The Holy Father has designated this year as a time  to foster, examine and be thankful for consecrated life.

Community Meals


Serving


It isn't an uncommon sight at St. Michael's Abbey to see the confreres hard at work. You may see them offering Holy Mass, teaching a class, or perhaps trimming up our Abbey's gardens. Service to the community is an essential part of Norbertine life. Even at dinnertime, you'll find our priests and seminarians hard at work serving and bussing the refectory tables. Every week there's a different crew of confreres who give up their seat at table so that they can serve their brothers and then clear the tables as meal concludes. At the end of the meal, it's the servers turn to eat while a group of seminarians stays behind to prepare the refectory for the next meal. With the growing number of men joining our ranks, our refectory is now a tight-squeeze and so working there often feels like an obstacle course. This, of course, is a sign of God's generosity to our community. Grateful for our overflowing religious community, we also eagerly await a more ample space in our new home.

Photo: Frater Jacob takes his turn washing the dishes after the community meal. 

Featured Homily 


Fear

General Patton once said, "Every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he's not, he's a liar." So it seems that, no matter how brave one is (even a soldier under Patton's command) the fear of the unknown is something none of us can escape. In fact, as one of our own students recently commented in his senior paper, authors and filmmakers often use this "fear of the unknown" in their works in order to produce psychological horror in their audiences.

St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that the primary object of fear (that is, that which we humans fear most) is death-something which is for all of us "the great unknown." Our Lord knows this; and maybe that's why He so often warned us about death and the end times: I have told you this so that you may not fall away, He said in today's Gospel. He even dedicated an entire book of the Bible, the last book, to the end times. And He has tells us over and over again not to fear: Do not fear those who can kill the body but not the soul; Why did you fear, ye little of faith?; Do not be afraid, it is I; When you hear of wars and tumults, do not be terrified. Our Lord occupied Himself with this quite a bit because He knew that we would too. The only thing we ought to fear is offending God, committing a sin.

 

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Ministry in Focus

Aid to the Church in Need

In the painful aftermath of the Second World War, a Norbertine of the abbey of Tongerlo in Flanders began a work which up to the present is one of the most effective and recognized charitable works of the Catholic Church: Aid to the Church in Need. At first he performed the amazing feat of getting the faithful of Belgium, who had suffered much under German occupation to donate food and material support to the millions of their former enemies who were the victims of a mass "ethnic cleansing" of parts of Eastern and Central Europe. Then as these grateful refugees become established, they did not forget his work and they began to donate for the support of the Church in lands under Soviet oppression. Then as the scope of the work increased, it began to extend to Latin America, Africa and Asia, and as the Iron Curtain fell, by will of St John Paul II, the work began to help the Orthodox of the former USSR. Today this work is extended literally to the whole world wherever the Church is menaced politically and economically, especially in the Islamic world.  St. Michael's Abbey, itself a community founded by refugees from Stalin's Socialist "paradise," has long been both a beneficiary (in its seminary formation abroad) and a close collaborator of his work. The prior of the abbey, Fr. Hugh, is happy to be its American "virtual" chaplain on the internet. The abbots of the community, both our first abbot and Abbot Eugene, have long been, along with other confreres, including today Fr. Gabriel, members of the American board of the work. The work is unique in that it is the only one of its kind which focuses exclusively on support for the works of the Church, catechetical programs, priestly formation, the promotion of women's religious communities, and parish construction, most recently in Egypt and the Arabian peninsula: wherever the local Church is threatened or needy.

 

To learn more visit ChurchInNeed.org

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St. Michael's Abbey



ST. MICHAEL'S ABBEY
19292 El Toro Road
Silverado, CA 92676