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The Retreat Team ...

Fr. Doug Smith msc

(Retreat House Director)

I was born in Mudgee NSW in 1939 and christened Paul Douglas, but am known by my second name, Douglas. Our family moved to Sydney a few months later and eventually settled in Lane Cove.

The Sisters of Mercy, the Good Samaritan Sisters and Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (MSC) were my educators. After a year in the MSC Apostolic School at Douglas Park, I entered the Novitiate, also here, in 1958. My older brother Don was in the same novitiate. Seminary studies and formation in Canberra and Croydon (VIC) included a BA degree at the ANU, majoring in Latin and Greek. I was ordained in 1967.

After five years in our MSC schools in Toowoomba ( Qld) and Hamilton (Vic), and eight years in our parishes in Hindmarsh (SA) and Coogee (NSW), I was sent to study Moral Theology in Rome. After gaining the Licentiate, I returned as a lecturer, formator and spiritual director at St. Paul’s National Seminary in Sydney for eight years, including a term as rector.

After a year’s sabbatical in Attleboro and Boston focused on formation, I looked after our MSC seminarians at Drummoyne in Sydney for six years and continued some lecturing at St. Paul’s. Then followed a term as MSC provincial bursar based in Coogee, Sydney. In 2001 I volunteered to go to Fiji to help our emerging MSC Pacific Union in the areas of formation, seminary lecturing and finance. I also ended up helping out with village Masses on weekends in one of our rural parishes. I spent my last three years in the Pacific Regional Seminary as a lecturer, formator, spiritual director and retreat giver. I was also heavily involved in the Worldwide Community of Christian Meditation in Fiji. After nine years in Fiji, I returned to Australia in December 2009 to take up my current position as the director of our Retreat Centre in 2010.

So I have spent more than half my life in ministry involved in seminary lecturing, formation of seminarians and religious, and in spiritual direction and retreats. Other significant involvements have been with Marriage Encounter, pre-marriage education and consultant to natural family planning.

I have always wanted to be involved in our Retreat Centre, but never expected to get the opportunity. I want to continue on the path the Centre has been on, with its focus on silence, prayer, listening to our God within us, with our team living ever more out of our MSC charism of “being on earth the heart of God”.

I began my conscious spiritual journey at Douglas Park as a teenager; I have been on retreat here over the years, and now I have the privilege and opportunity to focus more on listening to God in my own continuing and unfolding spiritual journey, plus to devote my time and energy to accompanying others on their journeys with our God ever deeper into the hearts of each one of us, where our God lives.     

 

dr. Kerrie Hide msc PhdTheol

God’s invitation to me to be a spiritual director is something I cherish dearly.

In this silent sacred place, St Mary’s Towers, I desire to be with the team in a way that enables us to create a safe, warm, hospitable place where those who come can enter their hearts, sink deep roots into the silence and stillness of God, experience God’s healing love and come to know more and more profoundly that they are one with God.

I trained as a spiritual director at Fordham University in the 1980’s and have been engaged in the wonderful art of spiritual direction for twenty years.

I have been formed theologically and spiritually initially by the writing of Julian of Norwich, and in more recent years the author of the Cloud of Unknowing. I have a delight in drawing from the rich tradition of Christian mystics.

I have also had the great honour of assisting in creating a new generation of spiritual directors through teaching in the master’s spiritual direction program at Australian Catholic University.

As a spiritual director I seek to listen with the ear of the heart with an emptiness that waits upon God, knowing that in time and in the spirit of deep listening and quiet stillness God’s desire for each of us and for the universe will become clear.

The words of Elizabeth of the Trinity help give voice to my longing:

I desire to be all silence,
All adoration,
To penetrate deeper and deeper into God
And be so filled with God
That I may by my prayer
give God to those who cannot find God.      

 

SR. PATRICIA NAUGHTON SSpS

As a child growing up in a very loving and Catholic family I believe the seeds of my religious vocation firmly took root early in my life.
My education began with the Sisters of Mercy in Warwick, and subsequently at All Hallows School in Brisbane.

After having completed my education and a year of teaching Speech and Drama at All Hallows I had a deep sense of being called by the Holy Spirit to give my life as a Holy Spirit Sister. I entered the Holy Spirit Missionary Sisters at Aspley, Brisbane, and now, after more than fifty years I can praise and thank God for the gift of my vocation and for the many and varied graces I have received throughout my religious life.

Immediately after my first profession I began my studies in nursing in Brisbane, However, after just three years I was given the opportunity to go to the USA for further preparation for my final vows and for further nursing studies. Upon my return to Australia I was given the opportunity to do a number of further studies both in nursing and in administration.

The nursing profession offered me many opportunities of witnessing and being instrumental in physical healing and it seems a natural consequence that I felt called to the ministry of retreats and spiritual direction where the blessing of inner healing is so often graced.

After many years in the nursing profession I was able to follow the call to the ministry of retreats and spiritual direction and was given the grace and opportunity to prepare for this ministry in Australia and America.

I was then called to Congregational Leadership for ten years after which my sabbatical led me to England and then to St. Beuno's in Wales, where I was on the retreat team. I had an active ministry in spiritual direction in Brisbane and throughout Queensland and New South Wales. It is now my delight to be on the retreat team here at Douglas Park

As a Holy Spirit Sister I seek to being a woman disciple centered in God, living my identity as a woman bringing forth and nurturing life in joy and pain. My prayer is that I will show the feminine Face of God nurturing life, love and trust as I am privileged to journey with fellow travelers seeking the love of God.      

I was born in Allora in 1939, a little rural town in the Darling Downs of SE Queensland. My early schooling was in Warwick with the Sisters of Mercy and the Christian Brothers to whom I carry a big debt of gratitude.

In 1956, I entered the apostolic school in Douglas Park. After the novitiate, I studied at Croydon and Canberra and was ordained in Toowoomba in 1966.

My first posting was to Daramalan College in Canberra as a scholastic in 1962 which was the opening year of the College. After ordination I returned as Assistant Principal to the Junior School. With Frank Anderson MSC and Tony Caruana MSC I was heavily involved in parent groups; father/son camps; twilight retreats for parents and retreats for religious.

After discernment it was decided that in 1979, I would do a year’s study at the Institute of Spirituality in Berkeley, California.

I then went to Chevalier College Bowral, NSW in 1980, where I was again assistant principal for the junior school for 18 months.

I was appointed to the formation of MSC pre-novices until 1985. In the early stages of this time I did Siloam under Brian Gallagher MSC and Sue Richardson in Melbourne. At the final stages of my time as director of pre-novitiate, I went to Guelph in Canada and did the Exercises of Ignatius and the subsequent workshop for directors. This was preparation for my next appointment as director of the novitiate which was from 1987 to 1996. During this time, I did the course on Contemplative Spiritual Direction by Bill Connelly SJ and Madeline Burningham.

In 1997, I wheeled my books across the lawn to the Retreat House where I have delighted in working with committed people ever since.

In 2005 during my sabbatical, I travelled to Chicago where I was able to work with Peter Campbell MSC (founder of the Life’s Healing Journey Retreat) and then in Portland Oregon with Armand Nigro SJ who had a big impact on the post Vatican 2 Australian church. I was also able to do a course on the Spirituality of Diocesan priests with George Ashenbrenner SJ at Creighton University, Omaha Nebraska.

I am very happy to finish my ministerial life here at Douglas Park unless the Holy Spirit nudges me further!