(The painting represented above is “Jesus Healing the Sick” by Gustave Dore. This article originally appeared in the Winter 2025 edition of Ursulines Alive magazine.)

Ursuline Sisters Shellie Intravia, Jacinta Powers, and Nancy Liddy live in different cities with differing ways to serve. But in September 2025 they came together with Ursuline Associates Amy and Tom Payne to help people with physical limitations experience Jesus.

They gathered on Sept. 26-28 at the Abbey of Gethsemani retreat center near Bardstown, Ky., for a Gennesaret retreat, named after the town in the Gospel of Mark (6:53-56) where Jesus healed the sick who were brought to him. The retreat (pronounced Juh-nes-er-et) is for people with chronic health issues who would have difficulty attending a typical retreat.

“These are people who usually don’t get out of their house other than to go to a doctor’s appointment,” Sister Shellie said. “They have a hospitality person and a medical person. The hospitality person helps them with meals, takes them on walks, and makes sure they get where they are supposed to be.”

“I feel like it brings people to a place where they can receive the love of God,” Sister Shellie said. “They can know that there are people in the world who value them, who are compassionate.”

The Paynes, who live in Owensboro, are the coordinators of the retreat.

“It’s a ministry unlike anything we’ve been involved with before,” Amy Payne said. “I’ve done lots of retreats where the purpose is for people to meet God – Cursillo, Teens Encounter Christ – but this reaches out to people who could not usually encounter the Lord.”

“These are people in real need of knowing that they aren’t alone,” Payne said. “We don’t tell them anything the Church hasn’t always told them. We have Mass every day, and they experience a loving group of people. They have the opportunity for the sacraments – penance, anointing, the renewal of our baptism. They are able to refocus, renew and restore.”

“Sister Shellie leads a guided prayer on dedicating their suffering – to take their pain and intentionally give it to Jesus,” Payne said. “It’s a powerful weekend. We come away with more than we give.”

Sister Jacinta is a trained nurse who lives in Owensboro. She served as one of the medical volunteers at the recent retreat.

“I was moved by the ‘progression’ of the movement of the Holy Spirit from its beginning on Friday afternoon through the closing on Sunday afternoon,” Sister Jacinta said. “The guests … came with plenty of luggage, but also hearts heavy with burdens, both physical and spiritual. As the helpers met them and continued to be present to them there was a sense of recognizing that the small acts of kindnesses, along with the words of the presenters, the holy rituals and the shared sacraments seemed to cloak them in invisible blankets of God’s warm presence. It was inspiring to me to see the guests and the helpers opening to the Holy Spirit and allowing this time to ‘heal’ unseen areas of the hearts gathered for this short time.”

Sister Nancy, who is discerning her next ministry in Louisville, attended her first Gennesaret retreat, serving as a musician for Mass and the sacraments.

“I could tell the retreat leaders understood how healing music and song can sometimes be for people experiencing pain and suffering, and how important live music is for celebrating the sacraments and rituals,” Sister Nancy said. She was moved by all the caring support she witnessed during the weekend.

“There were a lot of generous people – from the monks, the leaders, the nurses and volunteers – who were sincerely helping the retreatants to find their way through illness and grief just by being present,” Sister Nancy said.

“On the first evening of the retreat, everyone was just beginning to feel comfortable singing together,” she said. “The next day, they lit up and found their voice during the Gospel acclamation. It was touching to hear their strong singing on the ‘Alleluia’ – a song of triumph over death.”

Father Paul Scaglione began Gennesaret retreats in his native New Jersey more than 35 years ago. A 1968 graduate of Brescia College in Owensboro, he transferred to the Archdiocese of Louisville in 1999 and began the first retreat in 2001.

Sister Shellie became involved with the ministry in 2011, when she was serving in Louisville. She knew that Father Scaglione wanted to extend the ministry to another diocese. She introduced the Paynes to the ministry in 2015 and promised to assist them if they brought the program to the Diocese of Owensboro. She now lives in Tell City, Ind., where she is director of Catholic Charities.

The Mount Saint Joseph Conference and Retreat Center became the home of the retreat until Covid shut down the center in 2020. Father Scaglione stepped down once the retreat began happening at the Mount, but when the retreat center could not reopen, there was no place to host the Gennesaret retreat, Sister Shellie said.

“We called the (Trappist) monks at Gethsemani and they allowed us to return,” Sister Shellie said. “We’ve been back since 2023.”

There are some challenges with the new arrangement. Although the retreat is a nonprofit under the Diocese of Owensboro, it lost a grant when it moved to Gethsemani – even though all the participants are from the Diocese of Owensboro, Sister Shellie said. The retreat – which is free for the participants – now only happens yearly due to the cost and the distance. It is supported mostly by private donations.

Finding a priest to be the spiritual moderator for the weekend has long been a challenge, but for the past two years, Father Christopher Grief, the parochial vicar at St. Stephen Cathedral, has served that role.

“It’s been a wonderful experience to work with him,” Sister Shellie said.

“Serving as the spiritual director has become an exercise in humble accompaniment,” Father Grief said. “This experience reinforces the spiritual truth that ministry is sustained by the divine power found in solitude and prayer, a rhythm consistently modeled by Jesus in the Gospels.”

He knew nothing of the retreat before the Paynes asked him to participate, he said.

“What has drawn me back stems from the retreat’s direct echo of Christ’s compassion for the sick,” he said. “What I have found is that Gennesaret is a powerful effort to bring the sick to Jesus. My prayer for all guests of Gennesaret is that they will leave with renewed strength and radical hope as they acknowledge their journey as a path to deeper union with the cross of Christ.”

Louis Yopp was one of the nine participants at the most recent retreat. He lives in Paducah, Ky., where he is a Eucharistic minister at St. Francis DeSales Parish.

“I visit the homebound and nursing home patients to take them Communion,” Yopp said. “In my heart, these people are forgotten.”

He talked to Amy Payne about volunteering, but she suggested he come the first year as a participant.

“I’ve had a lot of surgeries the past 12 years, for my heart, shoulder and knees,” Yopp said. “I didn’t know what to expect. When I made the turn at Elizabethtown, something moved me. I felt God stormed in and changed my life. I’ve never felt that closeness to everyone there,” he said. “I tried to mingle with everyone. I felt like a little child of God for the rest of my life. Everyone had similar stories, but different and touching.”

“I’m going to come back and volunteer next year,” Yopp said. “I’ll do anything they want me to do.”

Amy Payne said when people have physical limitations that leave them feeling unneeded, they don’t want to be a burden, so they don’t ask for help.

“We tell them, ‘We want you to be the receivers this weekend,’” Payne said. “We’ve had people who are called home by God a few months after the retreat, and their families tell us that they received such peace from the retreat.”