Retreat Days at Sea

Saturday evening, we attended a dinner at a restaurant that had some tables reserved for our Magnificat group. We sat at a table with 6 other people: a couple from West Virginia, a couple from just down the street in Zelienople, a lady from Florida and a priest also from Florida, but whose family is from the Pittsburgh area. We had great conversation, good food, and a very enjoyable evening.

Sunday morning began (after breakfast) with the rosary, praise and worship, and a talk by Jimmy Seghers, who spoke on the topic of “Staying on Course”. During his talk, Jimmy pointed out how we get off course by getting attached to the wrong things. He spoke of God’s love for us as expressed in the Biblical Old Testament book “Song of songs.”

After Jimmy’s talk, we had Mass, said by our beloved Fr. Tom, in one of the ship theaters. Fr. Tom thought it was funny that he had to walk through three bars to get to the theater where we were having Mass. One side of the theater had glass walls, and people in the hallway that were passing by kept stopping and looking in to see what was going on in this theater. I wonder what they were thinking when they discovered a Catholic Mass was taking place. The ship did make an announcement and said that everyone was welcome to attend, and we did have some non-Magnificat cruisers join us for Mass. I’m sure they enjoyed Fr. Tom’s humor.

Mass in the theater

During the afternoons on the ship (at 3 p.m.) they offer “tea time”. I joined some Magnificat friends for tea and small sandwiches, but mostly for good conversation. Joe and I skipped the evening group Magnificat dinner, because the reservation is for 7:30 and we don’t usually eat that late. We’ll probably do our own thing for dinner for most of the cruise.

Because Monday was another day at sea, we had a similar retreat morning to Sunday: rosary, praise and worship, speaker, discussion, and Mass. Our speaker for Monday was Dr. Elizabeth Kim and she spoke on “Keeping Your Eyes on Jesus”. She referenced the apostles’ experience in the upper room that is recounted in the New Testament book of Acts. Since we were on Deck 17, she said that we were experiencing the Upper Room Caribbean Style. A takeaway from her talk is that fear and doubt hinder faith. Fear of abandonment, failure, rejection, suffering, the unknown, etc. – all these things can hinder us from having deeper faith and fully trusting in God.

I enjoyed another afternoon tea, this time with friends from Pittsburgh. It was so nice to connect with these ladies in this beautiful setting.

Joe and I discovered the fitness center, and we’ve used the treadmill and bicycles. We decided it was very necessary to do so in order to counter all the delicious food that we’ve been eating. We do love the food on this cruise and are thinking that it may be the best food of any of our cruises.

We have had a few issues with the service, and I therefore have dubbed Princess the Boomerang Cruise Line. The reason is that we would ask Person A about something and they would say that you have to ask Person B. Then when we’d ask Person B, they’d tell us that we have to ask Person A. This happened on quite a few occasions. They would send us back and forth, back and forth, until finally somebody would give us an answer, and we’d wonder if it was really the right answer, or if they just told us something to make us go away.