In classrooms, from stages, at the altar and at the pulpit, in celebrations of every kind, Sister Thea Bowman, FSPA. and Father Bede Abram, OFM Conv, were singing and dancing “canticles of praise.” Their songs and stories tell how African American men and women, many of whom were enslaved in America, forged an identity and a spirituality out of the Bible and their own African cultural forms. This seven-day retreat, imaginatively distilled from Sister Thea and Father Bede’s experiences, will enable others to “come out the wilderness, leaning on the Lord.”

This second edition of the retreat includes reflections by two Black Catholics belonging to a generation formed and inspired by Sister Thea’s and Father Bede’s witness—a Foreword by Dr. Cynthia Bailey Manns, one of four lay Americans who participated in the Global Synod, and an Afterword by Father Maurice J. Nutt, CSsR, a Redemptorist missionary preacher, spiritual director, and Thea Bowman biographer.