By DEXTER DUGGAN
NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas — At six-foot-five, Fr. John Mary Foster, MDM, may be able to reach a little higher toward the heavens than most other people, but retreatants at a rural facility here dedicated to the Divine Mercy are told that faith, trust, and humility bring knowledge of God’s will within their grasp.
Foster is the leader, or “guardian,” of this monastic community, the Mission of Divine Mercy, which also reaches out to the world. The small religious order, founded in 2001, also is known as Mission of Divine Mercy, hence MDM. The retreats are called Encounter With Jesus, or EWJ.
In a peaceful setting in Texas’ wooded Hill Country, the mission began offering three-night retreats to lay people this year, a Holy Year of Mercy decreed by Pope Francis, after the facility expanded with a new building in 2015, the O’Callaghan Divine Mercy Center, named for a veteran local monsignor, Eugene O’Callaghan, who had provided “extraordinary moral and material support” to the community from its early days.
The mission’s theme of the mercy and forgiveness of God draws on the messages given to 20th-century Polish mystic and nun Faustina Kowalska, canonized a saint in 2000 by fellow Pole John Paul II, who established the Feast of Divine Mercy on the Sunday after Easter to confer complete forgiveness of sins and their punishment in the hereafter for people who participate in a simple nine-day devotion.
Pictures of the Polish nun and Pope are spotted around the buildings here, and a reading room has volumes of the Bible and St. Faustina’s diary, Divine Mercy in My Soul, recounting her conversations with Jesus when He appeared to her to counsel trust and submission to God’s will.
St. John Paul is regarded as being a major influence in spreading knowledge of the Divine Mercy devotion. St. Faustina died at age 33, shortly before World War II began in Europe and illustrated the desperate need for mercy and forgiveness.
Some pastors will say the Divine Mercy devotion is just “a private revelation,” the mission guardian, Foster, told a recent Encounter With Jesus here, but it had been approved by the Pope himself.
A primary objective, the mission says in its preamble, is “to live by trust and faith in God’s eternal mercy, His first and greatest attribute, still too little known.”
At the first morning talk on August 19, Foster may have struck a chord with those who question the goodness of God because they experience or see so much suffering. However, he said, much of the suffering was unnecessary because people didn’t listen to what the Lord told them — “because we thought we knew a better way.”
There’s so much the Lord wants to tell people, he said, “but if you’re not listening, He can’t.”
When a person asks the Lord for insight, Foster said, that’s an act of humility, faith, trust, and obedience, “because we know we don’t have all the answers.”
At a late-afternoon talk on August 20, Foster pointed out that even the all-powerful God is inhibited in helping people if they lack faith.
“We see a lot in the Scriptures that God doesn’t act unless there’s faith….‘Your faith has healed you’….He respects our freedom. If we don’t open the door, He’s outside….Faith is that act of opening the door so that He may come in,” said Foster, who easily looks at least a decade younger than his 56 years.
The Mission of Divine Mercy is located in south-central Texas, between San Antonio to the southwest and the state capital of Austin to the northeast. However, because the majority of the retreatants come from around these cities, the mission provides no shuttle service from the cities’ airports.
Emily Jebbia, a mission spokeswoman, told The Wanderer that it hasn’t publicized itself widely because of its limited accommodations, although word is spreading on the Internet. However, “Our next goal is to build some cottage-style dormitories to increase the number of people…we can accommodate for each retreat.”
In addition to the reading room, the cathedral-ceilinged O’Callag
han Divine Mercy Center, costing about $2.2 million, has a conference room, kitchen, and dining hall. This new space allowed for the already-existing St. Michael’s Hall to be improved as a retreatants’ dormitory for 21 “more substantial beds” rather than previous “sort of rickety cots,” Jebbia said.
St. Michael’s has a modest eucharistic adoration chapel attached, while a larger chapel that seats about 200 people is atop a hill overlooking the O’Callaghan Center.
O’Callaghan attended the 2015 dedication of the center, which coincided with the 60th anniversary of his Ordination as a priest. He died in 2016.
Although the crucial, everlasting fate of souls is a momentous focus of the mission, the atmosphere here is casual and even lighthearted. Between retreat talks, individual participants might recite the rosary, take a little hike, or even lie down for a dormitory nap.
They’re given a printed schedule but informed they don’t have to attend every activity. They’re told not to set expectations of what to get from the retreat, but to let the Lord work. Some talks are given in the conference room. Others, weather permitting, are at picnic tables or on benches by the trees.
The mission’s preamble concludes: “This is a noble project, but we have to be realistic about our littleness and limitations. Hence a sense of humor is important; to not take ourselves too seriously, but to hope in Him.”
A non-refundable fee of only $40 is charged when a retreat reservation is made. It covers retreatants’ lodging and regular meals from a Thursday dinner through Sunday afternoon. During that period, reflective silence is maintained, and each retreatant eats at a separate table in the dining hall.
Separate retreats are given for women and men, either in English or Spanish. For further information, see missionofdivine
mercy.com or phone 830-302-9707.
Retreatants may make an additional donation to support the mission if they wish, but one isn’t required.
Foster told a late-afternoon session on August 20 that the idea of the mission was conceived in January 2001, as the new millennium began.
“It wasn’t like this great sign in the sky” to start the mission, he said. “It’s been very difficult. I don’t recommend it.”
Then, flashing the humor that gives the mission a lighter feeling, Foster drew laughter when he added, “I tell the Lord: ‘Remember, if this fails, it was your idea’.”
After dinner as this retreat began on August 18, participants were told, “For us (at the mission), you have voted with your feet. You’re here….You’ve delivered yourself here.”
This isn’t a place where people come to show off their perfection but to seek mercy, they were told. “We don’t care if you’re horribly sinful….If you’re good enough for God, you’re good enough for us….Try to go through the weekend, and the rest is God’s problem….When the Lord works, He works in the deep part of your soul.”
After an August 19 evening talk on sin, mercy and the Sacrament of Reconciliation, Confessions were offered although no one was required to confess. The confessionals look like three little green hermits’ cabins outside the larger chapel on the hill.
This chapel has wooden walls up to window level, but, entirely open to the air, there’s no glass in the window spaces on the sides and rear, which look out onto wooded hills. However, there’s a solid wall behind the altar.
In inclement weather, coverings can be pulled over the window spaces.
The 11 a.m. Mass on Sunday, August 21, celebrated by Foster was devout, with a choir in the rear.
At a talk in the conference room before the celebration, Foster said the Mass “is the sacrifice of Jesus made flesh,” which “unites beyond time and space.” However, “Today that sense of the Mass has been almost lost.”
The priest said he used to feel when celebrating Mass that Jesus was saying to him, “Slow down.” Foster obviously took that lesson to heart with the reverent Sunday service.
Good Vs. Evil
Jebbia told The Wanderer that members of the MDM community offered retreats around the Archdiocese of San Antonio from their earliest days, driving “a truckload of accoutrements that were needed for putting on the Encounters” to various existing facilities. “That set-up and break-down were very time-consuming.”
After they acquired their own 128 acres in 2004, retreat food was prepared in a rudimentary kitchen already there that probably dated to around World War II, Jebbia said. “The earliest Encounters used tents and hoses thrown over tree branches for showers.”
Even the trees that cover the hills here seem to tell their own story of the contest between good and evil being fought.
“Our blessing is to have as many Live Oaks as we do. Those are the large trees that populate the meadow area and a lot of our central campus. Live Oaks are God’s gift to central Texas, can live a long time, and give generous shade,” Jebbia told The Wanderer, adding:
“Our bane is to have so many cedar trees (technically they are really called Ash Junipers, but around here they are always referred to as cedars, as in ‘those blanket-blank cedars!’)….Most ranchers try to eradicate them.”
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