Advent Retreat for the Newcastle and Middlesborough Volunteers

For one weekend in Advent, our Middlesborough and Newcastle teams of volunteers have travelled down to London for some early festive cheer and Christmas shopping, but also to join a wider group of university students and young professionals from around London in day of sharing, silence, prayer and reflection at our newly refurbished convent in Kensington.

Like every year, the Assumption Young Adults team organised a day retreat in early Advent, an event that is regularly attended by a number of young people looking to spend a few hours, amid the Christmas preparations, reflecting on the meaning of this liturgical season, participating in the sacraments and preparing their minds and hearts for the coming of our Lord Jesus.

During the day, two talks given by the sisters helped us reflect on the event of the Annunciation and on the last encyclical letter of Pope Francis Delexit nos on the human and divine love of the heart of Jesus Christ.

In the morning, sister Catherine introduced the theme of the Annunciation using images from classic iconography, only to point out how such images, necessarily talking to us through the language of human senses and experiences, might inspire us a sense of familiarity, rather than wonder and awe for an event that goes far beyond human imagination.

In the afternoon sister Caroline presented an outline and brief commentary of the latest encyclical of the Pope, tracing the history of devotion for the blessed heart of Jesus and stressing its relevance as an embodied, humanised and unifying devotion, in an age of artificial intelligence and dehumanising fragmentation of body, mind and soul.