John Thavis on this year’s papal retreat:

Cardinal Biffi, who is 78, will preach on the theme, "The Things Above," which refers to St. Paul’s letter advising early Christians to "think of what is above, not of what is on earth."

If the cardinal wants some guidance, he could look back to Pope Benedict’s own words last year about the same passage. The pope said St. Paul was not telling people to cut themselves off from their earthly responsibilities, but to orient their daily lives toward the supernatural.

Then again, Cardinal Biffi is not required to follow the pope’s lead.

The retreat opens with adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, an evening prayer service and an introductory talk. Each day afterward, the retreat master gives three meditations in morning and afternoon sessions, accompanied by prayer and reflection.

As the retreat goes on, the Roman Curia machinery winds down. Not everyone attends the entire program of spiritual exercises, but the top officials in each office are encouraged to do so, and the pope’s Redemptoris Mater Chapel fills up quickly.

The pope disappears for a week, too. No private audiences, no liturgies, no working lunches. Even the Wednesday general audience is canceled, to the disappointment of pilgrims who chose this week to be in Rome.

Pope Benedict certainly has plenty to do: the final review of a long-awaited post-synodal document, a book on Jesus due out this spring, a backlog of "ad limina" appointments with bishops and a string of homilies and talks to prepare for the coming weeks.

But taking time out of a busy schedule is precisely the point. Pope Pius IX first instituted the papal Lenten retreat in the 1920s, and in 1929 he issued an encyclical promoting spiritual exercises for the entire church, saying that "the most grave disease" of the modern age is lack of spiritual reflection.

He said people’s insatiable search for riches and pleasure "so entangles them in outward and fleeting things that it forbids them to think of eternal truths, and of the divine laws and of God himself."