kansas monks

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 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.