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The Retreat Team ...

Fr. Stephen Dives msc, stm

(Retreat House Director)

I think our MSC spirituality, a spirituality of the heart is a great treasure we have been left by our Founder Jules Chevalier. It is wonderful to be able to share this with so many people who come to this special place with a longing and a thirsting for a deeper relationship with our loving God. Heart spirituality can be transforming and life changing when people come to know and understand that our God is a loving God, full of kindness and compassion, who yearns for intimacy with us infinitely more than we yearn for it.

I was born in Wollongong NSW and after leaving school and working I joined the YCW (Young Christian Workers Movement). I became President of it and in 1968 I was invited to go to Port Moresby as an extension worker to help start it up there. After three and a half years I returned to Australia and started training for MSC priesthood. I was ordained in Wollongong Cathedral in 1977. I was appointed back to Port Moresby where I worked in parish work and as MSC Vocations Director. After three years I was appointed Rector of the spiritual year for Diocesan seminarians at Erave in the Southern Highlands. I did that for five years and was then appointed Rector of DeBoismenu College, the MSC College at Holy Spirit Seminary at Bomana, Port Moresby. After three years I went to Toronto, Canada and completed a Master’s degree in Theology at Regis College, the Jesuit school of Theology. I then went to the Jesuit Retreat Centre at Guelph, Ontario and did the 40 days spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius.

I was then appointed to Fiji as local superior and Rector of our college at Pacific Regional Seminary in Suva. After three years I was appointed Superior of the MSC Pacific Union, which took in most of the Pacific area except PNG and Solomon Islands. I moved to Kiribati where our headquarters were at that time. After three years we moved the headquarters to Fiji which was more central and more accessible. After nine years I finished my third term as Superior and returned to Australia.

After nine years as community leader here at Douglas Park I was asked to prepare for work in the retreat centre. In 2010 I went to Melbourne and attended the Siloam program at Heart of Life Spirituality Centre and received my certificate of accreditation as a spiritual director. This year, 2012 I was appointed director of the retreat centre. It is hard work but very rewarding and enriching as well.

dr. Kerrie Hide msc PhdTheol

Kerrie Hide 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.

FR. TERRY NAUGHTON MSC

Terry Naughton 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. 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!

ms. Michelle Vass

Terry Naughton Silence is praise for You “silentium tibi laus ” ( Ps 65 Jerome’s translation)

For many years I have found the ‘heart of silence’ of St Mary’s Towers to be a spiritual home. So it is with much gratitude and humility that I join the retreat team and look forward to sharing with others my deep love of Silence as the foundation of prayer.

We live in amazing times with a wealth of knowledge easily accessible. Yet our busy, secularised society has lost touch with the wisdom of religious traditions. I believe passionately that there is a need to recover and develop anew, creative ways of contemplative living based on the richness of our Christian heritage. In a special way it is through the Spirituality of the Heart, which keeps us in touch with the living, loving power of God, that we can find the freedom to do this. I see too that Mary’s example of pondering and beholding the presence of Jesus in her heart, can help us learn how to be that heart presence of Christ in our world.

I have a particular interest in the early Christian writings of the Desert Mothers and Fathers and the Philokalia, and the treasures they hold for contemporary Christian life. In addition, my early adult years spent in Japan, and South East Asia have given me a valuable insight into other faith traditions and their interface with Christianity. My approach to prayer is holistic , incorporating Tai Chi, Yoga and the study and writing of icons – all at the behest of Silence.

I completed a Master of Arts (Theology) at the Australian Catholic University, Canberra in 2002, and subsequently in 2008, further studies in Spirituality and Pastoral Ministry (specifically the practice of Spiritual Accompaniment). Now, as a member of the retreat team, I seek to live in a new way the words of John’s gospel “Abide in me as I abide in you” (Jn 15:4), abiding with those in accompaniment, and also together abiding more closely in the heart of our loving God. I look forward to life at St Mary’s Towers and its wonderful tradition of profound silence at the service of contemplative listening.