Abbey News

Sunday, August 30, 2009

At Last!
You've waited long enough to see the mysterious Curious Critter we couldn't upload to our server last week. Here it is: our window peeping tree frog!

Now wasn't that worth waiting for? The problems we were having were due to the fact that our web site host provider was bought out by another provider and our site was transferred to an upgraded server. It took a good deal of tweaking to get our site properly configured to the new arrangement but all seems well now. Another case of things have to get worse before they get better.

More Updating!
The biggest news of the week is that there isn't any. Almost everything has been relatively quiet and peaceful here these days quite in keeping with the usual end of summer calm. Crops are maturing nicely out on the farm and soon the harvesters will descend on the land with their harvesting equipment. There is a good deal of activity in the bakery where our maintenance men work at upgrading the plant from something of a 'mom & pop' operation to a much more professional one. Hopefully things will be ready for the inspection due later this fall.

Grist For the Mill
The oldest Benedictine monastery, St. Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, PA has an interesting story about their historic grist mill. Liane Hansen of National Public Radio visited Saint Vincent Archabbey and broadcast an on-the-spot report about it on Sunday, 2 August 2009. The broadcast is available online. The grist mill, now on the National Historic Register, is her first stop. The NPR Weekend Edition blog, Soapbox, offers a slide show of 23 photographs that supplements the broadcast.

When hope enters deeply into a Christian's life it unifies every aspiration and desire, and directs him toward God. Then there is no longer any room for so many little worldly hopes: for the esteem and the applause of men, an easier and more comfortable life, and a desire for the first place.

A Christian does not despise earthly realities, but utilizes them and values them with an unfettered heart; rather than being an object of attachment, they become a springboard for leaping always further ahead toward the conquest of God.

Thus life takes on the pace of a voyage that has no definite stops here on earth. It acquires a sense of expectation, of a vigil filled with longing. There is no time to lose, there can be no laziness or indolence for those who yearn to reach God: each day should mark a step forward toward eternity.

So we are always of good courage, - writes St. Paul - we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord-we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and home with the Lord (2 Cor. 5:6-8). This is the cry of Christian hope, impatient to reach God, a cry that does not end in sighs, but in busy deeds to attain its purpose. Whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him (ibid. 9).

Divine Intimacy
Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, OCD