Message from
Father Gregory J. Hickey

      Tomas Maher in the Summer Issue of Desert Call(2008), speaks to his readers of a journey.  He says that to go on a pilgrimage is to journey outwards and sometimes to a distant place.  This outward journey facilitates a deeper inward journey to that sacred place dwelling at the core of the pilgrim’s heart.

      One of our retreatants told me about his sister who journeyed to Lourdes because she wanted to be healed of a physical disease. As she went into the waters, she was not healed physically but was healed internally and felt a sense of peace.  An inner transformation had taken place and she became alive for the first time in several months.  That happens to many of us when we want a physical cure; we experience inner healing that yields to an interior peace.

      Recently, our beautiful Grotto has been restored and many have journeyed there looking for physical cures through the intercession of Our Blessed Lady and St. Bernadette and have found that inner transformation that has led to an interior peace.  Our family day and our program for youth called Adoremus Te yielded those types of inner transformations.

      Malvern Retreat House and the Grotto are places that you come to and journey in pilgrimage. This is a journey outwards but I hope that while you are here, you travel into God’s inner circle and feel that inner transformation that leads to an interior peace.

      I invite you to come to Malvern this fall and experience the beauty of the changing of the leaves, the inner silence as you listen to the voice of the Lord, and experience the inner peace and transformation that only the Lord can give you.

Prosit!
Fr Gregg Hickey, Rector
ghickey@malvernretreat.com