The Program begins in the Season of Creation, between the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation (Sept. 1) and the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi (Oct. 4). During this first retreat, participants will be immersed in the Franciscan pillar of Conversion: breaking down corrupted habits of conducting oneself and perceiving others in order to be realigned as an instrument of God’s love for all creation. We will devote academic attention to “spiritual ecumenism,” a paradigm of inter-church and intra-church reconciliation that is grounded less in negotiations of doctrinal difference and more in interpersonal experience, relationship building, and realignment of the heart.

Our second retreat takes place during Advent, a liturgical season of preparation, purification and hope. The spirituality of Advent, making room in the heart and the world for the God who empties Godself into the human experience of poverty and vulnerability, aligns with the Franciscan pillar of Minority. Participants will engage in dialogue and spiritual exercise meant to cultivate humility, hospitality and “spiritual poverty.” Academic instruction during this retreat will focus on the scriptural and patristic foundations of reflection on and intervention in Christian (and human) division.

Our third retreat, leading into the penitential and cleansing season of Lent, will focus on the Franciscan pillar of Contemplation. Although Lent is typically associated with conversion/metanoia (and Creation with contemplation!), this sequence reflects the spiritual trajectory of needing to be converted, and preparing ourselves with eyes to see and ears to hear, before attempting to understand others in their fullness.

This retreat will include contemplative practices drawn from the Franciscan tradition, as well as academic instruction on the early generations – the successes and challenges – of formal ecumenical collaboration between 1900 and 1960, including: the World Missionary Conferences of 1900 and 1910, the Life & Work and Faith & Order Movements, and the formation of the World Council of Churches in 1948.

Our fourth retreat, celebrating the light of Easter and the glories of springtime on the “holy mountain” of Graymoor, expands the traditional Franciscan pillar of “Justice and Peace” into a more holistic unity of Life Abundant, of which justice and peace are two indispensable components. The crucial recognition of this unit is that justice, peace and the integrity of creation are not mere “social” or “political” addenda to the Gospel, but preconditions of the life abundant that is the deepest hope and orienting horizon of the Gospel. 

Participants will explore (outdoors, when possible!) the relationships between the collaborative practice of justice, the interpersonal and intercultural labors of peacemaking, and the fundamental integrity of life on Earth that renders the others sustainable. Academic instruction will focus on the busiest decades of the “classical” ecumenical movement, between 1961 and 1999: We will cover Vatican II; the pivotal World Council of Churches Assemblies of this period; and two particularly influential agreed documents, Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry (1982) and the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (1999).

Our final retreat, in the outward-focused and multicultural spirit of Pentecost, will turn to a fifth (informal) Franciscan pillar: engagement across lines of religious, cultural and ideological difference. Participants will study and practice at the fertile intersections of ecumenical and interfaith encounter, reflecting on the interdependence of the two and the ethical, intellectual and spiritual dispositions that undergird the productive practice of each.

Academic instruction will turn to the most recent generations of ecumenical engagement, between 2000 and the present, interpreting the declining interest in classical ecumenism’s methods and goals following the end of the Cold War and the intense investment in interreligious exchange following 9/11. We will consider the rhetorics and realities of “ecumenical winter” and “ecumenical springtime,” looking to recent theoretical approaches but also to new forms of grassroots engagement providing openings for renewed peacebuilding and reconciliation in the mid-twenty-first century.