The Jesuit Retreat Center of Los Altos

Support Our Mission

The Jesuit Retreat Center of Los Altos depends primarily on God. God's grace fills the air we breathe, animates our prayer, inspires our words.

But as God has shown us in Jesus Christ, we live in an incarnational world, where a life of prayer-even Jesus' life on earth-has to be worked out in a carpenter shop that often needs sweeping, and in rooms that need heat and light, and on stretches of lawn and gardens that need careful hoeing and trimming.
Fr. Thomas J. Carroll, S.J., Executive Director

 

2008 Annual Appeal Letter

2008 Annual Appeal Letter Download (pdf: 185k)I

Dear Friends,

I wrote a year ago of a turning point in our history: the first meeting of a JRC Advisory Board. The seventeen members took up the challenge of planning toward a thriving future for the ministry of the Spiritual Exercises here. This first year of the Board’s generous collaboration has been creative, indeed.

We have begun a strategic planning process, a time of identifying possibilities and needs that will prepare us to set a wise course for our continuing service of the Church. Facilitator Jim Oswald has been gleaning wisdom and insight from dynamic meeting with a series of groups — Advisory Board, Jesuit staff and lay staff, retreat captains, retreatants of all ages and backgrounds, and leaders of our major hosted groups (e.g., campus ministers from many high schools and universities.)

We are blessed to be renewing, for ourselves, for our contemporaries, and for coming generations, both this sacred site and our ministry of reflection and prayer, of peace and healing, of companionship with Christ and encounter with God’s Spirit.

The Ignatian tradition of prayer has continued to attract to the Retreat Center a wide range of people who find here deeper relationship with their Creator and an opening toward free, joyful and generous discipleship. Our calendar overflows with retreats and our halls with retreatants, evidence that God’s Spirit is touching hearts on these acres even today. Our year’s hosted and sponsored events together served over 6,500 guests.

Our Pierre Favre Program, in its third year, is preparing directors of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. This three-year course is transforming the Retreat Center as its participants, both women and men, join our Jesuits on the weekend retreat teams and begin giving the Exercises, from San Jose to Sacramento, in the format of Ignatius’s 19th Annotation (retreats in everyday life.)

Plant improvements continue to focus on safety, building and systems integrity, and access. Recent projects have included installing irrigation along the eastern outlook of Pereira and Loyola Halls, eliminating archaic knob and tube wiring in St. Francis Hall, more than doubling the lighting in Rossi Chapel, and rebuilding, on a substantial new foundation, the listing south porch of historic Loyola Hall.

During the 2007-2008 fiscal year, we received just over $708,000 in gifts, through foundations grants, bequests, trust disbursements and personal donations. Our second annual report, which we will send out in early 2009, will provide the details and will acknowledge our many benefactors.

We are grateful for your generous response to Annual Appeal 2007. We received nearly $135,000. This included $54,451 toward the elevator for Loyola Hall (for a total, with 2005 and 2006, of $145,508 — closer, now, to our $400,000 goal!), $61,925 to the general fund, and $10,600 specified for other projects.

We again invite your gifts to the elevator project and to other Retreat Center funds and projects. Some of our current projects are listed for your consideration.

We are deeply grateful for all the ways you invest in the ministry of the Retreat Center, and we especially appreciate your choosing to support us in such times of financial difficulty and concern as we are now experiencing worldwide.

We rely, most surely, on the encouragement of your prayers. You and your intentions remain in our thoughts and prayers.

Sincerely yours in Christ,
Fr. Tom Carroll, S.J.
Executive Director

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Your financial support of The Jesuit Retreat Center will enable us to continue our 83-year tradition of nourishing the spirituality of all who come to us. Maintaining The Jesuit Retreat Center's historic structures, complying with safety guidelines, heating and lighting our buildings, and keeping up the landscaping are just a few of the ongoing expenses at The Jesuit Retreat Center for which we need your financial support.

There are gift possibilities to meet the various needs of our donors, including current gifts, planned or deferred gifts,, and volunteer opportunities.

In addition to the traditional gift opportunities, you can also help by shopping at amazon.com. When you access Amazon.com through our Retreat Center Bookstore to purchase books, toys or CDs, a percentage of the sale goes to The Jesuit Retreat Center.

We are grateful for your support.