Nineteen men from a variety of Fairfield County Men’s Ministries gathered last weekend at the Jogues retreat house in Cornwall NY, to welcome the season of Advent. The retreat provided some down-time for faith sharing, quiet prayer and liturgy before Christmas.
The weekend was centered on themes from an “An Adult Christ at Christmas” by Raymond Brown. We reflected on the Nativity stories in Matthew and Mark’s Gospels and discussed what adult messages and responses from the incarnation might hold for our lives today. Fr. Richard Rohr’s comments on Raymond Brown’s books pull it together nicely.
“The celebration of Christmas is not a sympathetic waiting for a baby to be born, but much more an asking for history to be born. We do the Gospel no favor when we make Jesus the Eternal Christ into a perpetual baby, a baby able to ask little or no adult response from us. Any spirituality which makes too much of the baby Jesus is perhaps not yet ready for prime-time life. God clearly wants friends, partners, and images if we are to believe the Gospel texts. God, it seems wants adult religion and a mature free response from us as adult partners, with mutual give and take and you eventually become the God that you love.”
If your Men’s Ministry would like to schedule a private retreat, feel free to reach out.
