Paul Zalonski – Page 6

St Ann Melkite Church Welcomes the Order of Malta

The parish welcomed the Order of Malta of the Eastern CT Area today for a meeting of 25 people, Knights, Dames, and Associates and friends. The day included updates on activities of our Eastern CT Area, the work of the Order in the Association, and a brief witness talk by Father Dennis McCarthy, our pastor.

The Divine Liturgy was served by Father Dennis McCarthy and concelebrated by Bishop Peter Rosazza (conventual chaplain) and Father Joseph MacNeill (deputy chaplain).

An incredibly delicious Lenten meal was prepared for us by Joumanna Hajj and her brother Maroun, with the assistance of several others.

The Order of Malta describes itself in this manner:

The Order of St. John of Jerusalem is one of the oldest institutions of Western and Christian civilization. Present in Palestine in around 1050, it is a lay religious Order, traditionally of military, chivalrous, noble nature. Its 13,500 members include Professed Friars and others who have made the promise of obedience. The other Knights and Dames are lay members, devoted to the exercise of Christian virtue and charity. What distinguishes the Knights and Dames of Malta is their commitment to reaching their spiritual perfection within the Church and to expending their energies serving the poor and the sick.

More information here:

~Order of Malta
~Order of Malta American Association
~Order of Malta Eastern CT Area

~The Order of Malta serves in Lebanon

PAZ with the hens

Today I spent a little time with the laying hens. Typically, Fridays I give food scraps to the hens from the monastery kitchen which effectively utilizes the food stuff and enriches the diet of the hens. In return, we get good chicken manure for the pastures and nutrient dense, pastured eggs. The chickens get fresh air, sunshine, exercise, and lots of human contact.

Our eggs are said to be nutrient dense, that is, greater amount of choline, vitamin A, vitamin E, omega 3 fats, higher levels of folate and vitamin B12, and carotenoids (giving a richer colored yoke). Commercial (industrial eggs) struggle to get the levels of beneficial elements found in pastured eggs. You will recognize that choline is a B vitamin crucial for brain development and maintenance. Choline is an important element in muscle control and memory. You can do your own research on the precise levels of the mentioned nutrients.

I love the hens. They’re great working girls.

Persephone is on the move 2024

Here too Persephone has begun
the agon of her emergence.

Shall we not behold her beauty
With Eyes and in Scent on wafting breeze
Piercing through our Hearts
To transcend our shared fate
To raise our Self from chothnic dark
To the Light beyond all reckoning.

***one of my honey bees getting out to bring back to the colony some pollen.

Santiago meet Portsmouth 2024

For nearly two decades plus some years the Manquehue Apostolic Movement (MAM) has been active ministering at Portsmouth Abbey and School and the Priory School at St. Louis Abbey. The lay men and women of the MAM some of the best people I’ve met over the years who are part of a group at the service of the Gospel and the Benedictine charism.

For those who don’t know the Manquehue Apostolic Movement it was founded in 1977 first as an Association of Lay Faithful according to the Code of Canon Law (1983) in the Archdiocese of Santiago de Chile. By 1994 the Movement was granted a firmer position in the Church by becoming a juridic personality in Law.

The Movement is composed of laity. There are no clerics who are members of the Movement. Yet they have had a strong and influential presences of Benedictine monks who have given good witness to the Benedictine way of proceeding. In many ways one can say that members of the Manquehue Apostolic Movement are lay Benedictines, similar but not the same as an Oblate’s call to relate to a monastery.

I have met over then years several members of the MAM at both noted abbeys but have been in touch with them mostly at Portsmouth in years. This year I had the privilege of meeting the men seen in the above picture: Martín, Mattias, Nico and Vicente. All four these guys inspire me. All graduates of the MAM school in Santiago and currently doing university studies having just finished two months of missionary work among the students at Portsmouth Abbey school. They are great young men who made an impact on many of us.

The work of the of the Movement is the prayerful reading of sacred Scripture – also called Lectio Divina. This is closely linked to the teaching and witnessing to the spirituality of St Benedict and 1500 years of life of monks, nuns, sisters and laity. In Santiago de Chile, Manquehue runs three schools and guides more that 100 weekly Lectio Divina groups. And probably one of the most impressive charitable works is a hostel for homeless women. You can find the Movement also at the end of the world –or near the end of the world– in Patagonia, in the south of Chile where there’s a retreat house. I am scheming to have a Manquehue community in the Providence, Rhode Island Diocese and close to Portsmouth Abbey.

Some members of the Manquehue Movement make an oblation to live the charism of the movement more intensely. Some are married couples, some are single, all centered on the Lord. Many of the graduates of the Manquehue schools do missionary work to deepen our love for Scripture.

May God abundantly bless the Manquehue Apostolic Movement and Martín, Mattías, Nico and Vicénte. May Our Lady and St Benedict intercede. AMEN.

St Peter Damian

Today is the feast of the fascinating Saint Peter Damian, monk, theologian, bishop and doctor of the Church. He was a reluctant abbot of his community; by 1057 Stephen IX twisted Peter’s arm hard enough for him to give up his monastic desert and made him Cardinal-bishop of Ostia. Never could Peter give up church governance.

One Peter’s biographers writes:

“St. Peter Damian fought simony with great vigor, and equally vigorously upheld clerical celibacy; and as he supported a severely ascetical, semi-eremitical life for monks, so he was an encourager of common life for the secular clergy. He was a man of great vehemence in all he said and did; it has been said of him that “his genius was to exhort and impel to the heroic, to praise striking achievements and to record edifying examples…an extraordinary force burns in all that he wrote”. In spite of his severity, St. Peter Damian could treat penitents with mildness and indulgence where charity and prudence required it.” Not what you hear too often. We need confessors to be better of their craft: mild, charitable, smart, AND prudent! St Peter, helps us.

My friend J. Michael Thompson wrote this hymn for the feast.

1. Preach the Word! Proclaim the Kingdom!
Whether welcome or disdained,
Tell the world of Jesus’ coming—
Patiently proclaim His Name!

2. When sound teaching is deserted,
When all novelties are sought,
When the Truth is scorned for fables,
Then this lesson must be brought:

3. Bravely work in face of trials;
Make the Lord’s Good News your life!
Serve the Lord by serving others,
Faithful bide through ev’ry strife.

4. Thus Saint Peter, in his teaching,
Sought to follow Paul’s command.
Hearing him, we seek to follow,
Holding to the Master’s hand.

5. Glory be to God the Father,
Glory be to God the Son,
Glory be to God the Spirit:
Ever Three and ever One!

J. Michael Thompson,
Copyright © 2010,
World Library Publications

Purity of Heart

Work on purity of heart

At the beginning of Great Lent, but it ought to be daily practice, is ask ourselves how we are working with certain spiritual disciplines like prayer, fasting, almsgiving, charitable work, care for self, silence, living virtuously, forgiving wrongs, and the like. Purity of heart is one of those disciplines that we either are untrained in, purposely forget about it, or actively work against it. Like many other things in the spiritual life if we ignore something long enough our center deadens. The point of Great Lent is to reinvigorate our relationship with the Lord and re-train ourselves to be full of life –to thrive– in God’s grace.

What is the quality of your heart? How do you concretely live the grace of freedom? What does purity of heart look like in your life and with those you life and work with on a daily basis?

“Spiritual discipline is above all about purity of heart. We have within ourselves the opportunity, through grace, of purifying our intention, of seeking only a loving response to the love that is already present, that encourages us forward. The heart that is truly free knows what it is free for: to be the lover God has always longed for” (NS).

St Valentine the beekeeper

Happy St Valentine’s Day!

Hagiography reveals that Saint Valentine (+270) was a beekeeper himself and had a great love for these beautiful creatures. He was known for his gentle and caring treatment of the honey bees, and it is said that he would often talk to them and bless them with his prayers. (Something I do.)

Forgiveness Sunday

Today is called Forgiveness Sunday as it is the day before Great Lent –the Fast– begins. The day marks with a rather dramatic, beautiful spiritual exercise that is rather impactful. It is a time again for tears of repentance and forgiveness. How good it is that we can do this, wholeheartedly, as a custom, on a specific day to aid our maturing in Christian faith.

Croc tears would be a real problem for those serious about their salvation in Christ Jesus.

Theophany in octave

We think in the long-game: the Church has a long tradition of carrying on a significant feast day for eight days following. So there is such a thing the Christmas Octave, Easter Octave, the Dormition Octave, etc. We have the Epiphany octave. If we believe in the primacy of liturgical theology, then experience will demonstrate that the memory found in praying the texts bears a heightened awareness and a keen appreciation leading to spiritual generativity in our life. We can’t settle for the bare minimum of liturgical observance.

Troparion — Tone 1

When You, O Lord were baptized in the Jordan / the worship of the Trinity was made manifest / for the voice of the Father bore witness to You / and called You His beloved Son. / And the Spirit, in the form of a dove, / confirmed the truthfulness of His word. / O Christ, our God, You have revealed Yourself / and have enlightened the world, glory to You!

Kontakion — Tone 4

Today You have shown forth to the world, O Lord, / and the light of Your countenance has been marked on us. / Knowing You, we sing Your praises. / You have come and revealed Yourself, / O unapproachable Light.

Baptism of the Lord

The Theophany narrative is one that includes the testimony of the Lord’s Baptism. The Baptism of Lord reminds us that the fact of the Lord’s Baptism forms in our consciousness a living icon of the Trinity, the revelation –a Theophany; the manifestation of the Tri-One God. In the Baptism, the world’s waters were sanctified and the Cosmos underwent a metamorphosis of Divine Energies.

What we commemorated on January 6, the Theophany, has direct consequences in how we live today.

Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, from a Sermon by Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, bishop (330-389 AD):

Today let us do honor to Christ’s baptism and celebrate this feast in holiness. Nothing gives such pleasure to God as the conversion and salvation of men, for whom his every word and every revelation exist. He wants you to become a living force for all mankind, lights shining in the world. You are to be radiant lights as you stand beside Christ, the great light, bathed in the glory of him who is the light of heaven.”