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Holy Cross Abbey

901 Cool Spring Lane Berryville, Virginia 22611

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Friday of the 19th Week of the Year

August 18, 2023 by Fr Joseph

Having been born into a sinful world—and ourselves afflicted with Original Sin from our birth—we tend to simply accept much of the dysfunctionality of our world and society as “normal,” or as just the way things are. In doing so, we need to be reminded—like the Pharisees—that this was not how it was in the beginning when God brought human beings into existence. Memory of what we were before our first parents transgressed their Creator’s command, is preserved in little more than the misery, unhappiness, and restlessness of the human heart, estranged from the only One who can fill it with peace, joy, and completion. Ongoing conversion—that central monastic vow—is thus a form of remembering who we truly are, and in what state we were created in the beginning. Thus, to neglect ongoing conversion is to reinforce our forgetfulness and to enter ever more deeply into exile, and even further into this bitter land of unlikeness. So, through ongoing conversion let’s make a daily effort to not forget, but to remember by heeding the voice that daily calls us to repentance and New Life.

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