Whitby Retreatants Encounter God in the Silence

As published in the Diocesan Catholic Voice newspaper June 2025

A time of going into a (blossoming) desert to Encounter God is how I would describe the latest Tasting the Silence retreat at St Hilda’s Priory Whitby.

Retreatants came from all kinds of backgrounds, but their common aim was to encounter God in the silence of the present moment, what St Ignatius of Loyola called “finding God in all things “.

Spring is, of course, an ideal time to experience and share in the joy of God in his Creation and the retreatants spend as much time outside as in prayer in the chapel. Nature is a great and silent teacher of contemplative prayer as we are naturally drawn simply to gaze and to wonder.

Encouraged to use all of their five senses, retreatants spoke with surprise afterwards about their heightened sense of awareness of the presence of God as a reality they had seldom experienced so deeply before. What they experienced on retreat they hope to seek and find on their return to their daily lives.

One said: “I was sitting on West Cliff, so much noise, so many people, and yet beneath it all there was a deep silence and within me a peace that never seemed to end.

“Then I came back to the priory for our next time of meditation and the silence in the chapel was so profound it was almost overwhelming.”

Another person who has been coming to the monthly one-day retreats since the Oasis of Silence program began in 2023 was surprised just how much time there was simply to be.

The invitation to spend time outside as well as in the chapel gives us an opportunity to assimilate what has just been experienced and to savour it

“I now know why you often describe the one-day retreat as being, for beginners, like diving off a 10-metre board,” he said.

“It’s quite possible to get to know the Gries Path that way, but in this retreat all the elements are there, spread over four days, giving me so much more time to experience them – and simply enjoy being with God.

“Being able to come back each month for one day will help to keep me more centred –  and hopefully allow me to dive back into the serene peace in God that I have experienced now. “

One retreatent who has been practising centring prayer for several years said: “I found what we did here a helpful way to get to the stillness that I long for but that so often seems to evade me.  It’s helped me to go deeper than I usually do. “

Franze Jálics

The Gries Path is a method of contemplative prayer practice taught by the Hungarian Jesuit P Franze Jálics SJ (1929-2022), which leads people through several steps or gateways to become increasingly aware of what is – outside in nature, in their bodies, their breathing, their hands, a sound – as they move ever deeper into the silence of the present moment and the awareness of God’s presence there.

We don’t really use a mantra. We are gently brought to focus our awareness on where we are and how we are – which is, of course,  in the silent presence of Jesus Christ.

So we’re not saying a mantra but encountering his whole person, human and divine, directly in his name: Jesus Christ.

The next Tasting the Silence retreat at St Hilda’s is from Monday October 20th to Thursday October 23rd. For more information click here or contact Sister Helen Stout by emailing hospitality@ohpwhitby.org.uk or calling 01947 899 600.

Angela Simek