Dear Participants,

Welcome to the sixth day of our retreat! Today, our focus will be on inner life.

What exactly is inner life? Interiority is an objective attitude; it doesn't differ from person to person. It's the presence of God in us. If we stay on the surface of things, however, we will be disappointed: our inability to believe, to have a living faith, is linked to our failure to cultivate an inner life. But developing a spiritual life is easier than you may think. Keep reading...

Mary teaches us the path to interiority, to inwardness, to silence. If Mary is a woman of faith, it is because she's first and foremost a woman of silence. This new world in which she had to believe first came to reality within her, within her own heart. 

Saint Augustine worded it perfectly:

"Return to yourself! Return to your own heart! Why have you run away from yourself? Come back from your wandering, come back! You need to return to the Lord; he is near! First, return to your heart. You will have become a stranger to yourself. You do now know yourself. Come back to your heart; there you will find God because you are formed in his likeness. In the inner depths of your heart, Christ lives. In the inner depths of your being, you will be renewed in the likeness of God. And in the likeness, you will recognize your God."

Fine. We know "where". Now, the question is "how"? Look at Mary. Like her, be still, enter into silence. Still the body, the mind, the feelings. "God speaks to us in the great silence of the heart," says Augustine. We too can encounter God, if we enter deeply into silence, by leaving behind all noise and confusion, by looking within ourselves to find a quiet spot and listen to God in our inner depths. 

Let us pray:

In the presence of all the heavenly court, I choose you this day, for my Mother and Mistress. I deliver and consecrate to you as your slave, my body and soul, my goods, both interior and exterior, and even the value of all my good actions, past, present, and future; leaving to you the entire and full right of disposing of me, and all that belongs to me, without exception, according to your good pleasure, for the greater glory of God, in time and eternity. Amen. 

Artwork: Marie, Crowned stars, by Joëlle Dalle.