A few years back I was blessed to be able to attend my first, and only, LMC retreat. I traveled from Virginia to Scranton, PA--a four hour drive--by myself . My life at that time was difficult to say the least as I was learning to surrender and humble myself to life's circumstances and God's providence. My husband had been a District Manager of Circuit City when the company went bankrupt. He lost his job and couldn't find a new one in the economic recession. We slowly lost everything. We had to move with our four daughters in with my parents. The idea of a retreat was appealing.
I suppose it was emotional exhaustion from our recent loss of livelihood coupled with a deep self-accusing feeling of sinfulness (mind you, I am a former teen mom with a less than polished past, to put it nicely--self forgiveness is an ongoing issue of mine :) that overwhelmed me emotionally. I spent a good part of the retreat in tears! Lol, not what I was expecting. But it ended up being one of the most beautiful, memorable, and important experiences in my life. I went in crying and came out radiating.
One the priests giving the retreat was Msgr. Esseff. He was absolutely amazing! He was a spiritual director and confessor of Mother Teresa, gives spiritual retreats to the MC sisters around the world, and occasionally to us LMCs too. He recently gave direction to some sisters at a retreat in Australia. You can hear an array of podcasts on his web page called, Building a Kingdom of Love. I recommend you listen to any (if not all) of his talks, but I am sharing with you this one in particular on vows. Msgr. Esseff has some beautiful words to share not only on religious vows, but on marriage vows as well.
I hope you enjoy:
The Vow – Session 2 Day 7 of the Australian Spiritual Retreat
If the link does not work, try visiting his web page for the full list of recorded sessions, and listen from there.