# Why you should go on retreat

**By:** Jack Valero  
**Published:** 2026-05-24T09:00:00.000Z  
**Source:** [The Catholic Herald](https://thecatholicherald.com/article/why-you-should-go-on-retreat)

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From St Ignatius Loyola to Mother Teresa, the saints understood retreat not as escape, but as the place where vocation becomes clear

“We are on a mission from God,” declare the Blues Brothers. It’s a line played for laughs – but it lands because it hints at something serious. A life with purpose. A task that isn’t self-invented.

That same idea runs like a thread through Christian tradition. Pope Francis put it bluntly: “I am a mission on this earth and that is the reason why I am here in this world.” Not just having a mission, but being one. And long before him, St John Henry Newman wrote with characteristic precision: “God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission… He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do His work.”