Simeon and Ana: A new Catholic retreat for people over 70 is born

This weekend the Simeón and Ana Catholic retreat is celebrated in Spain for the first time, aimed at people over 70 years old, which is presented as an “encounter with the Lord who gives meaning to everything and guides the conquest of life. eternal.”

The coordinator of this new evangelization format, Susi de Pablos, explains to ACI Prensa that the idea of ​​offering an experience of this type comes from the parish priest of the church of Santo Cristo de la Misericordia, (Boadilla del Monte, Diocese of Getafe), Javier Siegrist.

For years, Siegrist has been one of the priests most involved with the Emmaus, Effetá, Bartimaeus or Conjugal Love Project retreats and thinking about them, he considered “that there was a lack of a retreat dedicated to older people,” details the coordinator.

Like the other best-known retreats of this style, the dynamics, testimonies and experiences revolve around the episode from the Gospel according to Saint Luke starring the old man Simeon and the prophetess Anna, in which they praise the Lord on the day of his presentation in the temple while he was still a child.

It is a retreat designed so that older people “realize what Jesus needs of them in this life” and the reference they are for their family: “They have brought the faith to their children, they have committed themselves, They have been taken care of. And now, sometimes, they find that they can do less and less, that in order for their children to come they always have to wait until it is convenient for them…” explains Susi.

Regarding its structure and specific content, no details can be known before experiencing it, but Susi de Pablos does reveal that the pace is much slower (people over 90 years old attend) and that the program includes “dynamics that are very visual” and some “super happy” testimonies that give hope.

At the moment there are 33 people who will receive this first Simeon and Ana Retreat, which is considered a success.

Susi de Pablos also points out that this retreat is very necessary because “some at that age are very alone” and also because of a certain way of teaching the faith when they were children, very different from the current paradigm:

“The Lord and the God that we were taught at school was a very different God. It is not the God who loves you, who welcomes you, with whom you can have a heart-to-heart relationship with Him. But a God who waits for us behind a broom to see what we do wrong,” Susi laments.

As the retreat is aimed at people in the last stretch of their lives, Susi adds that it is also about sponging the heart and instilling hope: “It is about uniting earth with sky. And also that they realize that God’s mercy is infinite, that he continues to love and need us.”