A number of Guests to the Sunday Mass asked that this homily be posted on the website. Just on the eve of this Third Sunday of Advent, our nation has witnessed the horrific slaughter in Newton, Connecticut, taking almost thirty lives, most of them children. At the same time 400 hundred of our troops are […]

The final week of Advent is marked by the Solemn Antiphons for the Magnificat at Vespers. They are also know as the “O Antiphons” because each begins with the exclamation “O” as it calls upon the incarnate Lord by one of this titles taken largely from Jewish Prophecy. These antiphons emerged from the “imperial” ceremonial of Charlemagne’s […]

As we are about to celebrate the Third Sunday of Advent which urges us to rejoice–rejoice at the Lord’s coming, I look around at our nation and world and… Please join us in prayer, as we at the Abbey join you in your prayer, for the victims and their families of the horrific shooting in Newton, […]

The community Mass will be clebrated at 11:00 AM, Fr. James Orthmann presiding and preaching.

As recent posts and comments have brought home, Mary is not a low-profile member of Roman Catholic piety. Although the traditions, expressions and theological considerations may differ, devotion to Mary characterizes both the Latin West and the Eastern Orthodox Liturgies. Certainly the Reformers of the Sixteenth Centuries reacted against the exaggerated Marian devotion, even mariolotry, of the late Middle […]

It was gratifying that the Post on Advent Reading and Evangelization provoked a few–and varied–comments. Gratifying because the state of Catholic practice means enough to provoke discussion. The Posts do not seek to provoke controversy–one possible stratagem to promote readership–but I do welcome varying points of view. The reactions made clear to me that several […]

The community Mass will be celebrated at 11:00 AM,  Abbot Robert Barnes presiding and preaching.

Fr. Malachy returned home from the hospital Thursday evening with a new schedule of meds. He had been suffering from the inevitable complications of growing old. Your prayers and thoughts and comments are all deeply appreciated.

We practice “refectory reading” during our midday meal, the main meal of the monastic day. St. Benedict specifies that the monks should eat in silence and one of the monks should read to the community while they are eating. Often, we are listening to a work of history or biography–monastic biography, for example–a book about […]

First Vespers of the Immaculate Conception will be celebrated on Friday evening at 5:30 PM. Mary Immaculate is the Patroness of the United States; the community Mass will be celebrated at 11:00 AM on Saturday, Fr. James Orthmann presiding and preaching.