I first came to St Beuno’s in August 2010.
During the Holy Week of that year, as I had done in previous years, I attended the three Lenten reflections given from Monday to Wednesday by an English speaker at the University of Malta Chaplaincy. The University Chaplaincy is run by the Maltese Jesuits.
That year the English speaker was the Provincial for the British Jesuit Province. At one point, during his first reflection he said, ‘There is a place where one can really meet God!’ He then went on to name and describe St Beuno’s Jesuit Spirituality Centre in North Wales. With a smile on his face, he then added, ‘They say that the sheep around St Beuno’s have SJ painted on their back.’
The words, ‘a place where one can really meet God’ went right to my very core and kept coming back to me. So, a couple of weeks later, I decided to phone St Beuno’s to see if I could book a place on a weekend retreat towards the end of August. The lady who answered the phone told me that there was one place still available on that retreat!
That retreat in August 2010 was the first of countless blessings I received through the Jesuits, Spiritual Directors, all other St Beuno’s staff, others I met there and through the house itself and its breathtaking surroundings. And I cannot, of course, forget to mention Pushkin the cat who, during our first meeting on my first retreat, was introduced as one of the St Beuno’s staff.
Gerard Manley Hopkins’s words from his poem, ‘In the Valley of the Elwy’, perfectly describe my experience at St Beuno’s: ‘I remember a house where all were good to me.’ What remained with me after my first retreat and what I have since experienced time and time again is the gentleness, kindness and non-judgemental acceptance with which I am looked at, listened to and spoken with, in all circumstances, at St Beuno’s.
St Beuno’s is truly ‘a place where one can really meet God.’ It is also a place which then sends me out to meet and find God in all things!