January 9, 2010
Celebrating 60 years of service, retreat center adapts to changing times
By Denise MacLachlan
Herald staff
Christ the King Passionist Retreat Center in Citrus Heights can accommodate more than 100 retreatants in its facilities on 29 acres of oak trees and open space. The grounds include include walking paths, a meditation labyrinth, and a garden dedicated to the Stations of the Cross. Denise MacLachlan/Herald photo
Christ the King Passionist Retreat Center in Citrus Heights is a hub of understated activity, hosting thousands of people each year.
Arriving from parishes and organizations across the diocese and even from other states, retreatants leave behind the world of e-mail and cell phones to reflect on their lives among the center’s many acres of old oaks, open downs and quiet paths.
Among the more than 250 groups welcomed to the retreat center in the last year alone were such disparate organizations as the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department, Jesuit and Cristo Rey High Schools in the Sacramento area, the Episcopal Diocese of Northern California, McGeorge School of Law, the California Charter Schools Association, the Alliance of Catholic Healthcare’s Ministry Leadership Center, Sacramento grocer Corti Brothers, Alcoholics Anonymous, Mt. Olive Baptist Church in Sacramento, and the Volunteers of America, to name only a fraction of the retreat center’s guests.
“We’re called to respond to the needs of the local church,” said Passionist Brother Kurt Wernert, retreat director at the center. This year, the Passionists celebrate 60 years of ministry at Christ the King and responding to the needs of the church in the diocese.
The local church has changed over the past six decades, Brother Wernert said, as has the Passionists’ response to those changes. The center’s first retreat, on May 7, 1950, was offered for men only, as were all retreats at the center during the 1950s. The Cenacle Sisters, an order dedicated to providing spiritual retreats for women, had conducted retreats for women in the Sacramento area. But when the Cenacle Sisters withdrew from the Sacramento Diocese in the 1960s, the Passionists began providing women-only retreats at the center.
“At first we even kept to the sisters’ retreat format, to maintain immediate continuity for the retreatants,” Brother Wernert noted. But over time, the Passionists began shaping the women’s retreats as they shape all retreats: in subject matter that speaks to the concerns of the local church and builds on subjects explored at previous retreats.
“We create retreat programs that center on Scripture and speak to the people as they are now,” said Brother Wernert, who holds a master’s degree in divinity form the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago and has directed the retreat center since 2002.
The experience of giving each retreat, he explained, of listening to people’s responses to the retreat and hearing what’s going on in people’s lives, helps the spiritual directors at the center craft the next retreat.
Sixty years after the Passionsts gave that first retreat, Brother Wernert noted, the center now offers not only men’s and women’s retreats but also retreats for couples, families and groups of people interested in particular retreat topics, such as forgiveness and healing, prayer, overcoming addiction and remaining in recovery, meditations on Advent and Lent, and centering prayer. Usually the retreat staff preaches on these topics, but sometimes the staff invites in a guest speaker to lead retreats, Brother Wernert said.
The mainstay of the retreat center remains the parish retreat: a preached retreat for all parishes on a yearly topic. Brother Wernert explained that this year’s topic grew out of the responses people had to last year’s retreat.
Retreatants this year will reflect on ways that the presence of paradox in their lives serves to reveal the presence of God. “Don’t we learn best from what in our lives is the least expected, the seemingly impossible, the paradoxical?” he asked. “What is it that God is showing us?”
Parish retreats are generally held on weekends, from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon, though a few are wedged into the midweek. Parish groups schedule their retreat times a year in advance — some even claim a particular weekend as their traditional retreat weekend, Brother Wernert noted. Parishioners sign up for the retreat with their parish “retreat captains,” who make all arrangements with the retreat center.
Like many other retreat houses across the country, the Passionist retreat center not only provides weekend retreats directed by the center’s staff, but also provides space during the week to groups who bring their own retreat materials. These are groups who want to meet in a setting conducive to reflection, rather than in a conference center, according to Loretta Pehanich, development director for the retreat center.
One of the retreat center’s largest clients is the Ministry Leadership Center, a program established by five Catholic health care systems to ensure that the leaders of Catholic hospitals would make decisions from specifically Catholic values. Laurence O’Connell, executive director of the program, explains that hospital administrators from Catholic hospitals in 10 states participate in the program, meeting at the retreat center in Citrus Heights for two or three days, every three months, for the three-year program.
The need for the program arose from changes in the culture, as leadership positions in Catholic hospitals are increasingly filled by laypeople who have not had the spiritual formation of Catholic religious, O’Connell noted. So the program helps hospital administrators explore and deepen their identity as leaders of Catholic hospitals.
“The kind of interior work that people do on any retreat requires a place with few distractions,” said O’Connell, who holds a doctorate in sacred theology from St. Louis University in St. Louis, Mo. The setting at the Passionist retreat center lends itself to understanding the Catholic tradition, and what it means to live that tradition, O’Connell added.
The administrators’ meetings at the retreat center also restore the participants, O’Connell said, and allow them to return to their vocation with new perspective.
Another of the retreat center’s clients, Dominican Sister Paulina Hurtado, director of the permanent diaconate for the Sacramento Diocese, also describes retreats as restoring participants.
“It is important for people to go on retreat, to anchor themselves in their vocation, whatever it is, and notice how they are living it,” said Sister Hurtado, who directs retreats for the diocese’s permanent deacons and their wives.
“Everyone needs time and a quiet place to separate from their everyday concerns so as to examine better what they are about,” she said. She noted that the beauty and serenity of the Passionist retreat center “is particularly conducive to prayer and self-examination.”
Others are drawn to the beauty and prayerfulness of the retreat center, too.
In addition to parishioners making retreats with the Passionists and clients scheduling space for their own retreats, many members of the neighboring community also drop in to visit, Brother Wernert said.
People from the neighborhood come to the center to walk the labyrinth, he said, or to walk through and meditate on the Stations of the Cross in the garden. People are filling up the Thursday morning community Mass, too, in the center’s chapel.
Regular’s at the 9 a.m. Mass on Dec. 31 described their attraction to the center.
Sarah Smith, who has attended the Thursday morning Mass for the past two years, says that Mass at the center is “closer and more intimate,” and that Passionist Father David Calhoun’s homilies are like “great conversations.”
Diana Mehlhaff, Smith’s grandmother and a member of St. Mel Parish in Fair Oaks, has been going to retreats at Christ the King for 10 years. She first attended one of the 12-step recovery retreats, she said, which proved to be “a powerful spiritual experience” that changed her life. Eventually she discovered the retreats for women and now she returns every year to make a retreat with other women from Northern California.
As much as she enjoys the people on retreat and the Passionist community, Mehlhaff emphasized that she doesn’t come to the retreat center to socialize. “I come to pray,” she said.
Commercial trucker Greg Waterman has time on his hands after going on temporary medical disability last summer. He’s been coming to the center since August. He expects to be working again when the economy strengthens, he said, but in the meantime he makes the most of his months-long, informal “retreat” at the center.
“We’re a house of prayer,” Brother Wernert noted with a smile. “Everyone is welcome here.”
For reservations and information on retreats and programs at Christ the King Retreat Passionist Retreat Center, call Margaret Hinshaw at (916) 725-4720, ext. 302, or visit the Web site at www.passionist.org/christtheking.
