It is not easy to find spirituality houses available to make a withdrawal or a coexistence. More and more groups and parishes consulted by this newspaper say it: «There is no availability; sometimes you have to reserve with one year in advance. And the spirituality houses themselves confirm it: this is the case of the spirituality center Saint Ignatiusin Salamanca. According to a note released by the Jesuits, their Salamanca house “has programmed the 2024-2025 academic year taking into account the growing demand of people who want to do the spiritual exercises in different forms and times. «During the last course, 50% more people came to carry out some of their proposed modalities: 668 retreatants with 5412 overnight stays. These figures represent an average stay of 8 days,” they continue.
What are the causes of this boom of the houses of spirituality? The sources consulted by El Debate indicate threemostly:
- 1. The appearance in recent years of movements and spiritual experiences that attract a growing number of people. This is the case of the retreats of the Conjugal Love Project, of Emmaus, of Effetá, Nicodemo, Bartimeo, Yíos, of the Alpha Courses… Along with them, the “regular” groups maintain their traditions of organizing retreats and coexistence: Camino Neocatechumenal, Cursillos of Christianity, Focolare, Opus Dei, Schoenstatt, Communion and Liberation, Regnum Christi, Charismatic Renewal… And, of course, the hundreds of religious congregations, schools and parishes who organize their own activities.
- 2. The closure of numerous spirituality houses has also influenced those that remain open to receive more groups. The vocational crisis that almost all religious congregations go through has caused many of them to have been forced to regroup their communities and close houses.
- 3. More professional management. This same vocational crisis of religious congregations has led consecrated people to trust in prepared laymen to direct their houses of spirituality. In this way, many of them have experienced a notable improvement in their efficient management. This is also noted in the promotion of the centers themselves, which have more careful web pages and profiles on social networks.
A problem that organizers of retreats and gatherings also face is, on many occasions, that of size of the houses of spirituality. Most of them usually have capacity for between 30 and 50 people. For many Church groups it is enough, but the problem is finding accommodation with more than a hundred places. Many of the activities organized by the Neocatechumenal Way or the Emmaus and Effetá retreats in the large Spanish cities They usually go far beyond that number of attendees, and it is not easy to find spirituality houses that have that capacity. Therefore, sometimes they are forced to hire complete hotels to accommodate the participants.
