Session 1: No More Gloom

We begin with a stillness exercise to help us to become aware of entering into God’s presence.

Make yourself comfortable. If sitting, keep your spine straight but relaxed, feet on the ground and hands resting in your lap. If walking, allow your paces to be gentle and rhythmical.

How is your body feeling? You may be aware of some aches and pains. Just acknowledge how you are and let yourself relax.

Notice your breathing. Take a few deep breaths and then begin to breathe out all that you’d like to let go of. Breathe in all that you hope for in this time of retreat.

Now we prepare to hear today’s scripture.

Isaiah chapter 9, verse 1 says, ‘There will be no more gloom for those who were in distress.’

How do those words strike you? Are there things that have been gloomy and distressing in your own life recently? What do those words make you think of in relation to the world as a whole?

Mary, Joseph and the Magi set out as pilgrims of hope, not knowing what awaited them. Can you enter into their feelings in your imagination? Allow your senses to help you to imagine their pilgrimage: seeing, hearing, feeling with them. Stay with whatever occurs to you.

We listen now to the scripture reading from Isaiah:

‘There will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past God humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honour Galilee of the nations, by the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan’.

Galilee was not considered a place of holiness in the time of Jesus. It had many Gentile inhabitants and was thought by the religious leaders to be a godless backwater. In John’s Gospel, Nathanael doubts that anything good can come from Nazareth. He later comes to see things differently.

There’s plenty of evidence around us of gloom and doom: our global environment is degrading rapidly, conflicts and tensions rage across the world Many live in desperate economic and social situations which force them to leave home but find only hostility when they arrive on other shores.

Yet here is God’s promise to banish gloom, to honour, restore and renew. Jesus called the fishermen who worked by the Way of the Sea to proclaim God’s kingdom of hope. How do the words of Scripture strike you? Do any signs of hope occur to you in your own life and in the world more broadly at this time?

Give yourself time for your thoughts and feelings to emerge.
What do you find yourself wanting to say to God right now? Don’t monitor your feelings: you may feel angry with God, asking why me? Why them? Why at all? The Psalms and the prophets often ask those questions. This is the moment for honest conversation.

You may want to lament before God. Or you may want to ask for the graces you need at this time. Isaiah’s words offer reassurance that we can trust God’s love for us. Whatever your feelings, share them with the God of creation who calls us to be pilgrims of hope.

O Wisdom of the Most High, ordering all things with strength and gentleness; come and teach us the way of true knowledge. Alleluia.