Description:

With gifted professor, author, and contemplative retreat leader Fr. Donald Goergen as your guide, explore the spiritual insights of four great spiritual masters with this one-of-a-kind retreat experience. This twenty-four-conference series is designed to capture your spiritual imagination and deepen your life with Christ, providing guidance from four diverse yet complementary twentieth-century spiritual masters: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Thomas Merton, Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and Blessed Pope John Paul II. You’ll spend six conferences with each spiritual master, and each six-part series is grounded in themes and writings related to that particular spiritual master, which can be used as a retreat by themselves. These four spiritual masters endured the cost of discipleship and became more conformed to Christ through his or her own distinctive calling. Teilhard was a scientist but also a mystic with a cosmic vision. Merton was perhaps the most prominent Catholic American spiritual writer of the twentieth century. A monk and seeker, he was restless, deeply contemplative, socially conscious, and always writing. Mother Teresa’s spirituality was oriented toward the poor. Acutely aware of the gospel’s commands and grounded by her commitment to Christ and devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, she saw herself as a mystic of darkness. The final mystic in the series is Pope John Paul II, who lived a providential life. A defender of human dignity for all, he has become a symbol of hope, of the potential of the human spirit, and of the transformative power of grace. All four share these last qualities despite their different calls. Let these four spiritual masters accompany you and offer wise guidance in your journey to eternal life.