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A Long Retreat: In Search of a Religious Life
This gorgeously written memoir tells the story of one man's search for his religious calling--a search that led him to the Dominican Republic and Central Europe, to Moscow and the South Bronx, and finally into married life with a woman whose search for God coincided with his own.
In 1990 Andrew Krivak--poet, yacht rigger, ocean lifeguard, student of the classics--entered the Society of Jesus. The heart of Jesuit training is the Long Retreat, thirty days of silence and prayer in which the Jesuit novice reflects on the Gospels and tests his desire for the priesthood.
For Krivak, eight years of Jesuit formation turned out to be a long retreat in its own right, as he tested all his desires--for poetry, for travel, for independence, for love--against the pledge to do all "for the greater glory of God." And in this deeply affecting book the long retreat becomes a pattern for our own spiritual lives, enabling us to embrace our desire for solitude and perspective in our own circumstances, the way Krivak has in his new life as a husband, father, and writer.
The search for God is finally the search for oneself, St. Augustine wrote. Krivak's story pushes past the awful stories of scandal in the Catholic Church to reveal why a modern, forward-looking man would yearn to be a priest. Unlike those stories, it has an happy ending--one in which we can recognize ourselves.
In 1990 Andrew Krivak--poet, yacht rigger, ocean lifeguard, student of the classics--entered the Society of Jesus. The heart of Jesuit training is the Long Retreat, thirty days of silence and prayer in which the Jesuit novice reflects on the Gospels and tests his desire for the priesthood.
For Krivak, eight years of Jesuit formation turned out to be a long retreat in its own right, as he tested all his desires--for poetry, for travel, for independence, for love--against the pledge to do all "for the greater glory of God." And in this deeply affecting book the long retreat becomes a pattern for our own spiritual lives, enabling us to embrace our desire for solitude and perspective in our own circumstances, the way Krivak has in his new life as a husband, father, and writer.
The search for God is finally the search for oneself, St. Augustine wrote. Krivak's story pushes past the awful stories of scandal in the Catholic Church to reveal why a modern, forward-looking man would yearn to be a priest. Unlike those stories, it has an happy ending--one in which we can recognize ourselves.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published March 4, 2008
About the author
Andrew Krivak
10 books377 followersThe grandson of Slovak immigrants, Andrew Krivak grew up in Pennsylvania, has lived in London, and has taught at Harvard, Boston College, and the College of the Holy Cross. He lives with his wife and three children in Somerville, Massachusetts and Jaffrey, New Hampshire.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
March 27, 2021
The spiritual memoir is one of my favorite genres. I love to hear how people recognize and respond to the promptings of God in their lives. This is a very well written, deeply personal, honest account of the process of discerning a vocation to the Jesuits over a decade. After eight years in formation, the author will realize that he is being called to a life of love and service as a husband and father. But along the way, he will learn to pray, to listen for the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to surrender all to the will of God.
January 3, 2018
”Let me begin with an ending not yet my own.”
Through beautiful writing and some skillfully shared stories of his years in a search for his personal calling, which changes somewhat over the years as he grows from a boy to a man.
Raised as a Catholic by loving parents, Krivak is a somewhat soft-spoken man. I can easily see the attraction for him of entering into the Society of Jesus – the Jesuits. Of course, it’s a long road from Dallas, Pennsylvania where he lived as a boy, to the life he originally was driven toward, and then to find his home in a very different home than the one he had planned for many years.
This memoir is primarily about his years which led to him deciding he wanted to become a Jesuit priest, why that particular choice felt right to him for many years. Despite doubts, despite wavering moments.
“I was a voracious reader as a boy, so much so that I was often taunted at school with shouts of ‘Hey, bookworm?’ I didn’t care. Books were my map out of that small Pennsylvania town. I say this because, when my mother thrust a copy of Thomas Merton’s ’The Seven Storey Mountain’ in front of me one day (I couldn’t have been more than fourteen, I devoured it. And that life—a wanderer, a bad boy with a brain who in the end finds his place of belonging—became for me the ideal of what it meant to have a religious ‘calling’. So I set my heart on becoming a monk."
A beginning, of sorts. In the course of this quest, Krivak is led to many different corners of the world. Moscow, the Domican Republic, the South Bronx, Slovakia, Boston. Working in whatever capacity he was needed in, to begin with, working with AIDS victims in the early years, working with young children, living with the poor and destitute. Along the way he was tested many times, in many ways.
The life of those who wish to become Jesuit priests includes a four-week / 30-day retreat, generally referred to as “The Long Retreat.” Each week focuses on a different facet of faith, or removing deterrents, obstructions to faith. Silence. Prayer. A month with thoughts and feelings focused on their continued desires for the priesthood. Krivak’s personal journey toward his decision was a longer one. Sometimes we get so personally attached to an idea of what we’re supposed to be doing with our lives, when we’ve invested so much time, so much of ourselves that it becomes weighed down by the significance of change. Still, one does not give up easily on the idea of becoming a priest, or one would not have chosen that path to begin with.
”I worked and kept writing. And through all of this I kept going to Mass. My Catholicism remained, in a sense, the anchor to which I weekly tied the rode, from which swung my own as yet unharbored craft. Perhaps the maintenance of this exercise, though, is why, beneath the travels, the work, the writing, there smoldered the old desire to find something else, some place of silence, like the lingering whiff of candle smoke in an empty church after everyone has gone.”
Last year, around the time that ”The Signal Flame“ was released, he spoke at a bookstore that was on a very wintry day, and I was one of those who attended. I knew of this memoir, had a copy, in fact, but had not read it as of then. I was struck by how deliberately he chose his words, and his general sense of calm, which seemed independent of anything, anyone around him. His wife and children were there (and his children were extremely well behaved), and yet he never seemed to be distracted by the other “goings on” in the store. Radiant calm. He read some passages from ”The Signal Flame“, spoke a bit about those, and took questions, and with another guest author, Thomas Moore, a former monk, and exchanged insights he’d gained as a writer, along his journey from child to man. Friends who shared a somewhat common path.
”I was fortunate to discover—perhaps before it was too late—that while some details of my life had put me on the path toward priesthood, others remained to be discovered about the deeper path that, like an underground spring, runs beneath all others: the search for God that is the search for the self.”
”When I became a Jesuit, on the Long Retreat of the Spiritual Exercises, this became a desire to serve God, to imitate Christ in a priestly order of men, a desire that remained so until I felt the loss not of God but of who I was as a man. And now one question concerned me, one I always I could find in God while I kept it at bay from my fellow men and women searchers: Love. Pure and simple. Not some diffuse and vague feeling of warmth. Rather, this: How should a man love well? Without a life in search of that, I decided, I would find nothing, in service of no one. I would be a driftless and emptied community of… what? Certainly not a believer. The great mystery of Christianity is that God loves us first.If I doubted the possibility not of loving but of being loved, then I doubted everything.”
Recommended
Through beautiful writing and some skillfully shared stories of his years in a search for his personal calling, which changes somewhat over the years as he grows from a boy to a man.
Raised as a Catholic by loving parents, Krivak is a somewhat soft-spoken man. I can easily see the attraction for him of entering into the Society of Jesus – the Jesuits. Of course, it’s a long road from Dallas, Pennsylvania where he lived as a boy, to the life he originally was driven toward, and then to find his home in a very different home than the one he had planned for many years.
This memoir is primarily about his years which led to him deciding he wanted to become a Jesuit priest, why that particular choice felt right to him for many years. Despite doubts, despite wavering moments.
“I was a voracious reader as a boy, so much so that I was often taunted at school with shouts of ‘Hey, bookworm?’ I didn’t care. Books were my map out of that small Pennsylvania town. I say this because, when my mother thrust a copy of Thomas Merton’s ’The Seven Storey Mountain’ in front of me one day (I couldn’t have been more than fourteen, I devoured it. And that life—a wanderer, a bad boy with a brain who in the end finds his place of belonging—became for me the ideal of what it meant to have a religious ‘calling’. So I set my heart on becoming a monk."
A beginning, of sorts. In the course of this quest, Krivak is led to many different corners of the world. Moscow, the Domican Republic, the South Bronx, Slovakia, Boston. Working in whatever capacity he was needed in, to begin with, working with AIDS victims in the early years, working with young children, living with the poor and destitute. Along the way he was tested many times, in many ways.
The life of those who wish to become Jesuit priests includes a four-week / 30-day retreat, generally referred to as “The Long Retreat.” Each week focuses on a different facet of faith, or removing deterrents, obstructions to faith. Silence. Prayer. A month with thoughts and feelings focused on their continued desires for the priesthood. Krivak’s personal journey toward his decision was a longer one. Sometimes we get so personally attached to an idea of what we’re supposed to be doing with our lives, when we’ve invested so much time, so much of ourselves that it becomes weighed down by the significance of change. Still, one does not give up easily on the idea of becoming a priest, or one would not have chosen that path to begin with.
”I worked and kept writing. And through all of this I kept going to Mass. My Catholicism remained, in a sense, the anchor to which I weekly tied the rode, from which swung my own as yet unharbored craft. Perhaps the maintenance of this exercise, though, is why, beneath the travels, the work, the writing, there smoldered the old desire to find something else, some place of silence, like the lingering whiff of candle smoke in an empty church after everyone has gone.”
Last year, around the time that ”The Signal Flame“ was released, he spoke at a bookstore that was on a very wintry day, and I was one of those who attended. I knew of this memoir, had a copy, in fact, but had not read it as of then. I was struck by how deliberately he chose his words, and his general sense of calm, which seemed independent of anything, anyone around him. His wife and children were there (and his children were extremely well behaved), and yet he never seemed to be distracted by the other “goings on” in the store. Radiant calm. He read some passages from ”The Signal Flame“, spoke a bit about those, and took questions, and with another guest author, Thomas Moore, a former monk, and exchanged insights he’d gained as a writer, along his journey from child to man. Friends who shared a somewhat common path.
”I was fortunate to discover—perhaps before it was too late—that while some details of my life had put me on the path toward priesthood, others remained to be discovered about the deeper path that, like an underground spring, runs beneath all others: the search for God that is the search for the self.”
”When I became a Jesuit, on the Long Retreat of the Spiritual Exercises, this became a desire to serve God, to imitate Christ in a priestly order of men, a desire that remained so until I felt the loss not of God but of who I was as a man. And now one question concerned me, one I always I could find in God while I kept it at bay from my fellow men and women searchers: Love. Pure and simple. Not some diffuse and vague feeling of warmth. Rather, this: How should a man love well? Without a life in search of that, I decided, I would find nothing, in service of no one. I would be a driftless and emptied community of… what? Certainly not a believer. The great mystery of Christianity is that God loves us first.If I doubted the possibility not of loving but of being loved, then I doubted everything.”
Recommended
April 16, 2012
Really enjoyed this book. At the very least,it's illuminating and gratifying to learn that the Jesuits drink and swear. Like his other book, "The Sojourn",(the first chapter of which is one of the finest things I've read) this book is about a journey and some of this one seems so highly personal that his prose fails to include the reader at the deepest heart of his motivations and decisions. While the reasons for his ultimately leaving the Jesuit order are fairly clear, the reasons for his joining it are somewhat less so. That doesn't prevent the reader from being engaged in and accompanying Krivak on his "long retreat".
Between the lines I sensed that there are some unresolved issues among his siblings or within the narrative of his family of origin. Those may be worth a book in and of themselves, but it was as if he pulled a veil over that subject whenever it threatened to spill over into the story and something tells me that were he to be more forthcoming I might have had a deeper sense of how Krivak found himself walking "a long but worthy road that led to a place where (he) didn't belong.". I savored each page of this book; Krivak writes with a sonorous and well-paced voice and a gift for fulgent (his word!) prose. I wanted to read each page slowly in the same way I do with Marilynne Robinson - I want to stop and contemplate each paragraph before moving forward.
I do think Krivak is a somewhat self-conscious writer, the pricklier aspects of which will likely (and hopefully) fall away as he becomes more confident in his craft and his life journey. I hope he'll have a new book for us to read soon.
Between the lines I sensed that there are some unresolved issues among his siblings or within the narrative of his family of origin. Those may be worth a book in and of themselves, but it was as if he pulled a veil over that subject whenever it threatened to spill over into the story and something tells me that were he to be more forthcoming I might have had a deeper sense of how Krivak found himself walking "a long but worthy road that led to a place where (he) didn't belong.". I savored each page of this book; Krivak writes with a sonorous and well-paced voice and a gift for fulgent (his word!) prose. I wanted to read each page slowly in the same way I do with Marilynne Robinson - I want to stop and contemplate each paragraph before moving forward.
I do think Krivak is a somewhat self-conscious writer, the pricklier aspects of which will likely (and hopefully) fall away as he becomes more confident in his craft and his life journey. I hope he'll have a new book for us to read soon.
July 22, 2014
Haven't read a book like this one in quite a while that's had such personal impact. Part of that is because, like author Andrew Krivak, I belonged to a religious order for a significant time, then made a decision to leave. In my case, I'd already been ordained for four years. Much of what I experienced parallels what Krivak experienced & described, only he expresses it far better than anyone I've read or heard so far. His writing is most beautifully descriptive, particularly of his prayer life; probably it's the poet in him. In the process of recalling his Jesuit experience, he also translated into understandable terms for me the rationale and depth of St. Ignatius of Loyola's approach to religious life. My seminary/priestly experience predated Krivak's by almost 40 years, yet his descriptions of his feelings, aspirations, his draw towards prayer, liturgy & monastic simplicity, & eventually his questionings were very familiar to me. Perhaps Krivak's most touching paragraph (p. 315) expresses something with which I find myself continually challenged, even after all these years. "When I became a Jesuit, on the Long Retreat…this became a desire to serve God, to imitate Christ in a priestly order of men, a desire that remained so until I felt the loss not of God but of who I was as a man. And now one question concerned me, one I always figured I could find in God while I kept it at bay from my fellow men and women searchers: Love. Pure and simple. Not some diffuse and vague feeling of warmth. Rather, this: How should a man love well? Without a life in search of that, I decided, I would find nothing, in service of no one. I would be a drift less and emptied community of…what? Certainly not a believer. The great mystery of Christianity is that God loves us first. If I doubted the possibility not of loving but of being loved, then I doubted everything."
March 8, 2009
I picked up this book at the library, my interest in the Jesuits piqued by The Sparrow. This is the story of a young man, his years (8, I believe) in training as a Jesuit and ultimately his decision to leave. Andrew (aka A.J. and Age) seemed to have a somewhat typical Catholic upbringing; his mother seems especially devout. He seems to be a searcher, a seeker and that seems to be what eventually draws him to the Jesuits. However, throughout, he questions much and perhaps never really fits in.
Some of my favorite passages include the following.
On Christmas Eve, finding that a patient he had been visiting in the hospital has died, Andrew says, “ I knew what had happened, we had all been waiting for it, but it’s never real until the absence is there, yawning and clifflike, something close to a favorite piece of music cut short, but with the added pain of knowing that you’ll never hear those notes again.”
When another, older Jesuit priest is speaking with some of the younger men: “I don’t have a reputation for being edifying, “ he said to us after a brief pause and grinned. “That’s why I say these things only in prayer and privacy. But let me tell you. It’s a hard but beautiful life you’re starting out on, and who knows how close I am to finishing. I’ll tell you that I’ve regretted certain days of it, but I’ve never regretted the whole of it. And if you can say that, now or any day, then you’ll be all right.” (To me this seems true of more than the religious life.)
Some of my favorite passages include the following.
On Christmas Eve, finding that a patient he had been visiting in the hospital has died, Andrew says, “ I knew what had happened, we had all been waiting for it, but it’s never real until the absence is there, yawning and clifflike, something close to a favorite piece of music cut short, but with the added pain of knowing that you’ll never hear those notes again.”
When another, older Jesuit priest is speaking with some of the younger men: “I don’t have a reputation for being edifying, “ he said to us after a brief pause and grinned. “That’s why I say these things only in prayer and privacy. But let me tell you. It’s a hard but beautiful life you’re starting out on, and who knows how close I am to finishing. I’ll tell you that I’ve regretted certain days of it, but I’ve never regretted the whole of it. And if you can say that, now or any day, then you’ll be all right.” (To me this seems true of more than the religious life.)
February 10, 2012
My spiritual director recommended this book to me toward the end of my own discernment to leave the Jesuits after two and a half years. Though it did not influence my decision it did confirm my already-made decision to leave and I could related to many of his experiences, even living in some of the same communities Andrew Krivak lived in. This is clearly an autobiography but I had a hard time with his alternating between explanations of his Jesuit formation and his time outside the Society. I didn't always see these parts align as maybe he wanted. Nonetheless it was an honest account of his experiences. The book might have been triple the length if he added more detail about the stages of his formation. I would have liked to have heard more about his discernment process about leaving as the part where he meets his future wife at the beginning of theology studies only occurs in the last twenty pages or so.
April 27, 2008
4/11 Sort of for school, it's a supplementary rhttp://www.goodreads.com/images/layou...
really liked it (my current rating)eading for my Creative Non-fiction paper about the ministry and people's motivations for joining, and possibly leaving. I'm shelving it as general reading though, for reasons of pure ego.
4/27 Just finished it and, wow, there were tears at the end but I'm obviously reading it far more deeply than perhaps Krivak intended it to be read? Or maybe not. In many ways this is an example of the spiritual enlightenment I want, and it's great to see one man's journey through it. He may have left the Jesuits and decided not to be a priest, but there is no doubt of Krivak's spirituality and deep Catholic belief. That, in and of itself, is inspiring.
really liked it (my current rating)eading for my Creative Non-fiction paper about the ministry and people's motivations for joining, and possibly leaving. I'm shelving it as general reading though, for reasons of pure ego.
4/27 Just finished it and, wow, there were tears at the end but I'm obviously reading it far more deeply than perhaps Krivak intended it to be read? Or maybe not. In many ways this is an example of the spiritual enlightenment I want, and it's great to see one man's journey through it. He may have left the Jesuits and decided not to be a priest, but there is no doubt of Krivak's spirituality and deep Catholic belief. That, in and of itself, is inspiring.
July 8, 2013
This extraordinary book explores eight years in the life of a Jesuit in formation, who ultimately decides to leave the order. A contemporary account, it probes the contemplative religious life with the thoroughness of a scholar from earlier times. An incredibly beautiful read set against the rush of our current society, by a profoundly thoughtful man.
Here's an essay I wrote that mentions this wonderful book.
http://www.washingtonindependentrevie...
Here's an essay I wrote that mentions this wonderful book.
http://www.washingtonindependentrevie...
May 11, 2013
I was blown away by the author's candor and authenticity in
writing about his faith journey and discernment of religious
life for him. I hope Andrew will continue to use his gifts
both in writing and in his ability to express his deepest
understanding of where he is called to live a vocation that
is right and true for him. I read this book twice. It was
an inspiration to read of his honest search to know God's call
for him in the light of his experiences.
writing about his faith journey and discernment of religious
life for him. I hope Andrew will continue to use his gifts
both in writing and in his ability to express his deepest
understanding of where he is called to live a vocation that
is right and true for him. I read this book twice. It was
an inspiration to read of his honest search to know God's call
for him in the light of his experiences.
April 20, 2019
Andrew Krivak feels the need for a Jesuit's life. He enters the order in order to eventually become a priest. After 8 years of study, retreat work, overseas missions and teaching, he begins to question whether he really wants to be ordained. He has met a woman in Cambridge, MA where he is studying and they converse, take the same classes, walk, and become friends. Eventually, he feels he needs to be loved by someone and goes for his talks with his superiors. After a long retreat, he feels he needs to leave and eventually marries and has children. But his path is still calling him to be faithful to God and to do His will. A real thought provoking book.
February 8, 2024
National Book award nominee Andrew Krivak tells the story how he, a graduate of the great books college St John, and later a boat worker decides he is called to become a Jesuit priest. We know from the first pages that he eventually leaves the Jesuit order. The reader then follows his 10 years studying for the priesthood. During that time, we follow him from seminary to retreats, to his time in Moscow during Communism's fall. The memoir is essentially an interior memoir, describing his feelings. Few memoirs go into the author's spiritual and religious development, as Krivak's does. A very strong and unique memoir.
June 11, 2021
A little slow at first: first 50 pages took me a week and the rest I read in 2 days. Very emotional to read as a catholic now converting to another faith.
May 18, 2025
Remember, the question we ask in our aloneness – Where is God in all of this? – is not a question at all, but rather the truth that There is God in all of this, and all we can do is trust
Read
April 25, 2009This is a wonderful memoir of one man's path to the discernment of his true vocation in life. The book follows his life as a Jesuit begining with the novitiate through many tests of his vocation as a religious order priest to his eventually departure from the order and marraige. Merton's "Seven Strey Mountain" is still my favorite work in this genre, but Krivak's "A Long Retreat: In Search of a Religious Life" is now a close second.
December 6, 2008
The true story of a guy from Pennsylvania who spent 8 years on the road to becoming a Jesuit priest. Changed his mind and got married. Oh well. The book is thoughtfully written and very enlightening regarding the Jesuit path.
February 26, 2009
For those who are familiar with the Jesuit tradition of spirituality, Krivak excels in exploring and describing his intense walk with God. In order to fully enjoy the book, be prepared to concentrate, as this is not an easy read. All in all, it was enriching to know that one does not need to be a priest in order to serve God.
Read
April 6, 2011Memoir of one man's eight years in formation as a Jesuit. He lived and served in the New York Province in the 1980s and 90s, traveling to Haiti, Russia, and Serbia. His background in (and continuing commitment to) poetry and philosophy serves him well in developing a complex narrative of doubt, faith and discernment.
Want to Read
November 26, 2011Ever since reading Jonathan Spence's wonderful "Memory Palace of Mateo Ricci," I've been intrigued with all things "Jeb." (that and my gd'father and father were schooled by Jebs, so I grew up listening to tales -- inflated by time and parochial pride, no doubt -- of wonders of a pedagogy based on piety and rigor).
July 3, 2014
A wonderfully written yet easy to read spiritual memoir. It will resonate with anyone who has engaged in their own journey of faith. Especially relevant for those familiar with the Jesuits and the Spiritual Exercises, but Krivak also brings the unfamiliar up to speed. I really loved reading it!
September 24, 2008
Found it very interesting to learn the path of a Jesuit.
March 28, 2017
One of the finest spiritual autobiographies I have read
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews