Calibrated and fixed

Nearly every morning
I make a cup of coffee
in my battered old moka pot.

While the coffee sputters and fizzes
toward completion
I carefully place a dusty crumb of incense
on the burner, next to the pot.

I watch as a thin curl of smoke rises,
as the fragrant molecules of resin ignite:
myyrh, frankincense, rose, spiknard, jasmine, and the mysterious opercula of the wing-shell mollusk.

Uncounted mornings, evenings, and high holy days have calibrated and fixed
a specific set of connections between embodiment and sacred
through the everyday science of breathing,
so that simply sitting here by the stove
and waiting for coffee
becomes church.

Iliana Filby

St Frances of Rome and her Oblates

Today is the liturgical commemoration of Saint Frances of Rome, patron saint of the Oblates who live the Rule of Saint Benedict and who strive to serve. She died in 1440.

Along with Frances, we have King Saint Henry, as co-patron saints of the Benedictine oblates. Frances is also revered as the patron saint of motorists and motorcyclists because her path was always lit by her holy guardian angel. Some monasteries have their cars blessed today in memory of Saint Frances of Rome.

In Frances’ time in Italy is similar to ours today in that the monasteries are in decline: men and women are not seeking God through the monastic profession and the communal life. Her innovation was to gather women to serve the poor informed and formed by Benedictine spirituality. The Olivetan monks in Rome were helpful.

At first the women continued to live in their homes, but eventually found a house where they could gather and live in community without having to profess monastic vows. The oblate group that Frances for was seen as a hybrid, transforming the medieval practice of children’s oblate in monasteries, combining features of monastic life with secular life. At the same time similar groups surfaced and thrived in various places in Europe that became known as tertiaries. In some ways you can see the form of life that Frances had in the ecclesial movements of today, namely, Communion and Liberation and the Manquehue Apostolic Movement.

Frances therefore, created a new way of Benedictine life that was the union of the laity with Benedictine spirituality, grafting into the lives of the secular the call for this vocation in Benedictine life. A spiritual secularity is a gift of God to society and the Church. Unfortunately, what Frances did for the laity of the time didn’t gain widespread traction —at least not yet.

Who is interested in this form of life?

In everything may God be glorified.

Elias Lorenzo, OSB appointed bishop

We have a new Benedictine bishop in the USA! Thanks be to God!

The Right Reverend Abbot Elias R. Lorenzo, O.S.B., 60, has been appointed an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Newark, NJ, today by Pope Francis. He will be a close collaborator of Joseph William Cardinal Tobin, CSsR, the Cardinal-archbishop of Newark.

Bishop-elect Lorenzo is a Benedictine monk of St. Mary’s Abbey (Morristown, NJ) and until now the Abbot President of the American Cassinese Congregation.

Elias Lorenzo is well educated, with years of  experience in service and leadership in the Church and among Benedictines. Since 2016 as Abbot President worked with the abbots, monks and laity of 25 monasteries in the USA, Canada, Puerto Rico, and Mexico, Brasil, Colombia, and Taiwan which sponsors 10 universities and 12 high schools.

Among the US Bishops, Lorenzo will be the sole Benedictine monk serving as bishop, the others are retired.

May Our Lady and St. Benedict intercede for Bishop-elect Lorenzo and the Archdiocese of Newark.

American Melkite Appointed New Secretary at Vatican

VATICAN – Holy Father Francis has appointed Bishop George Demetrio Gallaro as the new Secretary of the Congregation for the Eastern Churches. Published on Tuesday February 25, 2020, at noon Italian time in the Sala Stampa, the former Bishop of the Eparchy of Piana degli Albanesi di Sicilia was appointed to the rank of titular Archbishop as well.

George Demetrio Gallaro was born on January 16, 1948 in Sizilien Pozzallo, Italy. After his seminarian studies at the seminary of Noto, he moved to the United States and was ordained a priest in 1972 in Los Angeles. He worked as a parish priest in various parishes of the Eastern Rite in the United States, and in 1987 he was incardinated in the Melkite Greek Catholic Eparchy of Newton.

Archbishop Gallaro taught Canon Law at the Melkite Seminary in Massachusetts and he also served as a professor of Canon Law at the Byzantine Catholic Seminary of SS. Cyril and Methodius in Pittsburgh, PA. On March 31, 2015 he was named by Pope Francis as a bishop of the Italo-Albanian Eparchy of Piana degli Albanesi. He was consecrated a bishop on June 28 by the bishop of Lungro Donato Oliverio as principal consecrator, and the bishops Dimitrios Salachas and Nicholas James Samra as co-consecrators.

Axios!

St Scholastica

Our venerable mother, Scholastica, the twin sister of the holy Benedict.

Scholastica guided a community of nuns near Monte Cassino, where her brother, Benedict, organized his community of monks. When she died, sometime around the year 543, the nuns and monks carried her body to Monte Cassino, and Benedict laid her in the tomb which had been prepared for himself. Benedict’s remains were placed in the same tomb, so that, as the saying went, “death would not part the bodies of this brother and sister, who had been of one mind in the Lord.” Her icon rests on the inside of the south arm of the icon screen. (NS)

Prayers for the nuns, and those named for our venerable mother.

Pope and Patriarchs

The Pope of Rome received on February 7th, the six Patriarchs of the Eastern Catholic churches: the Maronite, the Chaldean, the Copt, the Syriac, the Melkite and the Armenian. The conversation situated around circumstances of these particular churches in the Middle East.

A CNA article on the event.

Cultivate silence

Weekends, especially Saturday morning, is a good day to recuperate from the work week: physically, intellectually and spiritually. Of course we ought not to run ourselves down so much so as forget the Lord, His Gospel and the tradition of the Church; we all have to learn a proper balance to keep us on the “right path” without distractions. One of the sources of wisdom is the venerable Holy Rule of St. Benedict (it is not only for monks and nuns but also for the laity).
In his Rule St. Benedict directs us to cultivate silence at all times. It is in silence that the Holy Trinity, in particular, God the Father, speaks to us. Silence builds the habit that builds the wellness of the soul. Silence builds a sense of wonder and awe. Be consistent in the practice of silence even if it is 5 minutes per day.
The Benedictine monk of St. Benedict’s Abbey (Atchison, KS) Father Jay offers us these thoughts as we seek grow in silence.
  1. Silence prepares the heart to listen to God in the midst of a noisy world. Silence also prepares us to enter into His heart, for He loves in silence.
  2. Silence can be loud, magnifying the activity of the Lord’s presence within us and magnifying everything in our hearts, helping us to sift the wheat and the weeds.
  3. Silence is not quietism; it is rather resting in Him. For what effect could the storm around us have, if we rest beside Him asleep in the boat?
  4. There is a mortal silence, the silence of the tomb, in which the earth quakes and Christ descends to the dark depths of the human heart, to love us and to raise us up with Him. Love always resurrects.
  5. St. Joseph gives us the example of heroic silence, bowing before the Majesty and doing His will without complaint.

Benedictines seek God, and so should you

The vocation of a Benedictine is to seek God. We seek God in the ordinary circumstances of life. Turning the idea around some say God searches, too.

What does it mean when we say that God searches the innermost depths of the heart? Nothing is hidden from God. Before any of us ever settles into reflective silence, God knows each of us through and through. In this sense, God doesn’t search out anything for God is already fully aware of the complexity of our inner lives, our conflicting motives and our spontaneous emotions. But what God sees fully we are often blind to — in denial over, actually — with the result that we can act in ways that confuse us and make no sense. It is only when we face our inner reality honestly and humbly with the light of grace that we can see clearly enough to move forward. This is the work of inner prayer which is simultaneously God’s searching the innermost depths of our hearts. (NS)

Let them prefer nothing whatever to Christ,
and may he bring us all together to everlasting life.
Rule of Benedict 72:11-12

At the end of the year

“When you see the year ending, thank the Lord, because He had led you into this cycle of years. Stab the heart [‘prick the heart’] reckon up the time of your life, say to oneself: ‘The days run and pass by, the years fill-up, we have progressed much of the way; What good is there for us to do? Will we not depart from here, empty and deserted of all righteousness, the judgment at the doors, the rest of life leads us to our old age.’” — St. John Chrysostom

The Twofold Coming of Christ

At this seventh day of Christmas, I am thinking of who it is we preach these days. A piece from Saint Cyril of Jerusalem is helpful to contextualize the question especially we are day before the Octave Day of Christmas: the giving of the Holy Name, the only one that truly saves us. The saint preached:

We do not preach only one coming of Christ, but a second as well, much more glorious than the first. The first coming was marked by patience; the second will bring the crown of a divine kingdom.

In general, whatever relates to our Lord Jesus Christ has two aspects. There is a birth from God before the ages, and a birth from a virgin at the fullness of time. There is a hidden coming, like that of rain on fleece, and coming before all eyes, still in the future.

At the first coming He was wrapped in swaddling clothes in a manger. At His second coming He will be clothed in light as in a garment. In the first coming He endured the cross, despising the shame; in the second coming He will be in glory, escorted by an army of angels.

We look then beyond the first first coming and await the second. At the first coming we said: Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. At the second we shall it again; we shall go out with the angels to meet the Lord and cry out in adoration: Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.