Scholastica Oblate Deanery Gathers for Annual Retreat

By Oblate Shari Reilly 

The Scholastica oblate deanery, which started in Kansas City, Missouri, has been together for 34 years. Over the years we have added to our numbers while keeping active membership between 15 and 20 members. As members scattered across the country, we started to meet regularly by Zoom and became accustomed to seeing one another’s beloved faces in little boxes on a screen. This prompted us to prioritize gathering in person, and it is now our custom to travel to the Mount for an annual 3-day retreat.  

We focused our 2025 retreat on the topic, “End of Life: Your Gift to Family and Friends.”

Retreats begin with an evening of catching up. Over wine and festive snacks, we share life stories, pray together, and more recently, remember members who have passed from this life into the next. This practice prompted us to focus our 2025 retreat on the topic, “End of Life: Your Gift to Family and Friends.” 

Why talk about end of life? The Rule of Benedict says, “Day by day remind yourself that you are going to die” (RB 4:47). We chose to talk about the end of life because so many people do not. We shared information about everything from estate planning, advance directives, and palliative care to how to talk about death. We spoke about five things to say to someone who is dying: “I love you,” “thank you,” “I forgive you,” “please forgive me,” and “I’ll be okay.” We discussed the elements of obituaries and funeral rituals and how to express what is important to us. We reminded ourselves that funerals are for the living, so we should not try to plan every detail of our own funeral but invite our loved ones to include elements that that are most important to them. We even discussed the ethics of cremation, traditional burial, and “green burial.”  

After such a grace-filled discussion, we spent time centering ourselves, allowing love to radiate from our hearts, and grounding ourselves in God’s creation. We reflected on the impact of our lives and choices on creation. We remembered Mary Hynes, Louise Leipold, Hilary Lohrman, Dianna Whitaker, and all the deceased members of our deanery. We enjoyed praying with the sisters, visiting in the dining room, and spending time at the graves of the sisters with whom we shared treasured friendships in life and whose memory we honor in death. 

We recognized that as we approach our 35th year together, we are closer to the end than to the beginning. However, with members added as recently as a year ago, we look to the future with hope and trust in the providence of God, deeply rooted in the stability of the Mount St. Scholastica community.