On the day after Thanksgiving, 1949, a group of Catholic women walked expectantly through the front door of 2321 Blaisdell Ave. in Minneapolis and were greeted by nuns in habits featuring distinctive purple capes.
Originally the home of George Nelson Dayton, the house had been transformed into a place of “cultivation of grace in souls,” where 40 women would gather each weekend from dinner on Friday until dinner on Sunday to deepen their relationship with God. The center was officially named the Convent of our Lady of the Cenacle Retreat Home, but it would become better known as simply Cenacle. It was run by members of the Congregation of Our Lady of the Retreat in the Cenacle, a religious order dedicated to providing retreat experiences. The word “cenacle” means an upper room, and it refers to the room where Mary and the disciples waited after Jesus’ ascension.
The retreat house in Minneapolis was part of a network of dozens of retreat centers run by the Cenacle Sisters around the world. But more than that, it was part of a movement across the United States and beyond that sought to use retreats as a tool to deepen faith. The year before Cenacle opened, the Jesuits had opened a retreat house for men in the Twin Cities at Lake Demontreville. In 1956, more than a thousand women gathered in Minneapolis as part of the congress of the National Laywomen’s Retreat Movement.
Just six years into their ministry in Minnesota, the Cenacle Sisters had already outgrown the footprint of their home on Blaisdell. With the help of a league of laywomen devoted to fundraising, the Cenacle Sisters expanded their work in 1955 by building a new retreat center in Minnetonka on 20 acres of old-growth forest. Painted in soft blues, greens and pinks, with windows looking out onto the woods or garden, the new site offered more space for the religious sisters and their retreatants.
Some of the first women to be welcomed through the wide, red front door of the new house were women with disabilities from across Minnesota and beyond who were offered their first retreat with the support of Catholic nurses. This kind of expansive welcome was common for the Cenacle Sisters, who regularly hosted women from Catholic and ecumenical backgrounds for spiritual growth through lectures, spiritual direction, silent contemplation, confession and Mass. Their focus on spirituality even primed them for a role in the beginnings of the Catholic charismatic movement in the Twin Cities in the late 1960s.
Unlike their spiritual legacy, Cenacle’s physical footprint in the Twin Cities is no longer obvious. After the religious sisters left Minneapolis, the original Cenacle building on Blaisdell was razed to make room for parking for a neighboring business. Today, the site is home to the City of Lakes Waldorf School’s playground.
In the late 1990s, the Cenacle Sisters sold the Minnetonka retreat house, but they continued to host retreats there until the early 2000s. After Wayzata residents fought to keep the wooded area around the retreat house undeveloped, it was turned into a public park. The house itself is now home to a recovery program for people suffering from addiction.
Luiken is a Catholic and historian with a doctorate from the University of Minnesota. She loves exploring and sharing the hidden histories that touch our lives every day.
