Morning Chapter
In our regular Sunday chapter meeting this morning, Fr. John spoke briefly on the meaning of today's feast for the Church. He also reminded us that tomorrow, the celebration of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, has been set aside by Pope Benedict as Pro Orantibus Day, a day "for those who pray". Knowing that consecrated contemplative men and women need all the help they can get to remain faithful to their special vocation Bl. Pope John Paul II, in 1997 asked the whole Church to remember us in prayer especially on this day. We wholeheartedly second the motion! The Passionist Nuns at Owensburg, KY answer the question, What Is Pro Orantibus Day on their web site: In The Shadow Of His Wings.  

Afterwards Fr. Jerome gave a brief report of the annual meeting of the Resource Center For Religious Institutes he attended in St. Louis, MO a couple of weeks ago. He reported that about 700 religious men and women attended this year's national conference. Talks given and topics discussed included such items as health care for religious, investment policies and the increasing tension between government proposals inimical to Catholic moral teaching especially for those involved in health care.

Schedule Changes
Due to Thanksgiving Day coming up this week we've had to make several changes in our baking day schedule to comply with the needs of our distributors. This in turn brought about changes in the times for our daily Mass schedule. On days that we work in the bakery we have Mass in the afternoon to accomodate those working in the bakery. On the non-bake days Mass is in the early morning. You'll find the schedule for the week on our Liturgical Schedule page. 

60th Anniversary for November
Retired Abbot Fr. John Eudes has the Anniversary article for this month. Our Lady of the Genesee and the Foundation of Novo Mundo in Brazil is the topic of his article in which he gives a lengthy and informative history of our second daughter house from the days of its foundation right up to the present time. The community has not been without its growing pains which included the near killing of one of the founders by robbers. Since then the community has experienced further attempted robberies. As founding Abbot Fr. John Eudes is able to give a personal perspective on the community in his article which can be found at 60th Anniversary-November.

COMMUNITY AT NOVO MUNDO

Phone Troubles
Anyone trying to contact someone here at Genesee by phone lately has probably encountered difficulties. Nearly a year ago we had a new phone system installed which has proven to be not only inadequate but unstable and becoming more and more unreliable recently. If you have been wondering why you were unable to get through or leave a message or have calls returned blame rests squarely on our ailing system. But relief is insight as our vendor has agreed to take the system back and replace it with another more reliable one. The changeover is due to take place this Tuesday when the phones will be inoperative for most of the day. Hopefully that will solve all our phone problems giving us yet one more thing for which to be grateful on Thanksgiving Day.

To Blog Or Not To Blog
Our new web site (still a work in progress) comes equipped with a blog feature and a number of visitors have attempted to use it for sending messages. They are probably wondering why there has been no response to them and why the blog page is still in the unfinished test mode. Quite simply your webmaster (of sorts) is not at all familiar with blogging having never done it and he's not at all sure whether or not to set it in motion, wondering what there is to blog about. It seems like it would amount to a duplicate of the popular Abbey News and involve a good deal of precious time to keep it up. Is blogging a monastic thing to do is another question that comes to mind. Any light on the subject can be sent to the webmaster.