Skip to content
The Living Tradition Project
Ornately carved marble pulpit with sculpted saints in a cathedral

Offerings

Speaking, Teaching & Retreats

We offer speaking, teaching, and retreat experiences that are rooted in Scripture, the Living Tradition of the Church, and a deep love for the saints. Whether for a parish mission, conference keynote, day of reflection, OCIA formation and retreats, or Catechist formation, each event is thoughtfully adapted to serve your community’s needs and inspire lasting transformation in Christ.

Featured

Retreats, Missions & Formation

A few of our most frequently requested experiences. Each can be adapted in length and format for your community.
A stained-glass window of the Annunciation: the angel Gabriel appearing to the Virgin Mary
Featured 01

The Surprise of God: Rediscovering the Wonder of the Incarnation

A retreat centered on the astonishing reality of the Incarnation: the God for whom we wait is the God who comes near, enters human history, and draws us into His own life.

Learn More

Through Scripture, prayer, reflection, and the witness of the Church, participants move through an arc of Expectation, Encounter, and Communion—from the longing of Israel, to the startling nearness of God in Christ, to the invitation to receive and remain in Him.

Works especially well during Advent, though its themes can be adapted for retreats throughout the year.

Possible formats

  • Half-day retreat
  • Full-day retreat
  • Overnight retreat
  • Parish mission
Carved statues of the apostles standing along a cathedral wall
Featured 02

The Weight of Glory: Becoming Saints

What does it actually mean to become holy?

Learn More

This retreat explores the Christian vocation to sainthood—not as an unreachable ideal or spiritual self-improvement project, but as the transformation of the whole person through grace and communion with Christ.

Through the lives of the saints, Scripture, prayer, and the Church's understanding of holiness, participants are invited to consider what God is making of us and what it means to become fully alive in Him.

Works especially well during Lent, though its themes of conversion, holiness, and transformation are appropriate throughout the year.

Possible formats

  • Half-day retreat
  • Full-day retreat
  • Overnight retreat
  • Parish mission
An open liturgical Gospel book lit by candlelight
Featured 03

Keepers of the Mystery

The Christian faith is not something we invent. It is something we receive, enter into, and hand on.

Learn More

This retreat or formation experience explores the Church as the bearer of a living mystery: Scripture, Tradition, sacrament, memory, witness, and the life of Christ entrusted from one generation to the next.

Participants are invited to consider not only what the Church teaches, but what it means for each of us to receive what has been handed on and become a keeper and bearer of the mystery ourselves.

Possible formats

  • Parish mission
  • Retreat
  • Adult formation event
  • Catechist formation
Vigil candles burning before a statue of Mary in a stone shrine niche
Featured 04

Heaven, Hell & Purgatory Through the Eyes of the Saints

What does the Church actually teach about Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, judgment, and eternal life—and how might the saints help us see those teachings more clearly?

Learn More

This formation experience explores the Church's teaching on the Last Things through the eyes of the saints, allowing their lives, writings, mystical insight, and theological reflection to illuminate doctrines that can otherwise feel abstract or difficult to imagine.

Drawing on figures such as St. Teresa of Ávila and St. Catherine of Genoa, participants encounter the Last Things not merely as theological categories, but as realities that reveal something profound about freedom, mercy, purification, love, and our ultimate destiny in God.

Especially well suited for November and the Month of the Holy Souls.

Possible formats

  • Evening event
  • Half-day retreat
  • Adult formation event
  • Seasonal parish series

Flexible by Design

Event Formats

Any topic or theme can be developed into the following formats:

  • Parish MissionsOne-evening, weekend, or multi-day
  • Parish Retreats
  • Diocesan Conferences and Keynotes
  • Formation Days
  • Catechist Formation
  • Parish Staff Retreats
  • Parent Formation
  • Adult Faith Formation
  • OCIA Formation
  • Women's and Men's Retreats

More Offerings

Formation for Your Community

Example 05Ministry, Testimony & Storytelling: A Workshop for Catechists and Catholic LeadersWhat does it mean to be a catechist—and what kind of ministry has actually been entrusted to us?

This workshop begins with the ministry and vocation of the catechist, exploring the catechist not simply as a teacher of religious information but as a witness, disciple, and participant in the Church's work of handing on the faith.

From there, participants explore the relationship between the great story of salvation, personal testimony, and effective storytelling in catechesis.

The workshop offers both theological formation and practical tools for teaching with clarity, witnessing authentically, using personal testimony well, and telling stories in ways that lead others beyond ourselves and toward encounter with Christ.

Possible formats

  • Catechist workshop
  • Ministry leadership day
  • Diocesan formation
  • Parish team retreat
Example 06OCIA Scrutiny Preparation Retreat: Encountering Christ in the Gospels of the ScrutiniesA retreat designed especially for the Elect as they prepare to celebrate the Scrutinies during the Period of Purification and Enlightenment.

Through Scripture, prayer, and guided reflection on the great Year A Gospels—the Samaritan Woman, the Man Born Blind, and the Raising of Lazarus—participants are invited to allow Christ to uncover thirst, heal blindness, call forth freedom, and bring what is hidden into His light.

The retreat prepares the Elect to experience the Scrutinies not simply as rites to be completed, but as profound encounters with the Christ who searches, heals, enlightens, frees, and calls us from death into life.

The same experience can also be adapted for the whole parish during Lent in Year A, using the three Scrutiny Gospels as a series of Lenten evenings of reflection. In this format, the parish journeys alongside the Elect and enters more deeply into the baptismal and conversion themes the Church places before us during Lent.

Especially well suited for Lent, OCIA communities preparing for the Scrutinies, and parish-wide Year A Lenten formation.

Possible formats

  • OCIA day of reflection
  • Half-day retreat
  • Full-day retreat
  • Three-evening Lenten series
Example 07The Shape of a DiscipleDiscipleship is more than knowing what Catholics believe or participating in parish life. It is a way of seeing, choosing, loving, suffering, praying, and belonging that gradually takes on the shape of Christ Himself.

This talk explores the marks of a mature disciple: receptivity to grace, a life rooted in prayer, freedom for love, communion with the Church, and the willingness to be sent for the sake of others.

Rather than offering another checklist of things Catholics should do, The Shape of a Disciple asks a deeper question: Who are we becoming as we follow Christ?

Possible formats

  • Keynote
  • Parish formation evening
  • Retreat talk
  • Leadership formation
  • Young adult or adult faith formation

These are representative examples, not a fixed menu.

Ask about adapting one of these themes—or creating something for the needs of your community.

A Series

The Saints Among Us: Holiness, Conversion & the Extraordinary Lives of Ordinary Christians

The saints are not simply figures from the distant past. They are men and women in whom the Gospel took flesh. Christ acts in particular personalities, circumstances, relationships, struggles, vocations, failures, and acts of courage.

The Saints Among Us is a series of stand-alone talks and events that uses the life of a saint or holy person as a doorway into a larger question about Christian life.

Each event can be offered individually, or several can be brought together as a parish series. Additional saints and themes can be developed for a parish, retreat center, or special event.

Bartolo LongoMercy, Conversion & the God Who Refuses to Give Up on Us

Bartolo Longo's astonishing life is a story of darkness, conversion, mercy, spiritual warfare, repentance, and radical transformation.

His journey from profound spiritual alienation to a life devoted to the Rosary, works of mercy, and the Church becomes a powerful meditation on what grace can do with a human life.

His story asks a startling Christian question: How far is too far for the mercy of God?

St. Hildegard of BingenThe World Alive With God

Mystic, theologian, musician, writer, visionary, and Doctor of the Church, Hildegard saw creation as filled with meaning and alive with the work of God.

Her extraordinary life invites us to recover a Christian imagination capable of seeing reality not as flat, fragmented, or empty, but as a world charged with beauty, order, purpose, and divine presence.

Sandra SabattiniHoliness in Ordinary Life

Sandra Sabattini was a young laywoman whose brief life reveals something essential about sanctity: holiness does not require escaping ordinary human life.

Friendship, love, service, study, prayer, work, relationships, and the decisions of everyday life became the place where she learned to belong completely to Christ.

Her witness opens a larger conversation about what sainthood can look like for ordinary Christians living in the world today.

Karol Wojtyła / St. John Paul IIBecoming Fully Alive

Before he became Pope John Paul II, Karol Wojtyła was a young man formed amid war, occupation, loss, friendship, theater, manual labor, philosophy, prayer, and clandestine formation.

His life provides a powerful window into the Christian understanding of freedom, human dignity, vocation, suffering, love, friendship, and what it means for the human person to become fully alive in Christ.

Also Available

Additional Featured Themes

Any theme or topic of your choice.
Made for More

A reflection on human dignity, desire, vocation, identity, and the destiny for which the human person was created.

What are our deepest desires telling us? What does Christianity actually claim about the human person? And what changes when we begin to see our lives in light of the destiny for which we were made?

The Church Beyond Institution

The Church is an institution—but she is never merely an institution.

This talk explores the deeper mystery of the Church as the Body of Christ, a communion of persons, the bearer of Christian memory and Tradition, and the place in which the life of Christ continues to be encountered and handed on.

“There is no doubt in my mind that the Holy Spirit works through Laura and the way she shares the faith. Her words have a way of reaching your heart, deepening your understanding, and staying with you long after the course or retreat has ended. What you learn from Laura isn't simply information you hear and move on from—it is something you carry with you, live out, and continue to draw from for years to come.”
KatieColorado

Adaptable

You Don’t Have to Choose Something Exactly as Listed

Every parish and community is different.

Retreats, talks, workshops, parish missions, and formation days can be adapted to your audience, schedule, pastoral needs, and liturgical season.

See something that fits your community—or have another topic in mind? Let’s create a formation experience shaped for your parish, organization, or event.

See Something You Like? Invite LTP