The Rev. Joel Macul, OSB, STL, will present a retreat titled, “With Age-Old Love I have Loved You” (Jeremiah 31:3) at Saint Benedict Center, four miles north of Schuyler, February 14 – 16, 2025.
Fr. Joel Macul, OSB.
“Your words were my joy, the happiness of my heart” (Jer 15:16). This line sounds as though it comes from someone who delights in the Lord’s love. But for Jeremiah they come out of an experience of crisis. The world that he knows is coming apart. And he finds himself torn between his love for the community and his fidelity to God. He bears in himself the pain of Israel’s blindness to the truth and at the same time God’s everlasting love for his chosen people. It is the “age-old love with which I have loved you” (Jer 31:3) that Jeremiah clings to as he sees his familiar world disappear. We will see how Jeremiah stands firm in a changing world, how he confronts those who don’t want to see and how he speaks of a new relationship for the future built on a covenant that, once made, God will never let go of. We will hear how Jeremiah is no stranger to us in a time when we are living in a change of eras and still speaks to us of a compassion that wants to embrace us and make us new.
Benedictine Father Joel Macul was the prior at Christ the King Priory in Schuyler, Nebraska, from 2017 till 2023. Prior to that, he served as abbot of St. Paul’s Abbey in Newton, New Jersey, and taught Scripture at Tangaza College and Catholic University of Eastern Africa in Nairobi, Kenya. He now lives again in Newton, New Jersey.
The retreat begins on Friday, at 7:30 p.m. and ends on Sunday after Lunch. The program fee is $80; room and board charges are additional.