Come and draw from the well

Spiritual center operated by the religious of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

3 days & more

You need time just to let God’s gaze rest on you. That’s why the Centre offers long retreat periods if you so wish, giving you the chance to walk with the Lord and listen with the inner ear.

Retreats


All the year round, the Centre welcomes anyone who wishes to make a retreat. These retreats are for everyone, young and not so young, whether you’re on your own, in a couple or in a group, lay people, religious men and women, priests…

The retreat is a time of stepping aside in an atmosphere of prayer and silence. It places us in the light of Christ and can have a specific aim:

  • To learn or learn again to pray
  • To deepen your relationship with God
  • To stand back a little from everyday life
  • To take a new look at your life and bring it all together
  • To take an important decision, make a free choice
  • To renew your strength at a difficult time

At the Sophie Barat Centre, several kinds of retreat are offered:

  • Retreats of initiation into the Spiritual Exercises: 5 days just to let God look at you through guided prayer, sharing, and personal companioning.
  • Individual retreats: 5, 8, 10 or 30 days “à la carte” to deepen your relationship to God, all at your own pace, restock your resources or make a decision in faith, using a personalised programme.

A Pilgrimage “in Sophie’s footsteps”


Do you want to take time to grow in friendship with Sophie Barat, or perhaps to have a special encounter with God, as she herself had in this house?
For the “pilgrims”, 3 days is the ideal length of time to follow a complete itinerary in Sophie’s footsteps, visiting the house, just letting yourself be under God’s gaze, following suggestions for prayer, making a review of your life by letting Sophie’s life challenge you, resting and visiting the town…
You could enrich your “pilgrimage” by going to pray at St Thibault’s (the church where Sophie was baptized), taking a “contemplative walk” through the vines (Sophie often quoted the Gospel of the vine), discovering the banks of the Yonne (she left for Paris from there), praying in her room, contemplating the beautiful sampler she embroidered; it hints already at the spirituality of the Sacred Heart…
3 days will give you time to take a deeper look at what the spirituality of the Sacred Heart meant for Sophie, by discovering the root from which it all grew: those first 15 years of her life in Joigny.