The Fourth Sunday of Advent 2014 On this fourth Sunday of Advent we are given the gospel of the Annunciation.  With this amazing story we are invited into the ‘horizon’ of Mary’s experience. Mary’s horizon of experience was dramatically changed through her encounter with the angel, the messenger of God, and this encounter of hers now lingers in our present horizon of experience

The Third Sunday of Advent 2014GaudeteSunday…rejoice…for God is coming…out of the darkness, out of the impossible comes the gift of God…his life given fully in his Son and thus given to us… 
The gospel for this third Sunday of Advent once again centers on John the Baptist.  This time the context is different and the focus of John’s gospel is on the question ‘who are you’

Chronos-Kairosmeet as we enter the new liturgical year, which begins with Advent: chronos, historical time…kairos, the in-breaking of Divine life into human history.  The season of Advent calls us to feel into and to believe in this pregnant moment of possibility.  Advent ushers in the liturgical New Year, but it is not just another year…it is a very important time for all of our lives, for God is to be born again in the human heart, in the dry darkened places of our lives, in those places of need…

“There is a real danger that we miss the essential.  What do we want to live and what do we actually live?”  These words are from the Abbot General’s conference on the theme of ‘increasing fragility’ given at our recent General Chapter (9/14/2014).  It seems to me that in the ordinariness of each day it is easy for us to ‘miss the essential’, the essence of the monastic path, which is based on the gospel.  To reflect, then, on what we desire to live paralleled with an honest

Do we give enough attention to the silence…the silence that hovers around our hearts…the silence that goes deep, deeper than words…the silence that is the silence of God?  Silence speaks, does it not?  The silence of God is the Word of God.
Today’s first reading at Mass is from the first book of Kings and it is one that I love. Elijah is at Horeb, the mountain of God.  He is in a cave, a shelter…then, the Lord God tells him to go and “stand on the mountain of the Lord for the Lord will be