The forced confinement due to Coronoavirus is a crisis for many. It locks them away from the necessary physical interaction. For those with mental health and addiction issues, it can also play havoc upon their lives. The quarantine can become a nightmare for many but it can also be an invitation among the chaos to find peace and guidance. It can be if applied become a retreat from the world that can help individuals discover the quiet of God among the materialistic world.
The time for prayer and spirituality can be found in the quiet and isolation for those who seek it. Mystics and saints have reminded humanity throughout the centuries that a turn to God involves quiet. While social prayers and ceremonies are essential to our social nature, we are also individuals and must feed ourselves spiritually through meditation and quiet prayer.
In more normal times, it is healthy to turn to God to prayer daily and if possible once a week in an hour retreat from the world. This retreat allows one to re-access, re-focus, and discover what truly matters in life. That purposeful break or short spiritual quarantine from the world can allow one to hear God. One cannot hear God’s will or God’s demands in the loud of the world. Competing false ideals and distractions emerge. Satan looks to keep one busy as to avoid God and his message.
An hour retreat totally given to God as gift is a time to hear God. St. Teresa of Avila, St John of the Cross, St Benedict and St. Ignatius all speak of this quiet. The quiet where God is heard through meditation and total giving to God.
In that time, the phone is set away, social media ignored and television turned off. It is a time for God where we separate from the world to hear God’s desires and will. It is a quiet time that heals the soul from the isms of the world and refreshes the spirit to face it.
This time of physical retreat from the virus is a bad thing but it is also a time where we can spiritually retreat and find ourselves again. It is a time where the business of the world can allow one to work on oneself. Spirituality should not be something we neglect in this scary time. We can turn this time of fear into a time to re-access our own spirituality and take the opportunity to re-emerge from the quarantine as better Christians, people and followers of God.
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In the meantime, be safe and allow this time of uncertainty to help cultivate better spiritual practices through the time honored instrument of silence. Through silence we can filter out the noise of satan and find God.