Harvesters Retreat 2004
This weekend, the Harvesters (a Scripture study group I’ve been attending) had our annual retreat. It was a preparation for Advent as well as a chance to reexamine what we’ve been doing to see how we could “Welcome Christ into Our Lives”. I prepared some reflections, and so did JL and AT. Our spiritual director, Father AY helped organise a couple of sessions and said Mass for us today.
It was a relatively small group at the retreat so we had ample opportunity to share our views. Our last session was perhaps the most important because we spent some time deciding how we could be better Christians by realizing the mission of the Church to evangelise and to reach out to those in need.
Our first resolution stemmed from the realisation that our support structure has not been well organised to welcome the participants. Even though our Little Rock sessions had been well publicised (and well attended), few of the participants remained with us for subsequent sessions. It was a humble admission of our shortcomings, and we decided to prepare this Advent so that our next outreach (in January) will be better organised.
The next resolution was to continue our outreach to all who did not know Christ. For this year’s Christmas party (26 Dec), all members will be asked to invite a friend, especially one who is not a Christian or has not been active in Church. This will give us a chance to reclaim the true meaning of Christmas and to share its meaning to those who may not experienced Christ.
Our last resolution was to serve those in physical need: our Christmas party this year will not have a gift exchange. Instead we will encourage everyone to contribute towards a charity - over the next two weeks, we will select a charity that the group can identify with, and to introduce this charity to everyone so that we can support them on a regular basis (through monetary or other means).
My, that’s a lot of resolve for this Advent season!