Advent
Yesterday evening at vespers we began the new liturgical year with the blessing of the advent wreath and the lighting of the candle for the first week of advent. Today, along with the rest of the Roman Catholic world we inagurate the changes introduced with the third edition of the Roman Missal. We've tried to prepare well for the changes with several chant practices and a final practice in chapter this morning. Despsite our best efforts we managed to get our very first response to "The Lord be with you" at Lauds this morning wrong except for one lone voice that got it right.

Schedule Change
Thursday, December 8th, is the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. Ordinarily Thursday is a bake day but since it is a holy day of obligation this year we transferred our baking day to Wednesday, December 7th, so we need not work on the solemnity. The schdule changes for both days can be found on our Liturgical Schedule page. Shortly after the solemnity the changes for Christmas and New Year will be posted.

Supplement
Since posting his contribution on our foundation in Brazil in the November installment of our 60th Anniversary articles Fr. John Eudes received more current information about the foundation. He includes this as a supplement to his article which can be found at November Supplement.

Question Settled
To blog or not to blog on our web site has been settled in favor of not to blog. Many of you kindly offered your thoughts on the question and all but one felt that blogging isn't really necessary and would probably be a source of unnecessary distraction not in keeping with the Benedictine approach to silence as understood by the Trappist-Cistercian reform. While it is true that monks have to keep up with changes and developments we have to do so in a manner that will not compromise essential monastic values. Not every thing that comes down the pike can be 'monastisized' and integrated with monastic life and blogging, tweeting, facebook, etc. are numbered among them.

Speaking of facebook our business manager has put up a site on Monks' Bread which he manages. It can be found at MonksBread Facebook.

It was interesting to note how many who responded were aware of and appreciative of the importance and necessary monastic observance of a certain separation from worldly practices and develpments and how they have to be used with discernment and disgression. In any case, it seems clear that the Abbey News and the Contact Us pages are adequate and serve their purposes well.