Blessings to you!  I am sitting in the Albuquerque Airport on my way to Tucson, where I will be on Wednesday, the usual day when this Notebook is published.  I will be in Tucson at the Redemptorist Renewal Center in Tucson for a week, giving a retreat.  As often happens, I write this Notebook earlier because I am not sure what type of internet connection I will have at that facility.

At home, as usual, there are lots of things happening.  Several brothers went to a funeral in Albuquerque on Saturday.  We don’t usually do that, but there are always exceptions.  It is easy to imagine that we would be asked to lots and lots of funerals if we always went.  So we are discreet and reluctant, in order to preserve our monastic vocation.  While the brothers were in Albuquerque, they also collected Brother Augustine, who was returning from a discernment session in Houston.

I left the Monastery on Sunday after an early community Mass so  that I could fly from Albuquerque to Phoenix and from there to Tucson.  The flight from Albuquerque was pretty good, although we sat on the runway in Phoenix for almost a half an hour.  Then the flight to Tucson was delayed for an hour and a half.  When we arrived Tucson, there was a Knight of Columbus to meet us and he went with us and another Knight to the home of the local bishop. Most. Rev. Gerald Kicanas, who had dinner for eight bishops and myself.

On Monday at home the first group of brothers went to Rancho de las Paz, near Deming, New Mexico, so 20 miles from the border with Mexico.  We will be having four different groups of brothers taking a winter break there over the next couple of months.  This a 55 acre property with three buildings on it.  The owner would like to give it to a religious community that could use it in some form as a religious center.  We will evaluate our experiences there in a few months.  At present, it does not seem that we could integrate it into our regular life, but we shall see.

On Monday also five brothers went to Houston, Texas, for a four day course on Gregorian Chant.  These kinds of workshops really help our community with our singing.   You know that we sing Gregorian Chant in Latin for the Mass on alternate days and sing Chant in English on the other days.  So the more chant that our brothers can know, the better it helps our choir.

The retreat that I am leading is about the Year of Mercy.  It is easy enough to speak about mercy and yet it is difficult to specify what it might mean in a concrete situation.  Probably for many of us, mercy means a lenient attitude towards mistakes and even towards sins.  I have never been convinced that that is its truest meaning in the Scriptures, but have been put to work to read more and study the Scriptures more so that I can try to present a coherent meaning of mercy and what it might mean in a Jubilee Year of Mercy.

Mercy, by one dictionary definition, is kind or forgiving treatment of someone who could be treated harshly.  If we look at the scriptures of our Jewish ancestors in the faith, our Old Testament, we find two words there which are quite often translated eventually as mercy.  One of those words indicates love for another person, a kind regard for another person, but in a very faithful and steady way.  The faithfulness is to the other person but also to oneself.  A second word which can also be translated as mercy is the love that a mother has for her child.  This kind of mercy is felt in the body, in the intestines, in the guts.  Both of these words together give a very strong sense of mercy.

Real mercy seems to have two aspects:  one is a real sin or injustice or illegality that has been committed and the other a response to that sin or injustice or illegality which is less than it merited.  That is why it looks like leniency.  On the other hand, if there is no sin or injustice or illegality, then there can be no mercy.

All of this makes us reflect on our own sinfulness which is basically an injustice to God.  So if we deny God’s existence, then we cannot receive God’s mercy and be aware of it.  Or if we deny that we have any obligation to God, we cannot receive God’s mercy and be aware of it.  At one level, because of our sinfulness, we should simply not exist because we are always unfaithful to the Lord.  At another point, in God’s mercy, He allows us to live because he does not hold our sins against us.  Yet God wants us to repent and to seek Him with our whole being.

So we have this image, this reality, of God longing for us, seeking us out, being merciful to us—and ourselves resisting His love and mercy.  This is not entirely true because there is in most of us something that longs to be with the Lord, something that wants to follow the Lord and do His will—even when we are not entirely faithful to it.  We humans are complex and even more complex by our sinfulness.

The wonder and the miracle of God’s love for us is what we celebrate at Christmas and throughout the Christmas Season which for us Catholics continue through this coming Sunday, when we celebrate the Baptism of Jesus.

Why would God ever love us?  Because His love is faithful and also the love of a mother for her child.  This is the kind of love that our God has for us and there is no other God.  We can think of Moses when he saw the burning bush and God revealed Himself to Him.  We can think of Abraham and Sarah and God visited them.  We can think of the Prophets or of King David.  All of these people point forward to the coming of a Messiah, who is Jesus our Lord.  Our challenge is to accept that love, to rejoice in that love and to spend our lives trying to respond to that God.

As always I ask your prayers for me, especially as I give this retreat.  But I always need your prayers.  I promise to pray for you and will offer a Holy Mass for you and for your needs and intentions.  I send you my love and prayers.

Your brother in the Lord,

Abbot Philip