Abbot's Notebook

On Mount Athos the Julian Calendar is followed, rather than the Gregorian Calendar, which most of the world uses. What does the difference in calendars mean in practice? First a little history. The familiar Gregorian calendar was promulgated in October of 1582, by the...

Dear Friends, Brother Xavier McGough and I spent most of our Mount Athos Pilgrimage of 1979 at the monastery  of Simonos-Petra, a thriving community at that time, numbering about fifty monks, most of them young. I understand that today, forty years later, there are...

Dear Friends in Christ, Something that struck me while on Mount Athos in Greece from September 3 to October 11, 1979, was that the monks we met were there simply for monastic life and nothing else. That may seem like an obvious enough observation, but the focus on...

Dear Friends in Christ, Just two days into our Mount Athos pilgrimage, on September 5, 1979, Brother Xavier and I visited the Skete of Saint Daniel (“Danieleon” in Greek), a skete being a small establishment of monks. The Saint Daniel group of five monks were all icon...

Dear Friends in Christ, The last “Abbot’s Notebook” entry found Brother Xavier McGough and myself in London, England, en route to Mount Athos in Greece. This was taking place at the end of July and the beginning of August,1977, when I was 26 years old. Besides staying...

Dear Friends in Christ, This year marks the fortieth “anniversary” of the transformative pilgrimage I made with the late Brother Xavier McGough of our monastery, to the Holy Mountain of Mount Athos in Greece. I promised the monks we met and befriended there in 1979...

Dear Friends in Christ, An important aspect of the monastic way, but really a part of every living and loving community, family and relationships, is obedience. Saint Benedict, the sixth century author of the “Holy Rule,” or way of life, that we Benedictines embrace,...

Dear Friends in Christ, As a high school seminarian, from 1969 to 1971, when I was 16 to 18 years old, we students sometimes made retreats at the Trappist Abbey of Our Lady of Guadalupe, about forty miles from where we lived and studied at Mount Angel Seminary. While...

Dear Friends in Christ, It has been said that if we spent less time comparing ourselves with others, we would have fewer rivals. And there is the rhetorical question: why do we spend so much time living in the comparison? In making comparisons with others, we may in...

Dear Friends in Christ, In a previous Notebook essay, I wrote about being at a public high school in Portland, Oregon, James Madison High, for my freshman and sophomore years. I was happy there, where I finally had men teachers, one of whom I especially admired, Mr....

Readings: Acts of the Apostles 14:21-27; Revelation 21:1-5; John13:31-35 An essential part of being a follower of Jesus Christ is a willingness to love. How many times have we heard with our ears and our hearts the words in today’s Gospel passage, “I give you a new...

Dear Friends in Christ, Recently I received some welcome news about the Catholic grade school I attended in Portland, Oregon, dedicated to Saint Charles Borromeo. Located on the corner of 42nd and Emerson Streets, right next to the parish church of the same name, both...

Dear Friends in Christ, At the heart of the teaching of our Holy Father Saint Benedict is attention to ordinary things. The mundane matters of daily life for a monk, such as resting, rising, working, praying, reading, greeting guests, are all potential material for an...

Dear Friends in Christ, A film released last year has caught my attention and it sounds well worth watching. Starring John C. Reilly and Steve Coogan, the movie is called “Stan and Ollie,” and portrays events in the later careers of the outstanding comic duo of Stan...

Growing up in the 1950’s and 60’s, before the advent of color TV, let alone videos and DVDs or the movie channel, one the five Portland, Oregon, television channels televised the movie, “The Wizard of Oz” each year, one of Hollywood’s greatest films. As color TV was...

Dear Friends in Christ, Holy Week begins each year on Passion Sunday, usually called Palm Sunday, this year on April 14th. With the Church’s evening prayer of Vespers on the Saturday night before Palm Sunday, Holy Week actually starts. In our liturgical tradition this...

Dear Friends in Christ, More than a week has already passed since the Abbatial Blessing here on Monday, March 25, 2019, the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord. I am happy to report that everything went very well! The days leading up to March 25th were full and...

Once upon a time a father gave his little son some chewing gum, and the son took it but said nothing. “What do you say when you are given something good?” asked the father. “I want more,” replied the child. That is an understandable enough reaction of a little...

Dear Friends in Christ, It has been many years since I have been a regular teacher in the formation program at our monastery, but as abbot I am doing it once again. In the past, I mostly taught classes to the postulants and novices on the Books of Psalms, the Rule of...

While many parts of the United States are in the grips of inclement, or perhaps more accurately, horrible, weather, with record-breaking freezing temperatures, we in New Mexico are enjoying mild daytime temperatures, around 50 degrees Fahrenheit, or higher. This is...