With a Book and a Heavenly Companion
In the grey light of early morning on Quinquagesima Monday, between Lauds and Prime, we assembled in the Chapter Room to listen, once again, to...
For Our Oblates . . . and Others
Saint Benedict the Practical When it comes to the observance of Lent, Saint Benedict is very practical, very concrete. He doesn’t spend a lot of...
Feast of the Holy Face of Jesus
Reparation The last century saw, here and there, like so many points of light in the Church, men and women drawn by the Holy Ghost...
The Immaculate Heart of Mary
Blessed Are the Pure in Heart In the Beatitudes, Jesus, the Son of Mary, gives us the key that unlocks for us the mystery of...
Love and Confidence in the Heart of Mary
For today’s feast of the Most Pure Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary, I offer this translation of a text of Mother Mectilde de Bar....
Lord, that I may see
Gospel: Then Jesus took unto him the twelve, and said to them: Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things shall be accomplished which...
Trials, Humiliation, and Reparation
Humiliation Mother Mectilde de Bar was fond of repeating to her daughters that, “a victim of the Holy Sacrament [that is, one entirely offered and...
Litany of Reparation
Lord, have mercy on us. Lord, have mercy on us Christ, have mercy on us. Christ, have mercy on us. Lord, have mercy on us....
Into the Ark of Salvation
Sexagesima Three figures surround the Divine Sower of the Seed on Sexagesima Sunday. The first is Noe, the second the immaculate Mother of God, and...
Sexagesima Sunday
Attend to the Antiphons If you would enter deeply into the liturgy of any given Sunday, attend closely to the antiphons. The Magnificat Antiphon at...
Martyrs Close to Home
The photograph shows statues of the martyrs Blessed Margaret Ball and Blessed Francis Taylor at Saint Mary’s Pro-Cathedral in Dublin. We keep their feast today....
Blessed Columba Marmion: In Die Natalis
Several years ago, on a visit to the Irish College in Rome where the ever gracious Father Bernard Healy, then a student there, I was...
In the Hand of His Providence
Blind and Blinkered With a touching simplicity Our Lord says, “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten...
St Francis de Sales & the Rule of St Benedict
Holiness Is Symphonic The symphonic quality of holiness is a glorious thing orchestrated in Christ, by the Holy Ghost, to the praise of the Father....
Saint John Chrysostom on Priests
All men are ready to pass judgment on the priest as if he was not a being clothed with flesh, or one who inherited a...
St John Chrysostom, Bishop & Doctor of the Church
A Preacher Unlike Any Other Would that Saint John Chrysostom, the Patron Saint of Preachers, could stand here in my place today and preach with...
Conversion: Saint Paul’s and Ours
Image: A detail from the incomparable Caravaggio’s Conversion of Saint Paul. A Divine Inbreaking For Benedictines who make a vow of conversion — conversatio morum...
Illumina faciem tuam super servum tuum
The Journey Begins Today we begin the great annual journey to the Pasch of the Lord. It is a laborious ascent marked by four phases:...
At First Vespers of Septuagesima
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The secret and admirable way of silence
In this passage from a letter of 1678 addressed to a Religious of the Monastery of Toul, Mother Mectilde shows herself a teacher of interior...