A Weekend to Wonder: Inside FranU’s Intellectual Retreat

What happens when students step away from the demands of everyday college life for a weekend of prayer, conversation, study and adventure?

At FranU, they go on the Intellectual Retreat.

The annual retreat gives students an opportunity to slow down, spend time with their professors and peers and explore big questions with a sense of wonder. Along the way, they pray together, prepare meals, enjoy the outdoors and build friendships in a setting outside the classroom.

Each day follows a rhythm of morning prayer, breakfast, study, discussion, lunch and outdoor activities. Students also participate in Bible study, prepare meals together and end each evening with prayer. Afterward comes “Grand Silence,” a period of quiet that lasts until morning prayer the next day.

This year, the group traveled to Covington, where students read Pope Leo’s new document on the human person and artificial intelligence and a piece by Bishop Fulton Sheen, who was beatified in St. Louis that same weekend. The group also toured St. Joseph’s Abbey and heard the monks sing Mass on the final day of the retreat.

The retreat has become a tradition that looks a little different every year for Theology Program Director Dr. Brian Pedraza.

“I believe this is our fourth year,” Pedraza said. “The first year we went to a beautiful house in St. Francisville and studied Aristotle on friendship and Aquinas on charity. The second year we went to a Bed and Breakfast near Lafayette, studied Longfellow's poem Evangeline under the actual Evangeline Oak for which it is named, spoke of the origins of Cajun and Creole peoples and attended a festival. The third year we went to the beach and studied the sacramentality of the world.”

The retreat is designed for Theology, Great Books and Philosophy majors and minors, but any FranU student is welcome to participate.

That invitation is what brought Business student Claire Boudreaux to the retreat.

The intellectual retreat gave me the opportunity to step away from the busyness of the world for a weekend and refocus my heart and mind,” Boudreaux said. “This retreat helped reorder my desires and reminded me of my purpose and mission: to wholeheartedly love and serve each person I encounter by imitating Christ’s love for us. Being realigned with this purpose reminded me of what makes life truly worth living.”

The Intellectual Retreat offers students something that’s challenging to find in the pace of everyday college life: time to pause, ask deeper questions, pray, learn alongside professors and simply enjoy being in community.

For students considering FranU, the retreat offers a glimpse of the kind of community, conversation and formation they can find here.

To learn more about the retreat, contact Dr. Pedraza at Brian.Pedraza@franu.edu