Your Vocation

God's Plan for Your Life

A Holy Place of Prayer and Discernment

Are you seeking to prayerfully discern the next step in your life? Do you desire a place of quiet, prayer, work, fellowship, and formation to help you find the path the Lord has for you? Our Lady of Mount Carmel Retreat Center is a holy place of prayer and peace that will help you find your path.

Quiet, Peace, and Prayer

The Our Lady of Mount Carmel Retreat Center provides sixty-four acres of peace and quiet tucked away from the world down a dirt road in rural Montgomery County, Alabama.

The retreat center is the home base of the community of Apostoli Viae and our primary apostolate, the Avila Foundation and its work in forming priests, religious, and laity around the world.

In this beautiful and quiet setting, there is time for a great deal of silence and reflection to begin clearing away the noise of day-to-day life, allowing us to better hear the voice and calling of God.

One visitor recently said, "I have never experienced a more peaceful place in my life. I can't wait to return." 

Here's a video that reveals more about the retreat center: Our Lady of Mount Carmel Retreat Center Video Link

Learning to Hear the Voice of God

In concert with the Avila Institute for Spiritual Formation, each participant will walk a pathway of spiritual formation designed to open the heart and mind to the will and voice of Jesus and His Church. As a sample of the formation, every participant will be blessed with the following coursework (and more depending on vocational interests):

• Discernment of Spirits (Ignatian)
• Foundations of Prayer and Union with God (Carmelite)
• Breaking the Chains that Bind Us (Thomistic Moral Theology)

The goal of all of our formation is the transformation of the heart through encounter with God and those who know Him.

Young men discerning the priesthood may also have the opportunity to engage with our High Calling Discernment program that serves dioceses and religious orders around the world.

Joyful Work and Collaboration

Often, we cannot hear God because we are immersed in a world drowned in digital and visual noise, with little engagement in the fullness of our humanity in healthy hard work and collaboration with others.  Each participant will regularly engage, both inside and outside the retreat center, in ways that will draw them more deeply into what it means to live, work, and collaborate with others in the presence of God, for the glory of God. This will include, but not be limited to:

• Gardening
• Household Chores and Meal Preparation
• Grounds Maintenance
• Avila Institute Support
• Events Support

Worship

Every participant will experience daily prayer in common, which will include, but not be limited to:

• Daily Mass
• Liturgy of the Hours Chanted in Community
• Periodic Liturgical Celebrations
• Adoration (when available)

Daily personal prayer will also be encouraged as part of an horarium of prayer and study designed to meet each participant's personal needs related to their vocational discernment.

If you would like to experience our Noon prayer Liturgy, you can log in at 12:00 pm Central U.S. Monday through Friday using the link below. If you log in and no one is there, wait five minutes. If no one shows up, it means everyone is out of town for an event. 

Liturgy of the Hours - Noon Prayer