There are times in our lives when we sit down with a friend for coffee and learn they are in the midst of a challenging time. Whether that is a parent’s illness, divorce, difficulties in relationships, or another struggle, we might feel ill-equipped to walk with them through that struggle. In this 3 day workshop and retreat, Fr. Boniface Hicks and his team will teach participants the Art of Accompaniment. Participants will learn skills to accompany others on their journeys of faith. All are welcome to attend as together we hope to be the light for others in their time of need and be spiritually refreshed in our own personal walks of faith. Sign up here

• “Every form of catechesis would do well to attend to the “way of beauty” (via pulchritudinis). Proclaiming Christ means showing that to believe in and to  follow him is…something beautiful…Every expression of true beauty can thus be acknowledged as a path leading to an encounter with the Lord Jesus. [What is called for is a] renewed esteem for beauty as a means of touching the human heart and enabling the truth and goodness of the Risen Christ to radiate within it. If, as Saint Augustine says, we love only that which is beautiful, the incarnate Son, as the revelation of infinite beauty, is supremely lovable and draws us to himself with bonds of love. So a formation in the via pulchritudinis ought to be part of our effort to pass on the faith.” (Pope Francis, Joy of the Gospel)

• “If you look at your experience deep enough…. “you begin to see that this is the true nature of reality: its symbolic capacity, its ‘sacramentality’ -beauty is seducing us, and without clinging to the finite, we must allow it to inspire our yearning for the Infinite, Beauty with a capital B. What must I do? I must  be overcome by beauty, by beautiful things, by finding beauty everywhere.” (Albacete, Seduced and Sent)

• “The fact that the beauties of this world are subject to change – and are thus, fleeting –  can make us sad indeed. But that sadness can also open us to the hope of participating in the Life of the Beautiful One who is not subject to change.” (Christopher West, Eating the Sunrise)

• “We get little tastes of our destiny in the finite beauty all around us, and we can and should savor these tastes inasmuch as they awaken the hope of experiencing Infinite Beauty. But if we try to such infinite satisfaction out of these little tastes, we will not only be sorely disappointed; we will also leave a wake of destruction in our paths.” (Christopher West, Eating the Sunrise)

• “In the experience of beauty, a door opens momentarily upon the possibility of fulfillment and hurts the soul. It hurts because God made it to hurt; it hurts because it is meant to give the heart a taste of fulfillment in order to create a hunger for it; it hurts because it isn’t an end in itself, but a bread crumb leading to the Source of completion. And the hurt impels us to seek Him.” (Fr. Clayton Thompson, www.catholicgentleman.com, “Why Beauty Hurts”)

• “Beauty stirs that hidden nostalgia for God.” (Pope Saint John Paul II, Letter to Artists)

• “The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing – to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from – my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.” (C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces)

• “Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would have not been at all. (St. Augustine, Confessions)

• “This world needs beauty in order not to sink into despair.  Beauty, like truth, brings joy to the human heart, and is that precious fruit which resists the erosion of time, which unites generations and enables them to be one in admiration” (Pope John Paul II, Letter to Artists)

• “Servant of God Fr. Giussani grew up in a home poor in bread but rich with music, and he was touched, or better wounded, by the desire for beauty. He was not satisfied with any beauty whatever, a banal beauty, he was looking rather for Beauty itself, Infinite beauty, and thus he found Christ, in Christ true Beauty, the path of life, the true joy.” (Pope Benedict XVI homily)

• “I wish to create a church so beautiful that it would move even the hardest heart to prayer.” (The unknown architect of Glastonbury Abbey)

• “Beauty is the arrowhead of evangelization.” (Bishop Robert Barron)

• “Let all creation help you to praise God. Give yourself the rest you need. When you are walking alone, listen to the sermon preached to you by the flowers, the trees, the shrubs, the sky, the sun and the whole world. Notice how they preach to you a sermon full of love, of praise of God, and how they invite you to proclaim the greatness of the one who has given them being.” (Saint Paul of the Cross)