Chaplaincy Retreats in the last few weeks

By Chaplain, Jack Regan

 

February and March at St Wilfrid’s are fast turning into the Chaplaincy retreat season! There have been three in as many weeks and all of them have been a real success. On February 22nd I took a dozen Year 11 students to St. Cassian’s Centre, Kintbury for a three-night retreat along with a few other schools. St. Cassian’s is run by the De La Salle brothers. It was founded in 1975 by Damian Lundy, a well known name in Catholic circles, and has worked with many thousands of young people since then. The retreats at ‘Kintbury’ work in four stages: Welcome, Awareness, Reconciliation and Good News! Each stage invites the young people to think and to reflect, and each is punctuated by social times, group discussion, testimonies from members of the in-house team, and times of prayer.

 

A smaller group of Year 12 students also had the opportunity to go to Kintbury on March 4th. This was a much smaller retreat – only 18 young people in total – but was equally well received by our students who went.

 

We are now planning to build up Kintbury retreats within the school, perhaps in co-operation with other Catholic Secondary schools in our diocese.

 

On March 8th, the final retreat of the year saw us take 28 Year 13 students for an overnight stay at lodge Hill near Pulborough. The aim of this programme was to help the students to reflect on the last seven years together and what the shared experiences have meant to them. It also gave them a nice chance to look ahead to the future.

 

 

 

These three residential conclude our retreat programme for this academic year. It all started in September with the Year 7 away days at St. Bernadette’s and continued through a few immersion days and various other activities. Retreats are one of the most enjoyable aspects of chaplaincy and I am grateful to all of the staff, students and parents who have supported the programmes this year.