Finding Jesuit Values on the Mountains of Rio

December 16, 2016

It all began with an opened email and its first few lines: "Three days of silence and self-knowledge! Have you ever tried spending a day in silence? Have you entered into the deepest source of your being? Have you heard the voices of silence and felt the wisdom in your deepest feelings?" I received the email from Father Paul Schweitzer, S.J., an American priest who has been living in Brazil for over 40 years and teaches at my host institution. I was excited to know that the spiritual retreat would be following the format of St. Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises. I easily recalled all of the frequent allusions to St. Ignatius that I have encountered at Georgetown.


To be honest, while at Georgetown, I typically ignored the invitations to these religious retreats simply because I didn’t consider myself to be a believer. This time around, my decision was swayed. Earlier that week marked election day in the United States, and the results of the election affected me deeply. Despite being far away from America, I found myself in deep stages of mourning and grief. I felt a sense of hopelessness being so far from my home. The results of the election challenged my outlook on my future and the future of my community. I realized that a weekend spent exploring the power of reflection and introspection through silence would greatly benefit me.

That Friday afternoon I prepared my bags and headed to the very top of a mountain in São Conrado until I reached the Casa de Retiros Padre Anchieta (Father Anchieta Retreat House). The house was enormous with three floors, countless rooms, a chapel, a dining hall, and prints of Sebastião Salgado and Salvador Dali’s artwork fastened to its walls. Behind every corner of the house was a huge sculpture depicting a holy scene or figure. Our group was composed of four coordinators, two of them priests, and 20 participants, three of us who were international students. Most of us were between the ages of 18 and 28. Needless to say, I was fascinated to see that so many young people were interested in this spiritual activity.

As the weekend progressed, the other participants and I practiced eating in silence, moving in silence, deep prayer, and mindful meditation led by the priests and coordinators. While I was simply looking for an escape from reality, the others were involved in a deeply religious experience. After all, the coordinators encouraged us to keep silent so we could hear the voice of the Holy Spirit as it tried to reach us. I did not struggle with exterior silence, but rather with my interior silence. We engaged in exercises that encouraged the full use of our senses, which ended up improving my ability to concentrate. Every time disruptive thoughts pierced my internal silence, I tried to focus on the noise of water flowing down the mountain, or the birds in the trees, or the leaves rustling from the wind.

The spiritual retreat highlighted how deeply embedded religion is in Brazilian culture. Although the outside world typically holds on to the stereotypical images of a frisky and promiscuous country, my experience has only shown me how conservative Brazil’s values truly are. Before arriving I had no idea how strong evangelism would be here; it has even been a major topic in recent municipal elections. During the weekend of the retreat, I frequently fought the will to speak to the young Brazilians and hear their thoughts. I wanted to understand their motives for participating, and I wanted to know if they really heard the voice of the Holy Spirit. I learned to differentiate between what the universe was emitting and what I was receiving from it; I knew that I was looking at things from a challenging perspective. In looking for an alternative to conversation, I learned to see patterns and distinguish the other participants’ values through their creation of symbols, their practices, and the objects they used. In all, it was very refreshing to practice introspection and healing, all the while immersing myself in an entirely new and different space.
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