Annual Visit
In keeping with their annual custom of joining us for a Saturday afternoon celebration of Mass and Vespers the Psalmtones of Rochester, NY joined us yesterday afternoon for this year's celebration. They sang most parts of the Mass and a few of Vespers, much of it in traditional Gregorian Chant. It is really uplifting to hear Gregorian Chant sung so perfectly.

The Psalmtones were formed in 1991 as a schola of five Rochester men who enjoy singing Gregorian Chant and a capella Renaissance motets for various occasions. If you'd like to listen to some of their chants and other songs visit their web site at: The Psalmtones.

Speaking of visits we were glad to welcome Fr. Bernard, CFR and Br. Bob Herrick, ofm, cap into the community for several days retreat. With the woods along the ridge behind the monastery at their autumnal best they couldn't have picked a more colorful time to be with us in the Genesee Valley, despite a few days of rain here and there culminating in frosty nights.

More Retreating
Also on retreat but in an altogether different capacity is our Fr. Gerard. He is currently at our monastery of Our Lady of Joy on Lantao island, Hong Kong giving the brothers their annual retreat. As you will see in the brief historical sketch below this community has suffered a great deal since its foundation.

Founded in China by O. L. of Consolation in 1928; transferred to Lantao in 1937 after many moves; raised to the status of priory in 1941, abbey in 1999.

1937: the monastery was overrun by the Japanese; several monks were imprisoned and murdered, along with the bishop of Zhengdingfu (uncle of Dom Vincent Hermans).

1939: flood

1947: Establishment of a refuge.
With the advance of the communist army, the community fled to Sichuan, leaving only a few caretakers at Liesse. The monastery of Liesse was confiscated by the reds, who set aside a small part for old and sick monks. Regular life continued at Liesse no. 2 in Sichuan in spite of great difficulties. Following a trip to Europe, the prior sent a part of this community (about a dozen) to O. L. of the Prairies, Canada, because of continuing communist advances.

1950: the prior, returning to China, moved to Honk Kong and was able to regroup some of his monks on the island of Lantao.

1953: return of the monks from Canada.

1955: canonical transfer of the community to Lantao. Visit of the abbot general.

1956: 19 February, blessing of the church.

According to an email from Fr. Gerard the community is doing well and has a number of young men in formation. We expect Fr. Gerard's return next Sunday.

Preview of Coming Distractions
We thought it would be ready to be up and running this weekend but things didn't work out that way. It was up for a short while until 'unintentional consequences' (glitches!) showed up making it necessary to take it back off line. Hopefully the problems will be ironed out so that our brand new web site will be able to go live early this week. Up until now we've had three web sites: the Abbey's, the retreat house and the on-line store so it was decided to unify things by moving them to a single server and redo the sites.

For the most part the content of the sites will remain same but the format will have changed and, we hope, improved becoming more user friendly. The on-line store though will be completely redone.

No doubt, as usually happens with such things, more unintended consequences will appear as we continue learning how to work with the sites. Most of the addresses of the various pages will probably change though the home page for each site will remain the same so there should be no problem accessing them. Be sure to let us know of any problems or difficulties you have as we all become familiar with them.