Crucial Christian Retreats
Crucial Christian retreats are offered for individuals, couples, and groups. Please see below for more information about all the retreats we offer. Every retreat offers psychomoral and spiritual direction intended to facilitate spiritual growth and vocational discernment. Please contact us if you are interested in a attending a retreat.
Individual Retreats
Private Directed Retreats for individuals are conducted under the psychomoral spiritual direction of Dr. G.C. Dilsaver and/or a Psychomoral Mentor are available throughout the year and may last from a few days to a few weeks. Retreatants stay at the bed and breakfast Crucial Christian Cottage, which is located on a country farm. All prospective private retreatants must engage upon a video-conference preparatory course of Psychomoralitics.
Marital Retreats
Marital couples stay at the Institute of Crucial Christian Living for three to four days. The Becoming One in Christ retreat is for those couples experiencing severe distress either between themselves or in their families. This retreat may include individual and marital moral mentoring and spiritual direction, as well as psychodrama, educational and cultural presentations, and couple's recreational activities.
Women's Retreats
The Feminine Charism, Cultivating the Sweet Womanly Heart, is a 30-day retreat program. The participants will consists of a small cohort of women seeking vocational discernment or renewal. In addition to participating in a retreat program that follows a monastic horarium of prayer, work, and recreation, retreatants will also be able to avail themselves of a full course (7 sessions) of Psychomoralitics with the program director, Dr. G.C. Dilsaver.
The program is intended for women who desire to further manifest the feminine charism by conforming their hearts to that of the Blessed Mother's. In doing so emotional, moral, and relational issues that impede the feminine charism will be diminished and that which facilitates it promoted. As grace builds upon nature, both the vocation of holy matrimony and the consecrated life build upon womanliness. But many women today have had the blossoming of the feminine heart hampered psychomorally due to the familial and/or sociological improprieties so endemic to our age.
The Feminine Charism program is based on Crucial Christian Living and Psychomoralitics expounded in Dr. Dilsaver's books, Psychomoralitics: The Soul-Deep Alternative to the Failed Mental Health Professions (2018); Celebrating God-Given Gender: Masculinity & Femininity per Nature & Grace (2017); and The Three Marks of Manhood (2010).
The program is intended for women who desire to further manifest the feminine charism by conforming their hearts to that of the Blessed Mother's. In doing so emotional, moral, and relational issues that impede the feminine charism will be diminished and that which facilitates it promoted. As grace builds upon nature, both the vocation of holy matrimony and the consecrated life build upon womanliness. But many women today have had the blossoming of the feminine heart hampered psychomorally due to the familial and/or sociological improprieties so endemic to our age.
The Feminine Charism program is based on Crucial Christian Living and Psychomoralitics expounded in Dr. Dilsaver's books, Psychomoralitics: The Soul-Deep Alternative to the Failed Mental Health Professions (2018); Celebrating God-Given Gender: Masculinity & Femininity per Nature & Grace (2017); and The Three Marks of Manhood (2010).
Men's Retreats
V4Victory is a 30 day retreat that consists of a small cohort (e.g., 5 to 10) of sincere Catholic men similar in age and backgrounds. V4Victory stands for Virtuous, Vocational, Vulnerable, & Visionary. Virtuous is the call to Christian manhood; Vocational is the call to conversion and one's specific path in life; Vulnerable is a call to suffering well and courageously the Crucial Christian Way; Visionary is a call to discipleship and leadership; all taken together is a call to the victory of holiness and bringing about God's Kingdom. Most men seek our program out because they realize that somehow they have been hampered from progressing on the path of true Christian manhood, a condition endemic to our age. Paradoxically, these young men often have been hampered by the very qualities that give rise to their promise; indeed their recognition of their deficiencies marks them out from their peers who are complacent in their inadequacy.
During this retreat residents are formed in the Way of Crucial Christian Living, where above all they learn to open themselves to the action of Christ in their lives, thus allowing the Lord to speak to each one personally. This is done via a psychomoralitic process of soul-deep openness to reality, cognitive education in and assent to truth, and volitional choosing of the good. Upon this psychomoralitic process builds the Faith, where the ego decreases so that Christ may increase. The integral sum of this psychomoralitic and sanctifying Crucial Christian process is living the truth in a coherently and uncompromisingly Christian life.
During this retreat residents are formed in the Way of Crucial Christian Living, where above all they learn to open themselves to the action of Christ in their lives, thus allowing the Lord to speak to each one personally. This is done via a psychomoralitic process of soul-deep openness to reality, cognitive education in and assent to truth, and volitional choosing of the good. Upon this psychomoralitic process builds the Faith, where the ego decreases so that Christ may increase. The integral sum of this psychomoralitic and sanctifying Crucial Christian process is living the truth in a coherently and uncompromisingly Christian life.
Priest retreats
This retreat promotes personal and vocational growth and training in a Thomistic pastoral system for confessors and spiritual directors. Retreat days follow a monastic horarium and include academic classes, private and group spiritual exercises, private mentoring, group discussions. Retreatants may come earlier or stay later after the formal retreat is ended.
As grace builds upon nature, the Imago Dei Priest Retreat renews and strengthens a man's priesthood from the foundational ground up and teaches principles applicable to spiritual direction and formation. As such, each of the following seven essential Christian vocation is examined and its rectified answer facilitated: 1. Psychomoralitic Vocation; 2. Incarnational Vocation; 3. Familial Vocation; 4. Sociopolitical Vocation; 5. Christian Vocation; 6. Ecclesial Vocation; 7. Specific/Priestly/Religious Vocation.
The first four vocational states are of nature and apply to all men. The last three vocational states are of super-nature and apply to Christians. All the vocational states, be they natural or super-natural, are integral one to another and reciprocally impact each other. The Imago Dei Priest Retreat's curriculum emphasizes of the Sacrament of Holy Orders and the evangelical counsels and examines pastoral applications for a priest's direction of others in discernment and/or formation.
As grace builds upon nature, the Imago Dei Priest Retreat renews and strengthens a man's priesthood from the foundational ground up and teaches principles applicable to spiritual direction and formation. As such, each of the following seven essential Christian vocation is examined and its rectified answer facilitated: 1. Psychomoralitic Vocation; 2. Incarnational Vocation; 3. Familial Vocation; 4. Sociopolitical Vocation; 5. Christian Vocation; 6. Ecclesial Vocation; 7. Specific/Priestly/Religious Vocation.
The first four vocational states are of nature and apply to all men. The last three vocational states are of super-nature and apply to Christians. All the vocational states, be they natural or super-natural, are integral one to another and reciprocally impact each other. The Imago Dei Priest Retreat's curriculum emphasizes of the Sacrament of Holy Orders and the evangelical counsels and examines pastoral applications for a priest's direction of others in discernment and/or formation.
Group Retreats
Group Retreats are offered throughout the year and in various facilitates and locations. These group retreats aim to be a life changing, indeed character changing, experience. Group retreatants engage in individual psychomoral mentoring and spiritual direction sessions, group classes, activities, peer discussions, seminars, and spiritual exercises. Women and men attend separate retreats, as do clergy and religious.
Retreats are offered for the following cohorts: men and women in discernment, married men and women, single men and women, religious men and women, and clergy.
Retreats are offered for the following cohorts: men and women in discernment, married men and women, single men and women, religious men and women, and clergy.
For more information on specific retreats click below:
Individual Retreats
Marital Retreats
Women's Retreats
Men's Retreats
Priest Retreats
Group Retreats
Family Retreats