Holy Spirit Retreat Center: “Best-Kept Secret in Encino”

Getting to a spiritual retreat center often means driving for hours to secluded locations on mountain tops, on bluffs overlooking the ocean or in rural, distant valleys. But a drive to the Holy Spirit Retreat Center in Encino takes just minutes south on Hayvenhurst Avenue past Ventura Boulevard and up into the Encino Hills.

There, tucked beside some of the Valley’s luxury homes, sits an island of quiet and spiritual refuge. The 10-acre grounds contain 24 rooms for overnight and weekend visitors, dining hall,   “Hermitage” (two-bedroom retreat house with its own kitchen), chapel, four meeting rooms, a peace garden, volleyball court and a man-made lake with a surrounding walking path dotted with benches and small tables for individual or small-group contemplation.

Sister Chris Machado, the center’s executive director, said visitors are often surprised to discover the retreat center so near the heart of Encino.

“I had one man who said, ‘I’ve lived in this neighborhood for 30 years and I had no idea you were here!’ “ Machado said.  “That’s why we call it the best-kept secret in Encino.”

The retreat center is run by the Catholic Sisters of Social Service, a women’s religious community that began in Hungary in 1923. The group pursued an activist mission to help women, children and the poor, not so much by simply aiding them, but by actively working to overturn social conditions that led to their impoverishment, Machado said. The sisters were often politically active, performing their work in factories and pursuing legislation.

Today, the group worldwide numbers slightly fewer than 300, with 72 sisters in the United States, many of them social workers serving at-risk youth and gang members, she said.

The sisters came to the Valley in 1949 after they bought 10-acres of land from the wife of Encino land developer William Hamilton Hay.  At one point, 40 sisters crowded into the old Hay rancho near the man-made lake. They rebuilt in 1961 and in 1969 the buildings became a retreat center.

“In 1949, there was nothing here but a big old hill,” Machado said. “As the Hay family sold off Encino Hills, it became a very high-end district with movies stars like Clark Gable, a very snazzy area and the sisters were plopped in it.”

In 2005, after spending more than $2 million, the new retreat center opened. The buildings are sleek, modern and spare and include office space for the American headquarters of the sisters’ order and a retirement home for 40 of its members.

Catholic groups use the center to hold retreats, but Machado said the retreat center since the 1970s has hosted Jewish groups as part of its interfaith approach and hopes to attract Muslim and other groups as well.

“We’re trying to create an environment in which anyone seeking the divine, however they understand it, can be at home,” she said.

The center also welcomes youth groups for retreats, since many other retreat houses restrict attendance to adults. And the center itself provides some programs of its own. Plans for the future include programs focusing on spiritual, physical and psychological healing and nonviolence and conflict resolution.

“In our little way, we’re trying to promote peace and understanding in our 10 acres of the world,” Machado said.

Holy Spirit Retreat Center, 4316 Lanai Rd., Encino