FIAT Women's Group


We are a prayer and fellowship group for women of all ages and backgrounds that meets 7:30 to 8:45 a.m. First Saturdays, except when a holiday moves the date. We share with and support each other as we explore our Catholic faith and our walk with Jesus Christ. Please join us for fun fellowship, a great breakfast snack, a faith presentation and small group discussion. We can't wait to meet you!

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Our Current Study … 

Catholicism: Journey Around the World and Deep into the Catholic Faith

 

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Christmyer Lenten Retreat Prepares us for Easter and Beyond

April 12, 2022

We were incredibly blessed to have Sarah Christmyer to IHM for this special one-day retreat! Sarah is co-developer of the Great Adventure Bible Study Program and popular author of several books, including "Create in Me a Clean Heart: Ten Minutes a Day in the Penitential Psalms" as a personal Lenten journal. She blogs at www.comeintotheword.com and has been featured on a variety of Catholic television and radio shows.

    For our retreat, Sarah shared the stories of women God called to bring his chosen people into the world. She wove stories of women in her own life whose struggles paralelled those of Rachel and Leah, Rahab, and Ruth into her talks. They were all ordinary women who strugged with emptiness, oppression, infertility and loss--yet who found strength and hope in God. Through pondering their stories and hearing how Sarah related them to her life,  we discovered how these women from the Old Testament heard God, said "yes" to him, and thus shared him with the world. It is a model we now have for relating the stories of the Bible with our own lives, to see God's hand in our stories, say "yes" to him and similarly share him with the world.

    Some pearls that especially touched retreatants were that God wants to be with us in our struggles and that hope requires waiting and patience. Also, someone was touched to hear that we can walk a bigger circle around those who cut us out, including them in communications or activities within a larger group rather than direct interaction, to help ease healing of rifts. We pondered how every heart has a God-shaped vacuum, as stated by 17th century philospher and mathematician Blaise Pascal in his book "Pensees": "What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself."

     Kitty Cleveland's CD "Sublime Chant: The Scotland Project" was a gorgeous meditative background for our time of adoration and confession. You can find all 10 of Kitty Cleveland's CDs on iTunes and Amazon or visit her website www.kittycleveland.com for links. The beautiful Mary's Way of the Cross that Sarah led was adapted from "Mary's Way of the Cross" by Richard Furey, available at www.twentythirdpublications.com/stofcrboforw.html.  

     If you would like to join Sarah’s email list, there is a sign up in the footer of her website: www.comeintotheword.com. Add sarah@comeintotheword.com to your address book to make sure mail arrives in your inbox.