This is supposed to be an intellectual retreat.

You might be asking yourself, what does that mean?

It's different from an intellectual conference,

like an academic conference,

that aims principally at acquiring academic knowledge.

We care about that, and I hope that you will acquire some academic knowledge in the course of this weekend.

But it's different from a purely academic event, because our aim is not only to feed your intellect, but also your soul.

In fact, from a domestic perspective,

feeding your intellect is feeding your soul.

And we want these two to come together

and to resonate with each other.

It's also not like other retreats you might have been on.

I don't know what kinds of retreats you've been on.

When I was in high school, I went on some retreats that

looking back on them from their perspective of the Dominican priest

didn't seem very retreat-like, except insofar as retreat came to mean an emotional experience

with your friends.

Some retreats will emphasize maybe having individual prayer experiences or something like that.

And we hope that you have that too here, but that's not principally what our time together will involve.

We want you to enter into this intellectual retreat thinking about a profound mystery of our faith,

which we hope will help you enter more profoundly into the mystery itself.

So that's the goal, is to enter into that mystery.

...