October 2026 Retreat

From Fr. Woody:
Our contemporary society has little tolerance for weakness and no time for imperfection — and why would we? For a nation founded on the ideals of independence and self-determination, strength and self-sufficiency are baked into our society as the values to which we should all aspire. Any sign of imperfection must be masked over; any type of weakness or dependency is hidden away. How often do we project to the world an image of self-confidence, strength, and invulnerability to mask over who we truly are — even to the point of deceiving ourselves?
We carefully curate an image or a profile on social media to show an idealized life; influencers and looksmaxxers give us “perfect” images of fashion and beauty; we make endless (short-lived) resolutions and seek out self-help fixes (because God forbid we admit we need help from someone else!) Even where we can recognize a failure or a shortcoming, it’s a problem in need of a quick fix — the faster the better, and hopefully no one will have noticed anyway…. 
But what if our true strength actually lies in an embrace of our own weaknesses?

• What would it look like to take God up on the promise that “my grace is enough for you,” and “my power is made perfect in weakness”?
• Where is God gently inviting us to an honest recognition and grappling with our vulnerabilities, our wounds, our imperfections, and everything we try to hide away?

Rather than conveniently sweeping them under the rug, “out-of-sight, out-of-mind,” the God who desires us to “have life, and have it to the full” invites us to greater courage — the courage to be vulnerable, to embrace our frailty and fragility, and to admit our dependencies. 

This retreat will draw from contemporary philosophy, psychoanalysis, and the Christian mystical tradition to invite parishioners to encounter God more deeply in the very spaces we try to hide and deny. Jesus invited his own disciples to touch his wounds and come to believe. Perhaps he is waiting for us to reveal our own woundedness, in honest vulnerability and fragility, so that he may touch our own wounds and we can see them as sites of blessing and spaces to encounter God’s grace. 

Rev. William C. Woody, S.J., is a priest of the USA East Province of the Society of Jesus and a teaching fellow in the Department of Philosophy at Boston College.

Born and raised in the Philadelphia area, Bill’s initial encounter with the Jesuits was during high school at Saint Joseph’s Prep. He later graduated from the University of Scranton with a B.A. in theology and philosophy and a minor in French. He entered the Jesuit novitiate in Syracuse, NY, in 2011, professed vows in 2013, and was ordained a priest in 2021. He earned an M.A. in philosophy from Fordham University as well as a Master of Divinity (M.Div.) and a Licentiate in Sacred Theology (S.T.L.) in moral theology from Boston College, with a particular focus in the ethics of forgiveness and reconciliation.
 
Over the last 15 years as a Jesuit, Bill served as a pastoral minister at St. Anne’s Parish in Kingston, Jamaica and ministered as a hospital chaplain at St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx. Before his return to Boston College, Bill taught philosophy at St. Peter's University (Jersey City, NJ) and the College of the Holy Cross (Worcester, MA), and most recently ministered as associate pastor at Holy Trinity Catholic Church (Washington, DC). 

He has served as an editor for the International Network of Philosophy of Religion, and in 2024 Bill was named a fellow with the FASPE Ethics program (Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics). He has published and presented on topics in contemporary philosophy of religion, phenomenology of religious experience, Jesuit history and spirituality, and on the ethics of forgiveness and reconciliation.