experience of God’s creation. Then you can say, ‘I’d like to just sit here and be here for awhile.’ That’s what we’re trying to create,” said Fitzgerald. “The whole idea is sort of to have a nature burst.”

Early in the new year the center will embark on a $2.3 million capital campaign to raise money for the chapel. They have been planning this addition for several years, but the project was jumpstarted with a generous donation by the Betty and Alex Smith family, parents of the architect, which moved them toward their fund-raising goal and allowed the center to actually begin construction. They are now waiting for a building permit to begin, and construction is expected to take around five months.

In phase one of this campaign, they raised $1.5 million, which funded major improvements and renovations, including that of the new dining room and kitchen, new offices and replacing the brick walls with glass in the conference room.

The next phase of the project, to be completed in the next three to five years, involves remodeling four offices into handicap-accessible rooms, which currently they are lacking, and building a new wing with more space for meeting with priests for spiritual direction, for the bookstore and for offices. Prayer stations will be added to the existing chapel providing for another space for quietude, and the conference room will be turned into a library with tables for writing and journaling. A redesign of the parking lot will create more green space in front of the chapel, and the entrance will be landscaped to make it more welcoming.

The land and an adjacent house, now used as the Jesuit priests’ residence, were the summer home of the late Suzanne Spalding Shroder, who donated her property in the 1940s to the New Orleans Province of the Society of Jesus to be used for retreats for Catholics in Georgia. The first retreat was held in the retreat house in January 1961.

The chapel will deepen even further retreatants’ experience of introspection and communion with God at Ignatius House. Fitzgerald invites people of faith to come to this oasis of prayer and respite just off of Riverside Drive and I-285 and savor the solitude and spirituality of a three- or four-day silent weekend retreat centered on the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius during Advent or in the new year. The retreats, which typically draw around 35 people, 10 to 15 percent of whom are non-Catholic, are led by a priest or a layperson. The Cenacle Sisters also lead a popular women’s retreat. There are also specialized retreats, such as for Spanish speakers, for recovering alcoholics and for parish groups or married couples. There are about 42 retreats a year and this year, as of Nov. 27, they have had 1,100 retreatants, a 20 percent increase from last year.

In addition to the popular weekend retreat, there are other options, including a Saturday morning retreat and the 19th Annotation, which involves meeting every one to two weeks with a director over six to nine months and reading Scripture, following the exercises, praying and journal writing on one’s own. Homemade meals such as chicken pot pie and meatloaf are provided.

The goal of the silent retreats is to help one experience and more clearly hear God over the weekend, and to become more attuned to God’s presence in daily life, not just waiting for mountaintop experiences of God. Advent and the Christmas season are great times to make a retreat.

“In Jesus’ birth he came as a child, a baby with a mother and Joseph in a stable. So when some shepherds came, and wise men, it was not a mountaintop experience,” Fitzgerald said. “What better way to spend time with Our Lord than during Advent in a still, quiet way, to experience the joy of His birth, the awesomeness of this God—who takes on our humanity.”

Participants attend talks on Scripture and the Ignatian exercises which focus on God’s love and His invitation through Christ. “St. Augustine said it best, ‘our hearts are restless till they rest in God.’ I think people come to spiritually discern God in their lives … They come and experience God and in experiencing they have a deeper understanding … I think we have that a lot in relationships with others, get to know others by experiencing their authenticity and the love we have for the other person … God is saying, ‘will you be in a closer relationship, will you discern that deep desire to let me love you?’ and we say ‘yes’ to that.”

He noted the personal growth that comes through the search. “When we give ourselves away, God’s own creation, back to God, we treasure ourselves more,” he said. “The dynamic is silence. The only way to listen is to be silent. God is simply asking. When we let go and be quiet and start being able to hear, God will reveal Himself, communicate with us in whatever way God knows we can best experience Him in our lives.”

“(It’s) to meet Jesus, to be in such harmony with Jesus’ will, to go through our passion and death to get to our Father’s will” and to glorify Him, not oneself, he continued. “We transcend all the stuff we are attached to to be in total union with God.”

After talks retreatants can then go back to their private room, complete with a bathroom, and reflect privately about God, themselves and the people and situations they encounter in ordinary life and focus on really listening to the Lord. They can meditate and walk on the wooded 22 acres of property, where little angel, risen Lord, Marian and other statues are planted like Easter baskets around the grounds, as are colorful tile Stations of the Cross on wooden crosses. There is also a 150-foot cell tower—perhaps helping relay God’s messages—at the back of which is a concrete prayer wall with 22 iconic plaques, ranging from the Ark of the Covenant to a dove, depicting a brief history of religion from creation to Judaism to Christianity and ending with our final union with God. A little wooden birdhouse states that one is near God’s heart in a garden. A wooden deck overlooks the river with chairs for meditation and a narrow, rough path of log and wood beam steps leads one down the hill and beside the still water. Silence is observed during the retreat, except for opening and closing meals held in the renovated cafeteria. Sacraments are available throughout the weekend.

St. Ignatius was a 16th century nobleman and soldier who founded the Jesuits in 1540. He developed his faith after reevaluating his life during a long recovery from injuries inflicted on him when a cannon ball struck his legs while defending Spanish Pamplona against the French. Through the experience of retreat from the world, he was converted to being a soldier for Christ. The sojourning saint began developing the spiritual exercises on a stop in the town of Manresa in Spain on a journey to the Holy Land, where he had a vision while contemplating God on the banks of a river. There he is thought to have had an encounter with God as he really is so that all creation was seen in a new light and acquired a new meaning and relevance, an experience that enabled him to find God in all things.

Ignatius’ portrait can be found in the conference room, along with mahogany leather chairs and bookcases built into the walls. That room and the dining room have large glass windows that showcase the view of the woods and a little courtyard area with a stone path, fountain and daisies. Near the center entrance is Ignatius’ quote: “Pray like it all depends on God and work like it all depends on you.”

Fitzgerald, a former Bell South executive, has been director since 2002. He is the first layperson to direct the center and loves being able to serve God in this way. He has been making silent retreats for many years and finds they deepen his sense of appreciation of the people in his life.

“My experience has been that after a retreat every human relationship I have improves, not because the other person has somehow changed, but the sense to have just a deeper awareness of the value of life, of people in my life. When I can’t do it a whole year, there’s definitely a void. I sense I’m still searching for something that hasn’t been found.”

For many they foster healing and renewal. And while everybody is silent, he noted how persons making a weekend retreat communicate with each other through body language and other gestures, citing a study that only 10 percent of communication is done through words, while 75 percent is through body language and 15 percent, intonation. People have told him that at retreats they may see someone looking sad and know that they are not alone in their pain; others are joyful and through their body language can express God’s love for them. “You create a community in silence.”

He pointed to a picture in his office of one of his daughters looking Christlike while cradling her stillborn baby in her arms upon a hospital bed, which to him reflects the bittersweet mixture of joy and sorrow in life and God’s unconditional love for His people even in their experiences of darkness and death.

Upcoming retreats will be held Dec. 10-12, Dec. 17-19 (Spanish), Jan. 7-9 (AA), Jan. 13-16, Feb. 3-6, Feb. 18-20 (women’s) and Feb. 24-27.

A suggested donation is $150-$250, which includes all meals and snacks, to help cover costs, as the center is not supported by the Jesuits or the Atlanta Archdiocese. For more information or a complete retreat list, visit www.ignatiushouse.org or call (404) 255-0503.