March 4, 2013
ABBEY NEWS
March 4, 2012
Retreat Week
This week we will be making our annual retreat from Monday, March 4th until Sunday, March 10th. We will be following a quieter schedule with more time for lectio and prayer than usual, doing only the necessary work, including baking Monks’ Bread of course. Our retreat director this year was supposed to be Father Martin Laird, O.S.A., associate professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University. That was the plan until Friday when he called to say he broke his ankle and, much to his regret – and ours – would be unable to come.
Nothing left for us to do but to have a quiet, silent retreat as we used to have years ago. Meanwhile we will try to reschedule him for another time. As so often happens, we propose, God disposes. Do keep us in prayer as we go aside and rest with the Lord awhile making ours the prayer of Samuel, speak, Lord, your servant is listening (1 Samuel 3:10).
Web Woes
This update was all set for a Saturday posting only to discover that due to problems with our site we couldn’t access it to do so. But our techs fixed the problem in a jiffy this morning so all is well. Once again we propose. . .
As the wintry days grow longer day by day it is refreshing to hear honking geese flying overhead. Can spring be far behind them?
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Lectio Notebook There is in us an instinct for newness, for renewal, for liberation of creative power. We seek to awaken in ourselves a force which really changes our lives from within. And yet the same instinct tells us that this change is a recovery of that which is deepest, most original, most personal in ourselves. To be born again is not to become somebody else, but to become ourselves. The deepest spiritual instinct in man is the urge of inner truth which demands that he be faithful to himself: to his deepest and most original potentialities. Yet at the same time, in order to become oneself, one must die. That is to say, in order to become one’s true self, the false self must die. In order for the inner self to appear, the outer self must disappear: or at least become secondary, unimportant. Love and Living |
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