k ansas Dear Friends, December is a month full of waiting and wonder. For us as a community of monks, we experience this as a community taking our cues from the liturgy. In her liturgy, the Church places among the people of God who were looking for the Messiah and waiting for deliverance. What did they expect? They expected someone who was in the mold of Moses. They looked for a great deliverer, a great teacher, a lawgiver but also a man of prayer. The Messiah was also expected to be a great king, who would regather the people of God long scattered among the nations, secure them against their enemies, and restore the worship of God in the Temple. What a privilege it is to be on the other side of the events for which our forebears longed. Yet we also wait, as St. Paul tells us, the glory yet revealed. We await the promised unity of the Church. We await the perfection of our human nature. We await the resurrection of our bodies which will bring healing and wholeness. We await the coming of the our Lord Jesus Christ. The work of Advent and of preparing for Christmas is the work of refocusing our hope on this future. It is so easy, especially in our busy world, to get caught up in hoping for different futures. Advent gives us a time to ask ourselves, what is it that we think will bring us happiness? What is at the heart of all our activity? Where are we storing up our treasure? In heaven? Or here on earth? This requires great discernment. Prayer is the workshop of discernment. Prayer helps focus our hope, gives us the
monks December 2023 resolve to wait upon the Lord, and opens us up to wonder. I encourage you to spend this season of Advent in prayer. Here the words of St. Benedict are helpful. In chapter 20 of the Rule, he says that the keys to prayer are humility and purity. For him, this means our prayers should be “short and sweet,” as it were. We ought not try to impress God by prolonged or elaborate prayers. We ought not approach God with a mask, as though He does not know our heart already. We should not think that our prayers will be answered if they are sophisticated or elegant. Rather, says St. Benedict, our prayers are heard on account of our “purity of heart and tears of penitence.” At the same time, we should not be brisk to the point of being brusque. Our prayers should be marked by a certain devotion, a childlike piety and trust. We go to the Lord as we go to a benevolent, loving father. So let us dedicate ourselves to prayer during this Advent so that we might receive with joy the coming of our Savior. In Christ,
Abbot James R. Albers, O.S.B.
IN THIS ISSUE
The Poetry of Providence
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Why Principles are Imparative
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Living the Liturgy 6 -11
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The Poetry of Providence A Conspiratorial Benedictine and a Golden-Mouthed Preacher on the Dating of Christmas
By Dr. James R. A. Merrick
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lived in Scotland twice for a combined five years. Two of my children were born there, and it is the birthplace of my Catholicism, having been received into the Church with my family in 2017. Surrounded by the remnants and ruins of ancient and medieval civilizations, I couldn’t fight the urge to become part of the grander and nobler trends of history by entering the Church Catholic. Living in Scotland was overall an enriching experience. But there was the occasional “culture shock.” The prevalence of instant coffee in a place so proximate to continental Europe and that understood the importance of maturing spirits was confounding. More shocking, however, was the discovery that until relatively recently the observance of Christmas was discouraged in Scotland, with some of the historic traditions having been outlawed by Scottish Parliament in 1640. It wasn’t until 1958 that Christmas was restored as a public holiday. To this day, “Hogmanay,” or New Year’s Eve, overshadows Christmas. It might surprise you, as it did me, that a Christian country would practically ban Christmas. But seventeenth-century Scotland was shaped by the Protestant Reformation, especially the Calvinist branch. And Protestants generally felt that the Catholic Church needed to be purged of various superstitions and purportedly idolatrous practices that had crept in over the centuries through contact with paganism. Calvinists felt that if something wasn’t explicitly commanded in the Bible then it shouldn’t be enjoined upon people. As John Knox, leader of Scottish Presbyterianism, wrote, the feast of Christmas has “neither commandment nor assurance” in the Bible and therefore was to be “utterly abolished from this Realm” (History of the Reformation in Scotland, vol. 2, p. 281).
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Calvinists also believed that sin inclined humans to substitute ritual adherence for sincere faith. Thus, they suspected the observance of Christmas to be full of various rituals and traditions that obscured the real significance of Christ’s birth and obstructed genuine faith. This general skepticism toward Catholic tradition developed in the decades that followed to the point where many leading lights thought most distinctly Catholic practices could be attributed to the influence of paganism. Because paganism was typically held to be superstitious and inferior to Christianity, when Catholic traditions could be traced back to pagan roots the narrative of Catholic corruption of Christianity could be advanced, a narrative as expedient politically as theologically. When it came to the question of the date of Christ’s birth, it became popular to attribute the choice of the date of December 25th to the pagan festival of the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun or Sol Invictus. The Benedictine monk and classicist Jean Hardouin was a noteworthy proponent of this view. But it was his Protestant contemporary Paul Jablonski who took the theory and turned it once more into evidence against the Catholic Church. Hardouin was somewhat of a conspiratorial thinker, though his skepticism of medieval learning was at home in his day. He once claimed that the vast majority of ancient literature and artifacts were forged during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. But Hardouin did not invent the theory of the pagan precedent for the date of Christmas. It was noted in the twelfth century by an Orthodox bishop, Dionysius bar Salibi. Dionysius was likely overinterpreting patristic statements about the coincidence of Christ’s nativity with the birthday of Sol Invictus. The famed fourth century
DR. JAMES R. A. MERRICK Duccio di Buoninsegna, 1308 - 1311, The Nativity with the Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel, Tempora on Poplar Panel
preacher, St. John Chrysostom, known as the GoldenMouth, said the fact that Jesus, the true light of the world, was born on the same day as the Roman sun god was clearly Providential. The late Pope Benedict XVI remarked that this old theory of Christmas as a replacement for Roman pagan festivals “can no longer be sustained” (Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 108). Part of the reason is that Sol Invictus doesn’t appear to have been all that popular in the Roman Empire until the late third century reign of Emperor Aurelius, who promoted the cult as part of his plan to inaugurate the rebirth of Rome. But the festivals of his reign primarily occurred during the month of August. The earliest evidence that identifies December 25th with the birth of Sol Invictus comes almost a century later from a calendar dated to the year 354, which, significantly, also identifies Christmas on that date. The other issue is that Christians recognized December 25th well before Sol Invictus was made popular and at a time when, as Andrew McGowan of Yale points out, they were more zealous to distinguish their religion from paganism than to use paganism as an evangelistic tool.
At the dawn of the third century, decades before Aurelius assumed the throne, there were at least two figures claiming Christ was born on December 25th, St. Hippolytus of Rome and the Christian historian Sextus Julius Africanus. Consequently, the liturgical scholar Thomas Talley has gone so far as to say it was the Romans who co-opted Christmas for Sol Invictus not the other way around. Scholars such as Talley have argued for what is now being called the “calculation theory” of Christmas. This theory doesn’t read Christian dating as a mere repurposing of prior pagan festivals. It points out that the early Christians were very concerned both with biblical chronology and the symbolism of time. Africanus, for example, argued for December 25th because it was nine months later than March 25th, which was the traditional date for the Annunciation and, he added somewhat bizarrely, the day God created the world. In a late fourth century homily on the date of Christmas, the aforementioned preacher, St. John Chrysostom, looked to the Gospel of Luke for his own calculation. Luke has the most chronological information about Jesus’ birth. St. Luke tells us that Mary conceived Jesus six months after Elizabeth became
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pregnant with John the Baptist (Luke 1:26). It further tells us that Elizabeth conceived shortly after Zechariah returned from completing his priestly service in the Temple (Luke 1:23-24). According to Chrysostom, since Zechariah was a member of the priestly division of Abijah (Luke 1:5), he would have been serving in the Temple during the month of September and would have returned home late in the month. Traditionally, the Conception of John the Baptist was celebrated on September 23rd. If Elizabeth conceived John in late September and Mary conceived Jesus six months later, this puts the conception of Jesus right around the traditional date of March 25th for the Annunciation. Nine months later is December 25th. For St. John Chrysostom, the coincidence of Christmas with winter solstice and Roman solar festivals was an instance of the poetry of Providence. He did not see these coincidences as cause for suspicion but as confirmations of faith and the working of divine wisdom. While many today, including perhaps many Catholics, view the date of Christmas, if not Christmas itself, like they view the legends of Santa Claus, hopefully we can now see that the early Christians were not merely shrewd culture warriors, but people of faith who did their best to understand what had been revealed to them. And perhaps this Christmas we can move past all the skepticism and incredulity that surrounds us and regain something of Chrysostom’s faith that looks at history not as a series of random reactions but as the poetry of Providence.
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By a monk of St. Benedict’s Abbey, A Light was Born, Watercolor
FR. MATTHEW HABIGER, OSB
Why Principles are Imperative By Fr. Matthew Habiger, O.S.B.
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e identify ourselves with our principles. Tell me what a person’s principles are, and I will tell you what you can expect from him in his decisions and deeds. When we elect public officials, we need to know their principles. What is their guiding light, their moral compass? Once a person reveals their guiding principles, then he can be held accountable for how he preserves them on his tour of duty. If you declare yourself to be “pro-life,” then a whole catalog of commitments appears. If you claim to be “pro-choice,” then an entirely different set of commitments appears. Abe Lincoln based his presidency upon the major principle found in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident – that all men are created equal.” We all need an extensive collection of principles to give reasonable direction to our lives. Indeed, every walk of life, every profession, even every branch of knowledge has its set of guiding principles. In public life we refer to these as professional ethics. If we know the relevant principles that apply to a given activity, e.g., driving a car, then we know how to react to a wide variety of circumstances. Young children want to know the “rules” and “what is expected of them.” They want some structure in their lives, something that is dependable, predictable. But this applies to adults also. If you are a businessman, then you need to know what all goes into a successful business. There are basic principles operative in business and the economy. To be successful, the businessman must cooperate with these principles. If he does not, he risks bankruptcy. Then add business ethics to this. Every institution, whether in education, medicine, law, newspapers and media, the military, the police force, the sports world,or any other sector, has its set of guiding principles. Success comes with putting these principles to work. Failure results when they
are ignored, or badly misinterpreted. Then add all the relevant codes of ethics to these institutions. Marriage and family life heavily rely upon the awareness and practice of good principles. If you want your marriage to work, then there are things you must do to foster the relationship, and other things you must avoid that wreck the relationship. A 50% divorce rate today is a clear indication that many people do not understand what marriage was designed to be. They don’t understand making a lifetime commitment, or making an unconditional gift of self, or the indispensable role of self-sacrifice, and an openness to life. They don’t know the basic principles that can be found in every strong marriage, and in every healthy, happy family. Everyone wants a strong marriage and a healthy, happy family, but they don’t know how to build them. A democracy needs a set of principles if it is to survive. I encourage all Catholics to look beyond a politician’s popularity or party to find their principles. Vote on the basis of how closely a person’s principles align with Catholic doctrine. And do your part, both to learn the Faith and to defend in public the principles that set into motion socially the law of God.
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Living the Liturgy Commentary on the Liturgical Year By The Monks of St. Benedict’s Abbey
3 DECEMBER – 1ST SUNDAY OF ADVENT Fr. Jay Kythe, O.S.B.
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ave you ever said that “a part of me would like to do…” or “a part of me feels …”? We all have said something like that. We are created with “parts” or different roles we may take on at different times throughout our lives. Part of the great adventure of life is that these roles keep changing and shifting. In this Gospel reading for the First Sunday of Advent, we have the image of a man traveling abroad and leaving his household in the hands of servants. If we were to consider this household as our soul, there would be different “parts” of us assigned to different tasks. And a very important role is that of a gatekeeper. The traveler assigns him the role to “keep watch.” What is he to do when he keeps watch? First of all, it is for the traveler, waiting patiently for his return.
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Other servants do other things; a busy mother will be taking care of the children, a young man will have to study, a part of the person acts as a caretaker of the household, of infirm family members, of pets, and so on. That same person may have a gatekeeper, watching and waiting for the presence of Christ. That same gatekeeper would have to keep out undesirable passers-by. For us, that could be all the temptations we suffer, bad news we hear that threatens to disturb us, distractions that pull the gatekeeper away from waiting for the owner of the house. That same gatekeeper would have to keep messengers of the owner in, the messages we can get when we kneel down and pray. By now it must be clear as to who this traveler is: it is the Lord! And He asks us to “Be watchful! Be alert!” In the ordinariness of daily life, it is easy to become
LIVING THE LITURGY TODAY sleepy. It is easy to doze off and awakened by the cry, “The Bridegroom is here!” as the ten wise and foolish virgins had heard. It is easy to be distracted and not see Christ in the distressing disguise of the poor one standing before me. In the Gospel story, the traveler puts the servants in charge, especially the gatekeeper, and entrusts them with this task, to keep His property safe. In other words, this Divine traveler places a lot of trust in you! Trust can also be expressed in other words: confidence, reliance, and dependence; however, the best word is faith. When we make an act of faith, we place ourselves in God’s hands. And that act of surrender, done daily, keeps us from falling away and helps us to “stay awake!” God has put His trust in you; can you trust Him?
10 DECEMBER – 2ND SUNDAY OF ADVENT Fr. Marion Charboneau, O.S.B.
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ur Mass this Sunday will open with a prayer to remind the faithful that we are called to holiness in a world that can distract us. Our Collect, prayed by the celebrant, will be that “no earthly undertaking
hinder those who set out to meet your son.” Indeed, much of the world is dangerous, hampers us, and may prove spiritually fatal. In those words, in a prayer that asks anything unholy and evil in our lives be nullified, we will meet Jesus Christ in the Mass. Our encounter with Jesus in the Gospel will take the form of Anticipation. We will encounter Jesus in the prophesying of John the Baptist on the banks of the Jordan, proclaiming Jesus as one to come. John was a powerful and jarring figure in himself, clothed in camel’s hair and eating locusts and honey, and he was not just impressive in appearance, but in his word and preaching. John the Baptist was the messenger “crying out in the desert,” calling his people to prepare for the Messiah, calling everyone into a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” It was a message powerful in its day. For Jews, baptismal rituals and washing were common, reminding them of the God who brought Israel out of Egypt, led them through the Red Sea, and blessed them with the covenant at Mt. Sinai. John’s baptism reminds of that, but John isn’t the herald of the past; John the Baptist is the herald of a New Age, John proclaiming it by announcing a baptism even greater
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than his own. John saw his own work and his baptism as only a prelude to what is present and given to each of us this Sunday at the Mass: Jesus, as the Messiah in the Spirit of God, bringing about a new forgiveness and mercy able to transform human existence into an era of everlasting love, peace, and salvation, never to be broken. What we know by faith is that we’ve seen it all taking place. To go to the Mass conscious of this is to truly know the Good News and to participate in it. Indeed, we enter into the accomplishment of it in Jesus’s Death and Resurrection. Bread and wine become his own body and person in risen glory, and that is given to us as food and fuel for our own earthly lives, with Jesus renewing us and dwelling in us as the beginning of eternal life with him. If we recall that opening prayer with any honesty, we have to admit that in our sinfulness we’ve given ourselves over to all kinds of evils that hinder us. God in his love has responded with great mercy, in the Baptism we’ve received from Jesus Christ, and in the gift of his body and blood. For that, we will present ourselves to him on Sunday, responding to his gift with the offering of our own lives.
Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow, The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, Oil on Canvas
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17 DECEMBER – 3RD SUNDAY OF ADVENT Fr. Meinrad Miller, O.S.B.
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n this Third Sunday of Advent the Church celebrates Gaudete, or “rejoice” Sunday. The readings at Mass remind us why we have cause for rejoicing. In the first reading from Isaiah 61, we hear of the wonderful new that the spirit of the Lord God is upon me. That first reading ties in well with the Gospel in which we see another man, St. John the Baptist, filled with the Holy Spirit, preparing the way of the Lord. We know that St. Benedict had a devotion to St. John the Baptist, for whom St. Benedict had a chapel dedicated at Monte Cassino. It was precisely the fidelity and humility of St. John the Baptist that caused Our Lord to commend him in Matthew 11:11 Amen, I say to you, among those born of women there has been none greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. Perhaps the greatest testimony to the presence of the Holy Spirit in John is his humility. He does not take the occasion to draw attention to himself. Rather he gives witness to Christ clearly when he says the one who is coming after me, who sandals I am not worthy to untie. One person who recognized Christ present in our own age was Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Even though she went through years of darkness and desolation, she had faith that the one who had called her to minister to Him in the poorest of the poor was truly with her, guiding her. Her life was one of decreasing so that Christ might increase. In this final week of Advent, we rejoice also in Our Lady, filled with the Holy Spirit, who gave her “fiat” so that we might be set free. As we await the Birth of Jesus as monks, oblates, families, and friends, let us too rejoice that the Holy Spirit prepares our hearts to welcome so great a Redeemer as the newborn Prince of Peace, our Lord Jesus Christ.
Fr. Gabriel Landis, O.S.B.
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efore speaking about the Annunciation found in Luke 1:26-38, I want to speak about the Book of Daniel, where the Archangel Gabriel makes his first appearance in Holy Scriptures. In the Book of Daniel, anytime that the Archangel Gabriel appears to Daniel, he is greatly afraid. In his first appearance recorded in Daniel 8:15-17, Daniel say, “When he came near where I was standing, I fell prostate in terror.” In Daniel 9:21, he appears to Daniel again “at the time of evening offering.” In Luke 1:9, the Archangel Gabriel appears to the priest, Zechariah during the time of offering incense, which was done at the time of morning and evening offering. Zachariah’s reaction was very much like Daniel’s; in Luke 1:12, it says, “Zechariah was troubled by what he saw, and fear came upon him.” In the Book of Daniel and in Luke 1, we see very terrifying appearances to Daniel and Zechariah. From the Archangel, Daniel is told of the end of times. He is frightened by the appearance of Gabriel as well as his message. Zechariah, was fulfilling his priestly duties and had been chosen by lot to make the offering of incense. Luke 1:11-12 says, “the angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right of the altar of incense. Zechariah was troubled by what he saw, and fear came upon him.” The detail about Gabriel being on the right side of the altar of incense is important. Jewish thought held that being on the right side is a sign of favor. The Archangel Gabriel, standing on the right side, told Zechariah that he and his wife in their old age will have a child. Remember, Zechariah is a priest. He has been chosen by lot to offer incense, most likely at the same time the Archangel appeared to Daniel. He, like Daniel, is terrified. Yet he doubts the words of the Archangel! As we know, the Archangel is not happy with his lack of belief, so he punishes him with being mute until the birth of John. The Annunciation, which immediately follows the Archangel Gabriel’s appearance to Zechariah, follows a similar pattern. Both Zechariah and Mary are troubled by the vision. Luke 1:29 says, about Mary, “she
was greatly troubled at what was said.” Gabriel goes on to say to her that “Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus.” After objecting that she is a virgin, Gabriel tells her,
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“Nothing will be impossible for God.” “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” He then goes on to tell her that her cousin Elizabeth is pregnant as well, and, “Nothing will be impossible for God.” However, unlike Zechariah unbelieving response, Mary responds by saying to the Archangel, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to be according to your word.” It is striking how artists have conveyed these appearances of the Archangel Gabriel’s appearances to Daniel, Zechariah, and Mary. Often Daniel and Zechariah are portrayed either bewildered or in fear. In the Annunciation of Jesus, Mary is portrayed as being in a state of prayer. She is listening to the words of Gabriel, no longer in fear, but in an attitude of obedience. The Archangel Gabriel, often portrayed as a terrifying angel to Daniel and Zechariah, is sometimes portrayed as not even being able to meet her eyes. He often has his head bowed before the Mother of God. My point is this: God always wants us to listen to Him. He desires that we follow what He teaches, and what He wants for each one of us. To Daniel and Zechariah, God got his points across to them. They loved God, but they were terrified of his messenger, Gabriel. Mary loves God to the point that she moved beyond fear. She understands Gabriel’s words to her that she will be the mother of the promised Messiah. She will become the Mother of the Savior of the World. Her response to answering God’s will is a powerful encouragement to us. Her life as Jesus’ mother was not easy. But her willingness to achieve God’s will be fruitful to us all. May we all, when God’s will might frighten us, respond, “May it be done according to your word.”
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Rembrant, 1646, Adoration of the Shepherds, Oil on Canvas
25 DECEMBER – THE NATIVITY OF THE LORD Abbot James Albers, O.S.B.
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n meditating on the Solemnity of the Nativity of Our Lord, we reflect upon the power of intercession, how the Incarnation makes possible our ability to ask for and offer intercession. Through the birth of Christ, God becoming human flesh, the plan for our salvation was revealed in the quiet night. Veiled in that cave and in the child, Jesus was the nourishment for our journey of Christ’s Body and Blood, the defeat of death and victory of life, the resurrection of the body, the Communion of Saints, Mary and Joseph, and all the angels and archangels, all interceding for us, championing us on our journey – all wrapped up as a new-born child. Emmanuel, God-with-us, the Word made Flesh, quietly intrudes into the life of man to bring to life our hope. We are not in this alone: you interceding for me, and I and the other monks interceding for you, the entire Body of Christ lifting up prayer like incense, pleading to the one who became one of us, pleading to those holy ones who have fought the good fight, have finished the race, and have kept the faith. God in his Word made Flesh makes this all possible, and we ask him once again to quietly – and maybe sometimes with a mighty sound – intrude into our lives, to intercede. Consider the power of intercession as the action of intervening in the life of another, intervening for another. God intervened in human history to set it
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right and establish it in the Kingdom of Heaven. God, the Word, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, intervened in human nature to negate that which had gone before that marred the very soul of man. Most importantly, however, God intervenes in each of our lives individually, to save not only mankind, but to save you, and to save me, to intercede. From that moment in Bethlehem, interceding becomes our way of encounter with God. It is important that we understand this, not only to make way for God to intervene in our lives, but because we are called to mirror, to echo this intervention of God in the lives of others, in society, in our culture, in our prayers of intercession. God wants us to be the pesky widow of the gospel, pestering, intervening, encountering the newborn child who comes to us and to others. As we celebrate this season of Christmas, let us remember that the Son of God took flesh in a world where people make choices. It is a world where we all have our priorities, our goals, our vision of what would be best for our lives. God’s invitation to us, his intercession in our lives does not always fit with our preferences. That is when we are called to love the most, to deny ourselves. We, like St. Joseph, are called to give our assent, to respond in freedom, and to play our role in the unfolding of God’s salvation in the world – to intervene and intercede. This Christmas, let us turn to St. Joseph and the Virgin Mary as our example, to serve Christ with
31 DECEMBER – FEAST OF THE HOLY FAMILY Br. Angelus Atkinson, O.S.B.
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oday is the feast of the Holy Family— the family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. The communion antiphon for the Mass today is an interesting choice. We do not hear of the Holy Family in the peace and wonder of Bethlehem, but rather we are presented with what could be described as the confrontation of the Holy Family. It takes place after Mary and Joseph lose the twelve-year-old Jesus during their pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Feast of Passover. Returning to the Holy City to search, they find Him speaking with the elders in the temple on the third day. Mary addresses Jesus in these words: Fili quid fecisti nobis sic? Ego et pater tuus dolentes quaerebamus te. Son why have you treated us in this way? Your father and I have been worrying and searching for you. It is a sentiment that parents from Adam and Eve onward can recognize‒What are you doing to us? Ego is drawn and rises to a height on pater tuus… I and your father… Do you not realize what pain you are causing us? Mary and Joseph’s bewilderment is understandable, but what happens next reveals that there is something different before them. What they thought was the problem—a forgetful kid— was not the real problem. Jesus opens His mouth and breaks for a moment the long silence of the Gospel that hovers mysteriously over His formative years as a child and adult before His public ministry.
He replies: Et quid est quod me quaerebatis? An nesciebatis quia in his quis patris mei sunt, oportet me esse. Why were you seeking me? Did you not know that I had to be about the things of my father? Here too the phrase rises to a height on patris, “Father.” It is a singular moment, a moment of distance and also of revelation of a deeper union, in which Jesus reveals His true identity, which has been up until now hidden in the shadow of the foster fatherhood of Joseph. He is with His father. He has never left His father’s side. He is about the Father’s business. There is a beautiful prayer garden on the grounds of the monastery which meditates on these events as the Holy Family returns to Nazareth. In it, Mary looks at the child Jesus who has paused in their walk to look back towards Jerusalem, the place of His final destiny, the place of his last supper, his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension to the Father’s side. For a moment he has increased the distance between him and Mary and Joseph. But Mary, with her hand on the breast that nursed this child, looks upon Him as only a mother can, with tenderness, wonder, and sorrow in her eyes. In this moment she embraces the pain of this new distance, and this embrace gives birth to a greater recognition of the Mystery that is before her, the Mystery carried in this child, that she has borne in her flesh, that belongs to her, and yet only insofar as she acknowledges that He belongs to an Other, to the One who draws her and all who become familiar with her son to destiny. As we look upon them we can see that this is also what we desire for our own life, our own family and friendships‒if every problem were brought under our control, would we be happy? Rather, is it not greater to discover in every confrontation, a Presence that embraces everything and can bring it to its fulfillment? This is the embrace of the Father and in Christ it is always possible for us to be with Him in all things. We can ask Mary and Joseph to pray for us that we may also be given the grace of this new possibility in the light of Christ’s presence today.
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concern for God’s will, and with faith and love. Let us set aside that sin which keeps us from encountering the Word made Flesh. Let us do what needs to be done in order to participate more fully in the new life that our Savior offers us. Let us especially be attentive to those who are weak, vulnerable, and displaced, for they are the reflection of the Nativity scene – they intercede in our lives. Let us celebrate this glorious feast of our salvation by loving and serving him who has so gloriously intervened and interceded in our lives.
Monastic Formation
upcoming events
On December 7th at 5:00 p.m. Vespers, Postulant Jack Dugan will enter the novitiate. On December 8th at 11:30 a.m. Mass, Br. David Bissen will take his First Profession. Finally on December 9th at 10:30 a.m. Mass, Br. Jean-Marie Hogan, O.S.B., will take his Solemn Vows.
December, 7
At the beginning of December, join St. Benedict’s Abbey to witness all three stages of monastic formation.
It is rare to see all three of the stages in one year. You are welcome to attend on the 7th, 8th, and 9th. Each of these events will be held in the Abbey Church.
Novitiate of Jack Dugan First Profession of Br. David Bissen December, 8
Solemn Profession of Br. Jean-Marie Hogan, OSB December, 9
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