My Manresa Story: Resting a While

Gianpaolo Capozzi

Monday, February 24, 2025

Photo of a path leading through a grassy lawn, flanked by gates labeled Manresa.

Manresa Spiritual Renewal Centre in Pickering, ON. Photo by the author. © Salt + Light Media, 2025.

Last fall, I had the pleasure of visiting Manresa Spiritual Renewal Centre as they celebrated their 75th anniversary. As always, it was a delightful experience that undoubtedly brought me closer to God. The trip felt like I was reconnecting with an old friend...

My first time visiting Manresa was about two years ago for a high school religious retreat. The centre is in Pickering, ON, and while it is certainly not in the middle of nowhere (approximately a 3-minute drive from a McDonald's), its design and architecture make it a perfect sanctuary away from the bustle of city life.

The retreat I went on was called “Kairos,” a three-day, two-night retreat focused on helping young people discover who they really are. The word “Kairos,” we were told, means “God’s time,” as in, “this time was for God.” What was interesting about the retreat was that we were not allowed phones and had little to no access to clocks. This meant whenever someone asked, “What time is it?” our teachers would always smoothly respond with, “Hey, it's God's time.”

In all honesty, though, I have to commend my teachers for the trip, as it is a very delicate maneuver to take teenagers (of all people) away from the rest of the world and put them in a place where they have to go to Mass every day and pray all the time. I don’t intend to give too much away here, as there are many elements in the retreat where prior knowledge of them ruins the experience. But still, as I was on the bus there, all I could think of was the mountain of work I had to do back home. I was on the Student Council, Prefects, Tech Club, and the Newspaper Club, on top of taking four courses, so you can imagine the last thing I wanted to do was drive an hour away to Pickering for a retreat.

Yet, when the three days were done, I did not want to leave.

The retreat is a lot more fun than you would expect. I attended Brebeuf College School, an all-boys Jesuit school in North York. The spiritual aspect of the retreat was great, and in that respect, I was brought closer to God. However, unlike my experience at school, the retreat had an added dimension of play and joy: football or soccer outside, plentiful and delicious food, calling teachers by their first names, which was integrated into its spirituality. I came out of that trip feeling rejuvenated with a newfound confidence in myself and God that I never had before.

Jumping back to a memory from last fall: I am sitting across from Fr. Henk Van Meijel, SJ, Director of Manresa Spiritual Renewal Centre, who you may recognize from the Daily TV Mass. To prepare for a segment in behold on the centre, I interviewed him about its history and its charism in the spirituality of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Fr. Henk is a brilliant man with a bright personality and a warm smile.

Photo of Fr. Henk, a bearded man in a clergy collar and with an open-mouthed smile.

Fr. Henk Van Meijel, SJ.

By the end, I asked him if there was anything else he wanted to add, and he said, “Come and rest a while. That’s our slogan, actually.” At that point, it all made sense.

He had mentioned earlier that we are in a “busy, 24/7 culture” and that it wasn’t healthy to sustain that. When I embarked on the Kairos retreat, I did not want to stop all my school work and extracurricular activities all at once, but it became crystal clear that it was necessary. Not only did it put my mind at ease, making me a better student, but it made me a better person in uncalculable ways.

While working on the Manresa segment for the January 29th behold episode, I also discovered the incredible stories of many Manresa retreatants. One that stuck out to me was that of Kathy Dempsey, who turned from a retreatant looking for help to becoming a board member of Manresa. Her story is amazing and inspiring, and I would encourage you to hear her tell it in that episode.

Salt + Light Plus subscribers can watch the full episode of behold on-demand today!