As Jesuits we can find God in all things - and with our love for the urban, are especially able to find God in the business of the city. Finding God in the daily blur of the busy city centre of Amsterdam became the theme of a new kind of retreat in our Parish church, ‘de Krijtberg’ in Amsterdam. An amazing feature of this retreat, facilitated by the parish priest, was that the participants were directed by  scholastics. The retreat was easily accessible because it was short, it was near to people’s home and there was not the sometimes prohibitively high cost of the accommodation in a retreat house.

In the course of two weeks we offered two 4-day retreats in our parish in Amsterdam. We wanted people to be flexible in how many days they could join us. If people were not able to commit for the full four days, we still wanted them to have an experience with God in the city. And indeed, some of the participants joined us for just one, two, or three days. On top of that, we invited people to sleep in the own house. So, they could experience the retreat while sleeping in the familiarity of their own bedroom.

We invited people to a place on inner silence, a silence in which they could experience God at work, and a silence which is not disturbed by the noise of the city. To help people attain that we started each day with a short opening prayer at 9am. We led three 30-minute mediations throughout the day and ate lunch and dinner together in silence. The retreatants met with a spiritual director each day to talk on how they experienced the retreat. We celebrated mass each day with the parish community at 5:45 pm. And finally closed the day with an evening examen at 9pm.

The retreat was mostly offered in Dutch, but we had a notable English-speaking group. We wanted to give people the opportunity to follow the meditations in English to cater to the growing group of international Catholics in Amsterdam. A Scottish scholastic was able to help us provide these. The multiple languages of this retreat are a good reminder of the internationality of the Society of Jesus and the Catholic Church.

Finally, an important element of this retreat was that it was mostly run by scholastics. The initial organization was done by the parish priest but most of the spiritual direction was done by the three scholastics of the European Low Countries and one Scottish scholastic. With two of us in studies in Toronto and the other two studying in Paris, we have few opportunities to actually work together. This retreat gave us a chance to work together and to grow in giving spiritual direction. In the end, we never work for the Kingdom of God alone.