Page 4, 14th March 1952

14th March 1952

Page 4

Page 4, 14th March 1952 — A NEW OUTLOOK FROM RAINHILL
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Locations: Liverpool, Victoria, London, Rome

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A NEW OUTLOOK FROM RAINHILL

Michael de la Bedoyere
Spiritual investment in retreats
44DON'T you get terribly stale, giving retreat after retreat to people. always having to say the same thing? " 1 asked Fr. Peter Blake. Superior of Loyola Hall Retreat House, as we drove from Warrington to Rainhill. near Liverpool.
" Stale? Good heavens, no! Now tomorrow we have a Cana day. I shall start by reading those figures you've given in THE CATHOLIC HERALD this week about half the Catholics in Rome not going to Mass. And what with the &van business in Parliament there'll be plenty to talk about. It's always new. It's always different."
And that gave the keynote. Retreat? That seems to be escaping from the world for a few days or a few hours, turning in one oneself. Instead. it seems. Fr. Blake takes people out. and makes them look at the world and themselves in a fresh, a spiritual, light.
wanted to see Rainhill, not only because of its immense success as a retreat house: not only because of the crying need for a Rainhill near London; but also because so many people have quite a wrong idea of modern retreats.
One feels it oneself as a Catholic journalist. One writes weekly about politics and the world situation and social questions, and goodness knows what else. And as one writes one feels that the only answer today is to get down to spiritual fundamentals and try to see all these things in the only possible light that will make sense of them by revealing the nonsense. the basic disorder, in them.
And that is just what is happening at Rainhill, where you leave the world. but only to understand it and yourself better, and become one of the, alas, too few people who begin to get things into their right perspective.
THOSE Cana days! This is a new idea, Fr. Blake tells me. Engaged couples come together for a day so as to understand, and understand together. what marriage means. Certainly, they won't understand it if they take their cue from the world and their environment.
Later, during lunch at Rainhill, Fr. Jerome O'Hea said : " We ought to be having married couples here, too, making retreats together as man and wife. Why not? It's what they need, even if some people might not quite like it."
Of course. Rainhill is lucky. Three Jesuits chosen for their ability and knowledge of the world of today, and tertians from St. Beuno's to make up deficiencies at short notice; the old country home of the Stapleton-Brethetons, enlarged, polished, adapted for present requirements; acres of pleasant grounds; a rose garden (paid for with proceeds of sale of unneeded turf); a fruitful kitchen garden which makes money; a charming Lourdes grotto. Everything is plain, clean and simply attractive. There is an insufficiency of private bedrooms—indeed an insufficiency of everything if one takes the demand as one's measure.
Those Cana days have only just Started, yet I understand that you will have to wait till October if you want to get in.
LAST year they had 1,950 week
end retreatants at Rainhill, quite apart from shorter retreats, boys retreats, clergy retreats, private retreats, days of recollection, and above all R.A.F. courses which brought 626 men to Rainhill.
These leadership courses link up with what I said above about the up-to-datedness of this spiritual investment. These men come to make themselves better airmen in the full sense of the word " better "---better as men and .better as airmen. Mgr. Beauchamp started it. Incidentally. Plea and others learn to understand the Mass—with dialogue Mass every day, and young airmen crowding round the altar to learn hOw to Serve.
A well-given and well-made retreat gets things, all things. the right way round. That's all. You don't retire from the world. You don't contemplate yourself, even your soul. The word " retreat " is hardly the right word at all. It's a viewpoint; a perspective; a shot at looking at our world of pagan values and ourselves, with all our distractions and dissipations and false values, from God's point of view.
Anyway that was the feeling I got at Rainhill after talking to the Fathers—not to mention the two laybrothers (one dubbed the Jester of Rainhill--Brother Gaffney). Don't let's think of it as just being pious, or rather specially good. It is not. It is commonsense--God's sense about ourselves, about the world we live in, about our work, about our fun. And talking of fun : the community lunch was just one bright, active conversation interspersed with roars of laughter. Not very monastic perhaps; but the result of doing the right job in the right way.
WHEN will there be a Rainhill
in the South—quite near London, half-an-hour away from Victoria, say? Can anyone think of a better spiritual enterprise just at present? And T hope it has retreats for married people.
If anyone doubts the rich rewards, I would only ask him to do what I was allowed to do: to look over Fr. Blake's shoulder as he ran through his morning post and read out hits of the letters he had received from visitors who thanked him for their Rainhill eye-opener,




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