A Retreat for any time of Year
Welcome to ‘Knowing Jesus’, a retreat open to all who are interested in getting to know Jesus better. Christian tradition believes that the person of Jesus Christ reveals God to us. If we are to follow Christ and imitate him, we need to know him through his words and actions as shown in the Gospels.
Walk with us and really come to understand and love Jesus. We will ponder Gospel stories, reflect on their meaning and see how startlingly relevant Jesus is to living a truly human life in the 21st Century.
This retreat, produced in Scotland by the Society of Jesus – Jesuits – a Catholic religious order, is open to all throughout the world.
Letting Jesus emerge from Scripture
From one place to another from one generation to the next different aspects of the complex person of Jesus are stressed. Sometimes a rather fanciful Jesus is invented with no genuine backing in the Gospels.
If you have taken a look at stained glass windows in Victorian churches you will probably have come across the flaxen haired Jesus surrounded by blond children – gentle Jesus, meek and mild.
If you lived through the 1960’s and 70’s you may have met Jesus the Liberator with a rifle strapped to his back.
Some of the images of Jesus we come across are misleading and even unchristian.
Even when we stay with the Jesus of the Gospel,
what appeals to one generation may leave the next cold.
Christians are called to imitate Christ. We can only do this if we know him well.
During this retreat you are invited to spend time getting to know Jesus better.
We offer a selection of stories and sayings from the Gospels that illustrate different facets of Jesus’ character and values. Some you will probably find attractive, others you may find challenging.
Spend time with both and tease out their implications for how you see Jesus and how you live your life.
A difficulty many people have with Jesus is that after hearing the Church define Him as ‘truly God and truly man’ we assume we know what it is like to be God and start applying those assumptions to the man Jesus.
For example, we assume God must know the future, so we imagine Jesus must have known exactly what would happen in his life from his childhood to his Resurrection.
Our minds cannot grasp what it is to be God. We only know what it is to be human.
As Jesus was human, then, as St Luke’s Gospel says, like us he grew in wisdom and understanding.
During our retreat you are invited to pray and reflect over the man Jesus as you see him in the Scriptures and allow Him to reveal God to you.
Trust what you see will be what you need to grow deeper into knowing, loving and serving God and those around you.
