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What I’m Grateful for this Advent

My Orthodox mission church in Louisiana, and the Benedictine monastery in Norcia
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I have not been able to give my full attention to this blog in the past couple of weeks. For reasons not under my control, I have had an insane deadline on my Dante book. It will be published sometime late next year (the date hasn’t been firmed up yet), but because of various ancillary — and unusual — factors related to this particular project, I had to hurry up and get it done. Many people don’t realize this, but publishers work far ahead of the actual publication date.

Anyway, I’m still about to start the third draft, and there will be a fourth and final one … by Monday’s deadline. So, I’m berserk at the moment. Last night I took some time to go to vespers, because I had to clear my head. Our little mission church is never more beautiful than during evening prayer, with only the light from the candles illuminating the nave. I found myself reduced very near to tears of gratitude for what our church has meant to me. I have never grown spiritually as I have in these past two years in that country chapel, with its people (including our dear friend Jack, a founding member, who died suddenly in October). The beauty of the sung prayers, the darkness of a winter’s evening, and the glow of the candlelight put me in a reflective mood, and I was … just thankful, is all.

I also thought about one of the best things that happened to me in 2015: visiting the Benedictine monastery in Norcia, the Italian town where St. Benedict was born. Those monks, most of them Americans, are one of the great treasures of the Roman Catholic Church. I can’t say strongly enough what a place of peace, grace, and light that monastery and its monks are. I wish we could have stayed there a week.

I am an ex-Catholic, and a confirmed Orthodox Christian, but I met a warm and genuine welcome in Norcia. Spending time with those monks reminded me of why I still love the Catholic Church, and of the things that are best within it. If you are a Catholic who is weary of the Church for whatever reason, please do your best in 2015 to make a pilgrimage to Norcia — and please consider supporting them financially, and in your prayers. Theirs is a stronghold in the mountains, and an oasis in the desert. Just like my little Orthodox church home is here in the hill country of the Deep South.

We need to celebrate places of light like these. I wish I spent more time writing about them. After I get this book behind me, maybe I can.

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