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`The best spiritual memoir I've read since Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain. Andrew Krivak conveys his own ardent search while also capturing the fragmented spirit of our times, making his "long retreat" the occasion for a wise, tough and sometimes refreshingly comic meditation on faith. I read it like a detective story, unable to put it down--and then unable (and unwilling) to stop thinking about its lingering questions.'
--Patricia Hampl
--Patricia Hampl
Product Description
This gorgeously written memoir tells the story of one man's search for his religious calling--a search that led him to the Dominican Republic and Central Europe, to Moscow and the South Bronx, and finally into married life with a woman whose search for God coincided with his own.
In 1990 Andrew Krivak - poet, yacht rigger, ocean lifeguard, student of the classics - entered the Society of Jesus. The heart of Jesuit training is the Long Retreat, thirty days of silence and prayer in which the Jesuit novice reflects on the gospels and tests his desire for the priesthood. For Krivak, eight years of Jesuit formation turned out to be a long retreat in its own right, as he tested all his desires - for poetry, for travel, for independence, for love - against the pledge to do all "for the greater glory of God." And in this deeply affecting book the long retreat becomes a pattern for our own spiritual lives, enabling us to embrace our desire for solitude and perspective in our own circumstances, the way Krivak has in his new life as a husband, father, and writer.
The search for God is finally the search for oneself, St. Augustine wrote. Krivak's story pushes past the awful stories of scandal in the Catholic Church to reveal why a modern, forward-looking man would yearn to be a priest.
Unlike those stories, it has a happy ending - one in which we can recognise ourselves.
In 1990 Andrew Krivak - poet, yacht rigger, ocean lifeguard, student of the classics - entered the Society of Jesus. The heart of Jesuit training is the Long Retreat, thirty days of silence and prayer in which the Jesuit novice reflects on the gospels and tests his desire for the priesthood. For Krivak, eight years of Jesuit formation turned out to be a long retreat in its own right, as he tested all his desires - for poetry, for travel, for independence, for love - against the pledge to do all "for the greater glory of God." And in this deeply affecting book the long retreat becomes a pattern for our own spiritual lives, enabling us to embrace our desire for solitude and perspective in our own circumstances, the way Krivak has in his new life as a husband, father, and writer.
The search for God is finally the search for oneself, St. Augustine wrote. Krivak's story pushes past the awful stories of scandal in the Catholic Church to reveal why a modern, forward-looking man would yearn to be a priest.
Unlike those stories, it has a happy ending - one in which we can recognise ourselves.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Krivak's spiritual journey began when at the age of fourteen he read Thomas Merton's Seven Storey Mountain and decided he would become a monk. But Krivak's journey is his own, as Merton's was his; and it is, in the end, a very different one. Merton's quest brought him to life as a monk, and ultimately to life as a hermit, while Krivak became a Jesuit, not a monk, and his eventual destiny is as a husband and father.
The "long retreat" of the title has layers of meaning. A traditional part of Jesuit formation is the making of the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius, a long retreat of thirty days. But for Krivak, his eight years as a Jesuit were also one long retreat: not only a retreat in the spiritual sense, in which he tried to become more sensitive to the movements of the Holy Spirit and to the action of God in his life, but also, in his particular case, a retreat from a deep fear that if he ever allowed himself to be loved by another person, that other person would walk away. The book is the story of a quest: not only a quest for God in the author's personal life, but also a quest for an identity. And on another level, it is a quest for his own history, as Krivak explores the liturgy and ritual of his ancestors in Eastern Christianity.
But there is much more to the book than the author's personal story. Like its title, it has layer upon layer. It is a book about prayer and the spiritual life, and it is a book about Ignatian discernment. The author clearly has a great love for and understanding of Ignatius of Loyola, and his explanation of the spiritual exercises will do much to make the rather archaic language of the original text relevant for today's readers. Indeed, Krivak's own experience of making the spiritual exercises is central to the story.
The book is a gripping one. Although we know from the start that Krivak ultimately leaves the Jesuits, the story reads like a novel of suspense, as we follow him along a path of discernment that seems to lead him ever more surely to complete commitment as a Jesuit. How, we wonder, does this seemingly straight path suddenly turn around? This question pursues the reader almost right to the end.
I loved this book, and I highly recommend it.
The "long retreat" of the title has layers of meaning. A traditional part of Jesuit formation is the making of the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius, a long retreat of thirty days. But for Krivak, his eight years as a Jesuit were also one long retreat: not only a retreat in the spiritual sense, in which he tried to become more sensitive to the movements of the Holy Spirit and to the action of God in his life, but also, in his particular case, a retreat from a deep fear that if he ever allowed himself to be loved by another person, that other person would walk away. The book is the story of a quest: not only a quest for God in the author's personal life, but also a quest for an identity. And on another level, it is a quest for his own history, as Krivak explores the liturgy and ritual of his ancestors in Eastern Christianity.
But there is much more to the book than the author's personal story. Like its title, it has layer upon layer. It is a book about prayer and the spiritual life, and it is a book about Ignatian discernment. The author clearly has a great love for and understanding of Ignatius of Loyola, and his explanation of the spiritual exercises will do much to make the rather archaic language of the original text relevant for today's readers. Indeed, Krivak's own experience of making the spiritual exercises is central to the story.
The book is a gripping one. Although we know from the start that Krivak ultimately leaves the Jesuits, the story reads like a novel of suspense, as we follow him along a path of discernment that seems to lead him ever more surely to complete commitment as a Jesuit. How, we wonder, does this seemingly straight path suddenly turn around? This question pursues the reader almost right to the end.
I loved this book, and I highly recommend it.
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