Walk with the Community of Redwoods in our celebration of the Triduum.  Each day, from Holy Thursday until Easter, we will update this post with new details of our liturgy. Have a very Blessed Holy Week.  

May Christ's gift of self-giving love console and strengthen our hearts especially in this time of great suffering.

See you at Anaheim! Trappist West: Monks and Nuns - Anaheim Convention Center - February 21 -23, 2020.  

Abbot Paul Mark and Fr. Stephen arrived from New Clairvaux Abbey in Vina, California, bringing gifts.  They made the 5 hour trip hauling a squirrel (not the animal, but a machine).  It will be used at Redwoods for building maintenance on those high hard to reach gutters as well as for pruning fruit trees.

BEHOLD, WHEN THE FULLNESS OF TIME HAD COME, GOD SENT HIS SON INTO THE WORLD!  

The fullness of time is NOW as Christ is ever being born anew in our hearts and our world.  In the words of Abbess Kathy:

Today (hodie) we stand in the ambience and reality of the ‘first Coming’, of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, this great gift of God’s beloved Son.  Today we celebrate this historical reality.  And this is not all: Today (hodie) we stand with open hearts of faith as we behold the ‘second Coming’, the birth of Christ personally to each one of us and to the expanded horizon of our Church and our world.  Let us never forget this: God’s incarnation is on-going and it needs each one of us, alone and together, to embody God’s life that is always coming into our lives.  

May the presence of Emmanuel, God with Us, fill our hearts with joy, give us hope for the future and help us carry the burdens of this life.

At monasteries, the week before Christmas is marked by the singing of the O Antiphons at Vespers.  This tradition goes back to at least the 9th century.  By the twelfth century, the O Antiphons appeared in the popular Christmas hymn we know today as O Come, O Come Emmanuel.