Gaudate Sunday 2024
December 17, 2024
Third Sunday of Advent —Gaudete Sunday We have come to Gaudete ( Rejoice ) Sunday, and the prophets Isaiah and Zephaniah in their writings call the Anawim, ( a people
Chapter Talk – Corpus Christi – June 11, 2023, cycle-A When we feel barren, empty, hungering for something more, where or to whom do we turn? What do we do? Do we ignore, or run from these experiences in our life’s journey? The point of the first reading of Deuteronomy centers around this poignant text: […]
Chapter Talk – Fourth Sunday of the Year – January 29, 2022, cycle-A With paradox there is tension between two seemingly opposing realities. This tension is like a golden thread linking the two, sending divine impulses as one experiences either side of the polarity. What does this have to do with today’s gospel of the […]
Chapter Talk – 32nd Sunday of the Year – November 6, 2022 We just celebrated All Saints. It is a profound solemnity of the Church. Each year our first Vespers opens the solemnity of All Saints with this amazing text from St. Symeon the New Theologian: “The saints in each generation, joined together to those […]
Chapter Talk – 27th Sunday of the Year – October 2, 2022, cycle-C Right now, let us ask Jesus, like the apostles: “Increase our faith”. To ask something, to desire something beyond our ego demands, what would this be like? To desire and thus to ask from the depths, ‘Out of the depths I cry […]
Chapter Talk – 19th Sunday of the Year – August 7, 2022, cycle-C Stay awake… for what? For whom? Be aware…vigilant…have your lamps lit…why? Fears, anxieties, confusion, uncertainty…. silence. Imagine an encounter: I and Christ…or Christ and I: fears, anxieties, confusion, uncertainty: in the living encounter of faith what happens to these ‘pulls’ of the […]
Chapter Talk – 17th Sunday of the Year – July 24, 2022, cycle-C St. Luke’s gospel for this Sunday has three pericopes, all on the theme of prayer. The gospel begins with one of the disciples asking Jesus to teach them to pray. And Jesus’ reply is the Lord’s prayer. Jesus spoke in Aramaic, and […]
Chapter Talk – 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time – July 10, 2022, cycle-C ‘For this command that I enjoin upon you today’ (Dt 30:11)….and what is this command? It is one simple word, a word so multi-faceted and complex, and still simple, straight-forward….something we all know from very young. We are stamped with the Divine […]
Chapter Talk – Third Sunday of the Year – January 23, 2022, cycle-C For the readings of this Third Sunday, it is striking that two great voices and thinkers converge around one word: ‘today’. Those voices are Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar and Pope Francis. Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar in his commentary on the […]
Chapter Talk – Second Sunday of the Year – January 16, 2022, cycle-C With the wedding feast at Cana, we are given the third manifestation of the Incarnate Word, the Word made flesh. God has united with humanity in sending his beloved Son to and for us, fully human and fully Divine. The other two […]
Chapter Talk – 29th Sunday of the Year – October 17, 2021, cycle-B We want ‘glory’ but there is a cost. This is the essential message of today’s gospel. Jesus is addressed by James and John, two of his disciples, as ‘teacher’…and they add, “We want you to do for us whatever we ask of […]
Chapter Talk – 16th Sunday of the Year – July 18, 2021, cycle-B The readings for the Mass today center on the ‘shepherd’ theme. Jesus realizes that his disciples need some solitary, silent time and space. As they retreat to a lonely place, they see before them a crowd of people who arrived there just […]
Chapter Talk – Sacred Heart – June 13, 2021, cycle-B Jesus: the icon of God’s love, the icon stamped upon our hearts. Thus, this is our end goal (telios) to become fully open, arms outstretched in mercy and compassion. “Acquire a heart and you shall be saved”. This desert saying coming out of the fourth […]
Chapter Talk – Fourth Sunday of the Year – January 31, 2021, cycle-B “God acts in the simplicity of open hearts, in the patience of those who pause until they see clearly” (Let Us Dream, p.61). These words of Pope Francis are among many thoughts he has on discerning: discerning what is the voice of […]
Chapter Talk – 24th Sunday of the Year – September 13, 2020, cycle-A Peter asks Jesus: “If my brother or sister sins against me, how often must I forgive? As many as seven times?” We all know by heart Jesus’ answer: “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times” (Mt 18:21). What is […]
Chapter Talk – 13th Sunday of the Year – cycle-A, June 28, 2020 When we each professed our monastic vows at our solemn profession, was not our ‘yes’ total? If we reflect on the ‘burning’ feeling in our hearts at that time, there was a strong affect and love within our ‘yes’; we were aware […]
Chapter Talk – Solemnity of the Sacred Heart – June 19, 2020 John, the ‘beloved disciple’ leaned on the chest of Christ. The ‘beloved disciple’ leaned on the “divine-human heart” (Wendy Wright, Sacred Heart Gateway to God, p.15). In John’s gospel we all are the ‘beloved disciple’. What are we ‘leaning’ upon when we lean […]
Chapter Talk – November 17, 2019 – 33rdSunday of the Year – cycle-C I received from Abbot Damian of Spencer a copy of his homily that he gave last week for the funeral Mass of Br. Meinrad. He concluded his homily with the following: “I’ll let St. Therese and Fr. Thomas Keating have the final […]
Chapter Talk – 32ndSunday of the Year – November 10, 2019 – cycle-C For the solemnity of All Saints I referred to Thomas Merton who wrote: “to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore, the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and discovering my true […]
Chapter Talk – All Saints – November 1, 2019 “O God, keep us faithful to the gift which they received with such joy and handed on at such cost.” This is an excerpt from a prayer for the feast of the apostles Simon and Jude. The gift they received was their ‘mission’, their mission of proclaiming […]
Chapter Talk – 28thSunday of the Year – October 13, 2019, cycle-C Today is the canonization of Cardinal John Henry Newman. He was a prolific writer, an intellectual whose heart very much balanced who he was, what he preached and what he wrote. I will share multiple quotes to support this statement! To begin: “God has created […]
Chapter Talk – 25thSunday of the Year – September 22, 2019, cycle-C As I was pondering what to focus this morning’s chapter talk on, I turned to the third conference we had from Fr. Michael Dodds for our retreat. In staying with his theme for our retreat ‘The Hiddenness of God’, he begins this third […]
Chapter Talk – 24thSunday – September 15, 2019, cycle-C In our retreat with Fr. Michael Dodds, OP, our second conference was on ‘the hiddenness of God’. This hiddenness of God, the God who is unknowable leads, Fr. Michael said, to some people denying the very existence of God. What I was struck by in this […]
Chapter Talk – 18thSunday of the Year – August 4, 2019, cycle-C Revitalization: to impart new life or vigor…to restore to a fresh condition. What if this word became a sacred image for us as a community? No question: we worry about our future, the immediate future of our individual lives and the life of our […]
Homily for the 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C [Jer17:5-8 ; 1Cor 15:12,16-20 ; Lk 6:17,20-26] Jesus’ Sermon on the Mountain, with His famous Blessings, is usually associated with the Evangelist Matthew, who gives the most elaborated version. But also Luke has his version. According to Luke, Jesus is rather descending into a valley – or […]
FRIDAY, 4th WEEK OT – February 8, 2019 [Heb 13:1-8 ; Mk 6:14-29] King Herod is a coward with a vacillating heart. On the one hand he does have some interest in spiritual matters, on the other he is most eager to preserve his power position under all circumstances. Though being a secret admirer of the new and […]
Third Sunday of Advent —Gaudete Sunday We have come to Gaudete ( Rejoice ) Sunday, and the prophets Isaiah and Zephaniah in their writings call the Anawim, ( a people
Monastery Lentils A popular Guest House recipe that is vegan, easy to make and packed with flavor. Recipe calls for dry herbs – but use fresh for extra flavor. Serve
A lot goes on in the world, but little changes in a monastery. The life is regular and is set by defined intervals of prayer, work, and study. We are
