The Retreat Ministry is currently hosting a variety of retreats for the spring semester, with specific retreats available for first-year, female and queer students. Retreats usually last a weekend and take place at Fordham’s retreat house upstate in Goshen, N.Y. Upcoming retreats include the Spring Art and Yoga Retreat (March 1-3), Emmaus 130 (March 8-10) and the Queer Art Retreat (Feb. 24).
“Our number one mission is always to encourage students to explore their spiritualities and take that one step further, no matter what that may be,” explained Stephanie Roddy, associate director of Campus Ministry. “We hope to find God in all things, to tap into the communities that we’re a part of, our inner-selves and our inner-worlds, and really show the way that spirituality is working in our lives.”
Retreats typically span a weekend. Students leave the Rose Hill campus on a Friday after classes and drive up to Fordham’s retreat house. Retreats involve a mix of small group conversations, individual reflection time, activities and talks from student retreat leaders over the course of three days. Students also join in community-building activities such as Taizé prayers, fireside chats and arts and crafts.
Planning for these retreats is a year-long process that involves a team of roughly 15-30 student leaders, a graduate assistant and Roddy herself. The team is established the academic year prior and student leaders participate in retreats and trainings that teach them important leadership and speaking skills.
“Our retreat team works year-long and they’re broken up into leadership teams of four to six student leaders,” explained Roddy. “Each of our semesters starts with a leader’s retreat for these retreat leaders where we go through the formation together and make sure people know how to craft a talk, how to facilitate small groups and more of the logistics side of the retreat program.”
Each retreat is usually planned out over the course of a month. Leaders for each retreat meet and design reflections, talks and activities for each weekend.
Though retreats are often emphasized in the Jesuit tradition, the Retreat Ministry offers retreats that cater to people of various faiths and identities.
“We start each of our retreats with the ‘Spirit of the Weekend’ — a list of maybe eight or 10 instructions for the weekend. And we have one bullet point that specifically talks about prayer. Through this bullet point, we invite everyone to approach prayers that might be different from the way that you connect with your spirituality and your inner world, but to approach it with open eyes and open ears and to take the lessons that are there and to apply them to your own life,” Roddy said.
Roddy explained that each retreat is unique and an experience that she finds inimitable: “Something that we say that I feel is really important [is] that there’s never a retreat gathering that’s exactly the same, that every group that comes in is unique to that group. So even though I could’ve been on a hundred FreshVisions, each group of first-year students is going to bring new energies and new perspectives… I think that is what makes it so special — each group that gathers in Goshen, it’s the first time that that specific group of people will be there together, and it’s also the last time that that specific group will share that weekend.”
The Retreat Team is currently accepting applications for the 2024-25 academic year. Applications can be found online and are due on March 10. For questions, please contact Stephanie Roddy at [email protected].
