+ “The spiritual gifts we have differ, according to the particular grace which has been assigned to each,” Saint Paul teaches us in this morning’s Epistle. “Each must perform his own task well,” he continues, “…unwearied in activity, aglow with the spirit, waiting like slaves upon the Lord, buoyed up by hope, patient in affliction, persevering in prayer,” etc.
 
There is more than enough for each of us to be getting on with here, particularly where it is clear which particular grace – which state in life or vocation – is ours, be that the monastic cloister, the secular priesthood, a form of religious life, Christian marriage or the single life in the world. Almighty God has placed me in these circumstances at this given point in time and my task is clear. As St Paul would remind us, our duty is simply to persevere in faith, hope and charity in fulfilling the responsibilities that the grace I have been given places upon me through the normal means of spiritual sustenance available through daily prayer and regular recourse to the sacraments.
 
There is great joy and peace to be had in arriving at this point in life – be that the profession of monastic vows, ordination, or the celebration of Holy Matrimony. And rightly are these occasions celebrated – as they were at Cana, in Galilee, as the Holy Gospel of this Mass recounts. Our Lord himself attended the wedding feast, together with his mother.
 
We know well the miracle of the changing of the water into wine, somewhat reluctantly performed by Our Lord at the insistence of his seemingly impetuous mother. We may be tempted to think that this miracle was something ‘rather cute,’ one of politeness, to save embarrassment. But we should not underestimate either the importance, or indeed the mystical significance, of wine in Sacred Scripture. Let it suffice to remember our Lord’s words at the Last Supper:
 
And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you I shall not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.” (Mt 26:27-29)
 
That Our Lord ensured that the Wedding at Cana could continue to be celebrated with the very best of wine is clearly an indication of the presence of the Kingdom of God – made manifest for the first time by a miracle that honours, no less, the holy vocation of marriage.
 
This miracle came about, as I have said, through the somewhat impetuous insistence of Our Blessed Lady. Our Lord even seemed annoyed by her demand. And yet, He complied.
 
One small detail here should not be overlooked – or rather, one small phrase of our Blessed Lady: “Quodcunque dixtite vobis, facite.” (Whatever He says to you, do it.) These words come from the Virgin of Nazareth who had herself responded to the Angel Gabriel with “Be it done unto me according to thy word,” at the Annunciation. Now, some decades later and – as we heard in the Gospel of the first Sunday after Epiphany – her having pondered the mystery of her Son in her heart, she is able both to ask her Son to act and to instruct those involved, with confidence to get on with doing whatever He tells you.
 
If we wish to drink of the new wine of the Kingdom of God and be washed clean of our sins by its saving power, if we wish to know the peace and joy in this life that is given to those who serve the Lord according to their own particular spiritual gifts, if we wish to rejoice forever in the next life for our good and faithful service here (cf. Mt 25 14-30) these words “Whatever He says to you, do it,” are imperative.
 
Procrastination or pelagian ‘discernment’ – where my will, not God’s, is uppermost – have no place. Waiting for the approval of my peers or family is a perilous postponement. The wedding feast is now, and the wine has run out. My God-given place is to provide new wine – the best of wine! – by means of my prompt and willing cooperation with what God asks of me. Today.
 
If I do not, the particular spiritual gifts he has given me, or which he plans to give me, shall lie dormant or may never even be received. The feast may devolve into a famine for the lack of that precisely new wine I was called to bring.
 
Our Blessed Mother’s faith is the catalyst of the miracle at the wedding of Cana. At the sacrificial feast of the Kingdom of God enacted on this altar this morning, with great confidence, let us ask her intercession, that we shall have the courage to do what Our Lord requires of us. Today. +

+ “How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”
 
With these words the boy Jesus reproves the Blessed Virgin Mary for what was, on her part and on the part of Saint Joseph, an entirely understandable anxiety at having apparently lost their twelve-year-old son. A mother’s distress when she cannot answer the question “Where is he?” is more than understandable. So too is her surprise and even annoyance at finding that, instead of travelling home as she would have expected, her son was off doing his own things – conversing with the teachers in the Temple, no less!
 
The boy’s response “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” seems precocious. One might expect a humble apology. Instead, Our Blessed Lady is reproved.
 
This misunderstanding – if not quarrel – in the Holy Family is instructive. At matins this morning Saint Ambrose commented that Our Lady was rebuked because her thoughts were purely human. She had not yet grasped that, even as a boy, Our Blessed Lord belonged in His Father’s house; that his God-given mission took precedence over all other concerns.
 
There is no sin involved here. Everyone is acting for the good. But what is happening is that Our Lord making manifest a hierarchy of goods: that which concerns God, that which is supernatural, comes before merely human concerns.
 
In placing this Gospel before us today the Church invites us to consider this teaching carefully. What comes first for me in the particular circumstances of my life? Are my concerns purely human? Does the worship of God and the keeping of the teaching of His Church take a second place, when it should occupy the first?
 
In particular, for young people considering the question of how Almighty God is calling them to serve Him in this life, this teaching presents a clear challenge. Am I concerned simply for human comforts, or am I willing to accept that if I “seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things shall be [mine] as well” (Mt 6:33).
 
An honest and generous consideration of this challenge may give rise to the reality given expression by the song of the psalmist:
 
One thing have I asked of the Lord,
    that will I seek after;
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
    all the days of my life,
to behold the beauty of the Lord,
    and to inquire in his temple. (Ps. 27:4)
 
There is no monk who does not know the moment when this reality, when these words, first touched his heart and he knew that henceforth he belonged ‘in his Father’s house.” And there are no few parents for whom this caused anxiety, particularly when their child is seemingly very young and may be thought to be behaving rashly or against his or her best (worldly) interests.
 
That the Holy Family itself experienced this tension should be something of a comfort to all parties concerned. But the teaching set before us by the Church today calls us beyond mere comfort. It calls us all – whatever the particular circumstances of our life and whatever vocation to which Almighty God calls us – to be about the things of God first. It calls us to a radical acceptance that yes, we must occupy ourselves with the things of God before all others – be that as a monk or nun, a spouse, a single man or woman, a secular cleric or an apostolic religious. And it calls us to not only permit, but to encourage and foster others, so to do.
 
Many years later as Our Blessed Lady knelt at the foot of the Cross, amidst the terrible human anguish she suffered, perhaps she remembered her twelve-year-old son’s rebuke? Perhaps even then she could not comprehend fully how His insistence on doing His Father’s will was truly necessary, at such a brutal cost?
 
The light and glory of the Resurrection of her Son removed all doubt and wiped away all tears. So to it shall for us, if but we place the things of God first and persevere in faith in Him.

Perhaps, today, we kneel before the Cross of this altar in anguish. Perhaps doubts continue to arise in our hearts. Let us ask the intercession of our Blessed Lady and beg the grace of perseverance that we, and all close to us, may more perfectly know and live from the light and glory of the resurrected Christ that, in this new Year of Our Lord 2021, we too may be first and foremost occupied with the things of God! +

+ For the past three weeks the Sunday Gospels have been echoing the cry of that somewhat enigmatic figure bridging the Old Testament and the New, St John the Baptist: “Prepare the way of the Lord.” Today he cries out that mountains and hills are to be levelled, valleys bridge and rough paths made smooth. Then, he assures us, we shall see the saving power of God.
 
This language is clearly prophetic: hills and mountains remain in the landscape where St John the Baptist himself preached. Rough roads also. How, then, are we to see the saving power of God? What does the insistence of the Church through the repetition of the voice of St John the Baptist in her Sacred Liturgy require of us?
 
The Ember days of this past week provide the answer, or more correctly a model for us if we wish to see the saving power of God. The model is our Blessed Lady, the humble virgin of Nazareth. The Gospel of Ember Wednesday is that of the Annunciation. Friday’s Gospel was that of the Visitation.
 
In the person of the Blessed Virgin Mary, by the singular grace of her Immaculate Conception, there are no rough paths to be smoothed, no valleys to be filled in by the levelling of mountains. Hence, when the Angel Gabriel comes to announce “a news of great joy,” – news, the content of which is beyond her imagining and even gives rise to questioning on her part (“How can this be…?) – Our Lady consents to Almighty God’s incredible plan for her with those famous and fruitful words: “fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum” (be it done unto me according to thy word).”
 
The “fiat” of the Blessed Virgin Mary was singularly fruitful: it permitted God to become man for our salvation. Without her ready – and intelligent – cooperation with the unimaginable, which God asked of her, the Lord could not have come to us in the manner foreseen.
 
We are not born with the privilege of immaculate conception. There is much that is rough within us to be made smooth. There are mountains of pride and valleys carved out by rivers of sin to be dealt with. And, of course, it is here that the cry of St John the Baptist addresses us directly. We must deal with these deformations with the means given us by Almighty God, particularly through the sacrament of confession. For most of us, this is enough to be getting on with, as it were.
 
And yet there is something more required. The measures prescribed by St John the Baptist are preliminary ones: they simply prepare the way for the coming of the Lord.
 
Thus, we must be made ready for that coming. And, like the Blessed Virgin Mary we must be ready, and willing, to do that which Almighty God in fact asks of us. Certainly, like her, we may not fully understand what is being asked. With her we may even question how what God asks of us can come to be. But in the end, we must also have her faith and humility in readily consenting to God’s plan. Otherwise the particular graces that can only be brought into being through my cooperation with God’s plan for me will never come into being.
 
This principle is equally applicable in small matters as well as large; in the larger questions of life and in the daily service I render to God and to those whom He sends me according to the circumstances of my particular vocation.
 
Monasteries often see the concerned, questioning face of a young man asking, “How can this be?” in respect of a possible vocation to the monastic life. And this is normal enough. Our Lady herself questioned the angel. But all too often there is a cancerous phenomenon lurking about in what is called “vocational discernment” in our times which would send the angel back to Almighty God with a list of questions for Him to answer – even demands for God to meet as prerequisites – before one might consider responding. The humility and docility of the Blessed Virgin before the manifest will of God are forgotten. My will, and not His will, becomes the operative factor.
 
Where this cancer takes root it threatens the very workings of God’s grace in the soul. Young people thus diseased cannot hear what the angel of God says for all of their own questions and demands and can thereby find themselves in a downward spiral of ongoing if not perpetual discernment which leaves God’s plan for them – and all the good that He wished to work through them – very far behind, indeed lost once and for all. Angels of God arrive to call us to what we cannot imagine can come to pass through our own cooperation with God’s will perhaps only once in a lifetime.
 
Do I wish to see and experience the saving power of Almighty God in the coming feast? Do I wish to make real and substantial progress in my life this Christmas?
 
Then let me heed St John the Baptist and make haste to do what is necessary to prepare myself for the coming of the Lord. Let me imitate the humility and docility of the Blessed Virgin Mary in readily responding, in faith and trust in God’s Providence, to what He asks of me. Indeed, in unconditional faith, for only He knows what good my cooperation with what He asks of me will bring about.
 
The Offertory of this Mass sings of the Annunciation once again. Let our prayers rise up to God with its incense, begging the graces of humility, docility and an for increase of faith. May the Virgin Mary intercede for us, so that when the Lord comes to us, we too may readily respond: “Be it done unto me according to thy word.” +

Vous trouverez ci-dessous notre lettre aux amis pour le temps de l'avent 2020.
À la fin vous trouverez une lettre importante de notre évêque.

Our Advent 2020 newsletter is published below.
At the end of the letter you will find an important letter from our Bishop.

+ The Sacred Liturgy of this Third Sunday of Advent is full of hope and expectation. We are to rejoice in the Lord always, according to the Introit. Saint Paul is in a good mood in the epistle, full of confidence in the nearness of Almighty God to those who follow Him. The gradual and alleluia sing of the majesty and strength of the Lord who will come for our salvation. In the Holy Gospel the humility of St John the Baptist cries out that we make straight the way for the coming of the Lord. The offertory antiphon sings of the pardon of our guilt, and the communion antiphon is explicit: “Take courage and have no fear ye who are faint of heart: behold, our God will come and save us.”
 
Well, indeed, we might rejoice before these eternal realities on this Gaudete Sunday!
 
But Almighty God will not force Himself upon us. He will not abduct us and take us to heaven as prisoners or as slaves. He invites us into nothing less than divine sonship! To accept this invitation, we must freely do our part. We must open ourselves to His grace. We must cooperate with all that He wishes to do within us.
 
This third week of Advent includes the very ancient Ember days – the traditional three days of particular prayer, fasting and abstinence which occur four times a year (which is why they are sometimes called the quarter days). Whilst not required by the current law of the Church, we shall do well to use this coming Wednesday, Friday and Saturday – in so far as we can – as days of fasting, self-denial and particular prayer.
 
We would do well to make an extra effort to assist at Holy Mass on these days. We could use them as days of greater recollection, perhaps in preparation for making our Christmas confession.
 
The collect of today’s Mass is particularly beautiful. “We ask Lord, that your ear will accommodate our prayers; by the grace of your coming shed light into the darkness of our minds.”
 
If we desire this light, if we truly wish to rejoice in the Lord, we must resolve to do what is necessary to allow that light to shine unimpeded in our minds and hearts. It may well show us things about ourselves which we need to address with the help of the recollection of the Ember days and the grace of the Sacrament of Confession. This light may well show us a path opening before us that perhaps we would ourselves not have thought is ours, or which may fill us with apprehension: yet if the light is of God, we ought to have no fear.
 
Indeed, we ought to have all the confidence, hope and expectation of which the Sacred Liturgy sings today. That we may live from, and ourselves become beacons of, the strong, radiant light of Christ that dispels all darkness, let us pray with great fervour at the altar of God this morning. +

+ In his homily at Matins this morning St Leo the Great exhorts his hearers on the Second Coming of Christ spoken of in today’s Holy Gospel with the following words: “It behoves every man to be prepared for its coming lest he be found either given up to gluttony or entangled in the cares of this world…”
 
Rather, we must deny ourselves, He insists, and free ourselves from bodily desires so that, “all noise of earthly cares being silenced” we “may rejoice in holy mediations and eternal delights.”
 
It is a familiar and a worthy idea, but even for a monk it may seem too idealistic, even unachievable. For monks also – particularly in a new foundation – have to deal with earthly cares at times.
 
St Leo knew as much: “in this life it is difficult that such a state [of recollection] be continuous” he observed. But “it can nevertheless be frequently taken up anew,” he continued, “that we might be occupied with spiritual matters more often and for longer periods…”
 
In reading this sermon at Matins for the first Sunday of Advent our Mother the Church is calling us today, at the beginning of Advent, to exactly that: a more frequent and deeper occupation with spiritual matters in preparation for the Coming of Christ: His coming anew this Christmas;  His definitive coming at the end of time, of which we hear in today’s Holy Gospel; and His coming to us at the moment of our death and particular judgement (which may be soon, or which may be some time in the future).
 
Advent is a season more of preparation than of penitence, though self-denial and repentance and the making of a good confession are certainly integral elements of it. Being prepared for my death and particular judgement, being prepared for the coming of Christ at Christmas, being prepared for the Coming of Christ at the end of time: this is what Advent requires of me.
 
Certainly, this means that I must make more of an effort to conquer vices and grow in virtues. Perhaps it means that I must make definitive choices to avoid certain occasions of sin once and for all. If I do not, how can I hope to be ready for any of the comings of Christ?
 
And indeed, this Advent requires me to become more recollected, more focussed on things spiritual, as St Leo insists. Perhaps this season is the season to make some spiritual decisions about the direction of my life, about my willingness to give up my own will in matters small or large, and finally to follow God’s will no matter how much the prospect of it may frighten me.
 
For us all, not matter where we are in our spiritual disciplines, Advent is – as St Leo reminds us – a time to take up spiritual matters anew. I may not have the same sort of list of resolutions as I have at the beginning of Lent, but resolutions I should have nevertheless. They should be realistic. With God’s grace and my heartfelt cooperation, they will be achievable.
 
“Ad te levavi animam: Deus meus, in te confido.” (Ps 24:3) To you I lift up my soul: in you I place my trust, the first liturgical words of the missal – the Introit for this first Sunday of Advent – sings. Let us make them our prayer at this Mass and throughout this blessed season in its anticipation of grace beyond our imagining. Our hope will not be in vain. +

In this time when travel is difficult and many people have been unable to get to Mass or even to churches, a number of people have asked us to light candles for their intentions at the monastery at our shrine of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or before our statues of Saint Benedict or Saint Christopher. 

We are happy to make this facility more widely available to those who wish to have a votive candle lit for their intentions at the monastery and at the same time would like to assist the monastery with their offering. The offering for a 3hr votive candle is €1,00. The offering for a 9 day (novena) votive candle is €9,00.

Requests may be made using the links below or by any other convenient means. It is not necessary to state the intentions for which you wish the candles to be lit. The monks will join their prayer to your intentions in lighting them.

​God bless you!