Day 1
Come, Holy Spirit
Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Thy faithful and enkindle in them the fire of Thy love.
Send forth Thy Spirit, and they shall be created;
And Thou shalt renew the face of the earth. LET US PRAY.
O God, who didst teach the hearts of Thy faithful people by sending them the light of Thy Holy Spirit, grant us by the same Spirit to have right judgment in all things, and evermore to rejoice in His holy comfort.
Through Christ Our Lord. Amen
O Holy Spirit, sweet Guest of my soul, abide in me and grant that I may ever abide in Thee.
A Fire
Gabriel, a fourteen-year-old boy, set out to make a fire in his parents’ fireplace. He gathered some large pieces of wood along with some newspaper. The paper he crushed up and placed around the large wood. With a match he set the paper on fire. The fire went up with a blaze but quickly went out. Disappointed, he tried several more times but with the same result. He even tried a candle that was supposed to burn for twenty-five minutes and start a fire without kindling. Yet even this failed miserably. The boy was most discouraged. This was until his father came home and quickly set to work. His father’s hands began to break up sticks and arrange them together. He first set down small amounts of the paper, but he added to this a large number of tiny pieces of wood. He then placed a larger log on top.
With a lit match, he set the paper afire. But this time the fire did not go out. The little twigs caught and burned brightly. The flames began to lick along the logs, and a short time later there were even signs that the log had begun to burn. The fire was bright, but the heat was still low. As the log continued to burn over time, the heat grew. Bits of the large log crackled and broke into glowing coals that twinkled with a character that seemed otherworldly. The heat grew warm and constant.
On a cold night, the fire would become a magnet in the house to those who found great comfort gathering to receive the warmth of the fire and hear the crackle of the wood. With the coals aglow, any wood, it seemed, could be placed atop the fire, and it would catch and contribute to both the beauty of the fire and also the warmth.
The fire captivated Gabriel, and he wanted to learn more. His father explained that the best wood to burn was seasoned wood. This wood had been cut down and left in the elements over time. The aging process did not truly start until the log was split open. This allowed the interior of the wood to begin to dry. The sun and wind both helped the log to lose the moisture that ran through it when it stood as a tree. Green young wood that had just been cut had too much moisture and was most difficult to burn. If it was successfully set afire, it often produced much smoke and hissed as it burned. Father explained that aged wood was best—not rotten wood. If the wood was rotten, it would not produce much heat.
On one occasion, Gabriel started a fire with several pieces of wood that he thought might be seasoned. But with multiple attempts, he found the fire produced only a copious amount of smoke. It was as if the wood refused to burn. When Father returned from work, he found the house was so smoky that windows had to be opened, even though outside it was cold. It took some time to clear the smoke completely as it had permeated the whole house for the better part of a day.
Gabriel learned from Father that each type of tree required a different amount of time to be seasoned. Ash trees required less than maple trees, while maple trees required less time than oak trees. On one occasion, Gabriel had taken several pieces of oak for the fire, and although the wood had been seasoning for a few weeks, this period of time was not sufficient for this type of wood, which required a number of months to dry sufficiently for burning.
The first could not be left unattended. It needed a person to move the wood and introduce more air into the fire. Father seemed to have such a way of simply tapping the wood, and a smoldering fire would be brought to a raging one with very little effort. It seemed he knew exactly how to move the logs to quickly set the fire ablaze. The boy was watching all this in awe of his father’s skill, which seemed to require so little effort. Yet Father was not new to tending and building fires. He had been doing this longer than the boy had been alive.
The youth, who had been so discouraged, had begun to grow in confidence. He still struggled with starting fires, but he was not afraid to try. He found he loved the task and would not give up. What captivated the boy was how each fire that was started in the fireplace seemed to unfold in a slightly different fashion. No two fires were exactly the same.
Sometimes when several logs were burning one on top of the other, a moment of collapse occurred. At that moment, hot coals were flung a distance in all directions. This can become dangerous as other things not intended to burn can be set afire. Thus, a screen is often placed in front of the fireplace for protection. Sometimes when many logs had been placed on the fire, it would become so hot in the evenings that the boy had to pull back the chair that he was sitting on away from the fire. The front of his legs became hot to the touch. Other times the fire was brilliantly glowing, but the warmth was still not great, and he had to pull the seat close to the fire to feel the warmth. Yet even as the family walked through the house, most found their way back to the fire.
On some mornings when the boy would come downstairs, he would find warm coals still aglow. One morning, to his surprise, there was no wood at all. Every bit of the wood had been consumed!
Periodically, Father would ask Gabriel to bring in wood for the fire. It was cold in the yard. As Gabriel picked up the wood, he could see the skin on his hands, which was already cracked and dry from the harshness of the winter, beginning to bleed from the cracks. As he came inside, he rubbed his hands, trying to warm them. He hid them from Father, but Father could see Gabriel was in pain. Father took Gabriel’s hands and drew them to himself. Gabriel could see that Father also had evidence of wounds on his hands. In that moment as Father held Gabriel’s hands, Gabriel felt overwhelmed by the love of his father and felt silly that he could have ever contemplated hiding anything from him. Instead, the suffering he shared with his father was something that united them.
Resources
The retreat can be done using a physical book, watching one our videos each day or with our online Consecration journey. Both the videos and online readings are free to use so there is no obstacle to starting! We have a whole website designed just to support the Consecration journey.