AJHS faculty & staff retreat: a sacred reset

From 24-27 June 2025, the Ateneo de Manila Junior High School (AJHS) community had its annual 3-Day Ignatian Retreat at Maryridge Retreat and Renewal Center in Tagaytay City. Led by Fr Jordan J Orbe SJ, Director of the EMMAUS Center for Psycho-Spiritual Formation, the retreat was a sacred time for AJHS faculty and staff to pause, reflect, and prepare for the new school year with renewed hope.

There was something different and especially moving about this year’s AJHS faculty and staff retreat.

More than just the fact that it marked the beginning of our in-service training, it was what our retreat director, Fr Jordy Orbe SJ, aptly called a sacred reset. And he was right. It felt like the chance to press an invisible button—a way for all of us to start fresh, to begin the school year renewed with hope and purpose.

But for me, it was more than that. It felt like a homecoming.

The moment I stepped into the room assigned to me and realized it was the exact same one I had during a previous stay at the beautiful, lakeside haven of the RGS Sisters’ Mary Ridge, something within me clicked. It was an unexpected, yet comforting surprise—one I immediately took as a sign. In that moment, I felt a gentle permission to make myself comfortable, to rest, and to find peace during the next four days.

Indeed, I found the peace and rest I had been seeking—though it didn’t come to me right away. I brought with me a heavy load of emotional baggage on the way to Tagaytay, and it felt far weightier and bulkier than the actual luggage I wheeled into the retreat house. Crippling anxieties, past wounds, nagging insecurities—I bore their weight. As we ascended to Tagaytay, I silently prayed, asking the Lord to help me carry them and to give me the strength to confront them in the days ahead.

True to His nature, the Lord did not let me down. In fact, He even outdid Himself—just as He always does. What I had prayed for came to me in the quietest of moments, within the stillness of my room, when I least expected it, and most beautifully, in the presence of the Lord.

The inner peace and the healing that I asked for, I realized, would come only when I opened my heart to the Lord’s presence and when I acknowledged my thoughts, worries, and distractions while seeking to be in His company. This inner work that I had to go through with much vigor while catching up on sleep and eating well, was indeed necessary– painful, but necessary. It was during those moments of prayer and introspection that I could be honest with the Lord, and in turn be honest with myself and face my messiness and forgive myself for my mistakes.  We leave all judgment at the door, because our Lord does not look at us with judgmental eyes, and His ways are not our ways. This insight helped me heal, and I know that healing is a path that I must continue to tread and pray for until I truly accept myself and the other difficult aspects of my life while I try to find peace in the midst of the mess and the noise. 

Grace poured in copious amounts during the four days that we spent at Mary Ridge. To be surrounded by beauty, silence, and love in all forms certainly humbled me and made me grateful. No wonder it felt like a homecoming.  And yet, we were once again reminded of the people and situations we left behind in the city.

There’s always a bittersweet feeling that comes with leaving the retreat house and going back to Manila; going back to our lives and to the daily grind comes with a feeling of uncertainty, which I find unsettling. I found myself wishing my companions and I could stay there a bit longer.  But that would already be escapism. 

But then, in my prayer and in my reflection, the Lord’s presence reassured me that He will continue to meet me where I am, while I’m preparing for work and even as I head home after a long and hopefully productive day. I cannot and will not deny that my encounter with the Lord was real, and I continue to ask Him to sustain me as I face another school year. May I keep meeting Him in the students who will be placed in my care and in the classrooms that I will enter each day. That homecoming was necessary, I believe, so I can also help others find safety and comfort in His presence. Like His love, these must never be experienced in scarcity, but openly and freely.