Lent good time for a retreat Off the Record Barbara Stinson Lee

This past weekend Jack and I had the opportunity to attend a Lenten retreat. I have to admit, at first blush I was not ready to clear even a half day from my schedule for it.

It’s a measure of how important we think we are when we think we can’t give God even a couple of hours one day during Lent. I took all of my concerns with me, daring the retreat presenter (Msgr. Robert Bussen, pastor of Our Lady of the Assumption Parish, Park City) to barrel his way through all my baggage and get to the heart of things.

Msgr. Bussen is an excellent presenter. In no time at all, he had me putting all the other important things in my life aside for a walk with God in the Garden “at the breezy time of the day.”

Retreats don’t have to be weekend-long affairs (though if someone offered me one now, I’d sign up in a Salt Lake minute). They don’t even have to last all day; just a couple of hours worth of putting God first in my life. Jack got a lot out of it, and especially liked the ample quiet prayer time allotted. In silence we visited the chapel in the diocesan pastoral center, and strolled around the building, enjoying the quiet.

We didn’t discuss any of the issues that seemed so important to me before the retreat began. We just walked about letting Msgr. Bussen’s words sink into our minds.

If you are a fan of the “Around the Diocese” pages in the Intermountain Catholic, you’re used to seeing notices of parishes and retreat facilities offering retreats of all shapes and sizes almost all year long.

Have you ever thought of going on one? It was a humbling experience for me to put everything else aside to go, but I’m glad I did it. I’m glad Jack and I could share the experience. It gave us much more important things to talk about than dinner. We talked about God, about how important he is in our lives, and how we should be giving God more of our time, especially our time at home.

Our retreat was more important than we thought it would be. It was our retreat.