Way of Beauty Summer Retreat

Dates:	First Retreat: Friday, July 6 – Sunday, July 8. Second Retreat: Friday, August 3 – Sunday, August 5. Participants arrive on Friday evening at 4:00pm and depart after Mass and brunch on Sunday.
Program Cost:	$300 includes room, tuition, and meals

Develop your spirituality…broaden your creativity

This residential course in prayer and culture will transform the spirit and direct you to the via pulchritudinis, the “way of beauty” – the divine path to creativity, love and joy.

Through this Retreat, you will learn about traditional culture – art, architecture, music – and how it reflects the rhythms and patterns of the cosmos.  You will also explore how the cycles and rhythms of the liturgy – the formal and public worship of the Church – participate in the same heavenly standard.

In the chapel, you will learn to chant the Liturgy of the Hours. The Liturgy of the Hours is a simple and beautiful prayer that enables you to “breathe” with the Church.  It is so simple, in fact, that you can take it back to your family or your choir so they can chant it too.  Apart from the Mass, the Catechism tells us, the Liturgy of the Hours is the most powerful and effective prayer.

You will also receive an introduction to the traditional ‘quadrivium’, or ‘four ways’, of studying the pattern, harmony and order in nature and mathematics, viewed as a reflection of the Divine Order and perceived by us as beauty. They provide the basis for a tradition of harmony and proportion in design and for a tradition of beautiful geometric art used, for example in tiled floors. Along with Church Tradition, these principles also provide the model for the rhythms and cycles of the liturgy.

Christian culture was patterned after this ‘cosmic order’. Literature, art, music, architecture – all of creation and potentially all human activity – are bound together by this common harmony and receive their fullest meaning the Church’s liturgy. Tradition tells us that when we apprehend beauty we do so intuitively, so an education in beauty is also an education in intuition and creativity. This results not only in more ideas, but also better ideas.

Previous training in art or music is not required for the Way of Beauty Summer Retreat.

The two retreats cover the same ideas, but have a slightly different emphasis. The first retreat focuses more on general principles, and as such is appropriate for those who have not been on one before. The second focuses more on learning prayer and studies the manifestation of these principles in particular works of art. As such it is more appropriate for those who have either been on a Way of Beauty retreat before, or are more interested in learning about chanting and praying the liturgy of the hours.