November 17 – The Advent Fast

Posted by Cor Unum Abbey on November 18, 2014
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Christkindl Market - Nuremberg - Bavaria - Germany

We are entering the ninth fast of our Cor Unum year, the Advent Fast. The days of each year conveniently totaling 365, we enjoy nine forty-day fasts, with five days remaining at the end of December for reflection and strategizing for the New Year.

As with all things here, this is a personal matter. Forty days without food has never been attempted and isn’t on the horizon! … but we have spent forty days without television and another forty days without desserts and forty days without complaining, and we have gone forty days with extra and concentrated thanksgiving and forty days with ongoing prayer for someone in great need and forty days with increased worship and focus on a particular passage of Scripture.

It is all that simple, and while not always easy, it is never difficult beyond delightful.

Let us be reminded of a most monastic practicality: sometimes in order NOT TO DO LESS, it helps us to devote ourselves to more. Sometimes? Really, for us, that is the cloistered credo, the choice of our consecration. If we were not here, we would be doing much less outside these walls. Instead, we ever call to mind in all we do that “here” we are hidden in the quiet temple of our souls with the abiding Presence of Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit, and we are here to enjoy our Lord.

So, Advent begins. Its official start will be Sunday, November 30, the First Sunday of Advent, four Sundays before Christmas. Get your Advent Wreaths ready, for we will celebrate traditionally, too, as many as wish to join in, but we always start a little early, with a little preparation before the preparation. Our Thanksgiving Fast is ended, but Thanksgiving is yet to come, so we have a bit of a blending of these two most joyous seasons, these seasons of sharing, giving, of family and pleasures and great gratitude.

What would you wish your Advent fast to look like? In all the planning and making ready before Christmas, with all the baking, buying, busy-ness, and beauty of the season, how will you make sure that the Lord doesn’t go begging … for your company? Of course we know, He doesn’t. He doesn’t need us, He just wants us. We see ourselves, in hope, like the woman who “wasted” the contents of her alabaster jar on her Lord. He doesn’t need anointing for burial either, halleluiah! Heaven is fragrant without our praise! Perhaps we are perfuming Him for His next Advent, His Soon Coming, no matter the length of days beforehand.

But consider this, my dear ones … that while heaven does not require the aroma of our praise and our prayers, it is somehow, gloriously, wonderfully, MORE FRAGRANT with it! It could be truly said that it would not be the same without it! Don’t you think that this might be a moment when the Abbess could rightly say, “Enough said!”

The Christkindlesmarkt in Nuremberg, Germany

Famous for its Nativity Scenes, Gluhwein, and the Christmas Angel that watches at the entrance!

January 1 – Alone in the Abbey

Posted by Cor Unum Abbey on November 7, 2014
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A sample entry from the upcoming Marketplace Monastics blog …
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The New Year comes quietly in the Abbey.  The rolling over of a new day isn’t permitted to take too much upon itself.  For us, assessments are made day in and day out, and a new page is turned whenever the old becomes brittle, selfish, or self-satisfied.  Change is never far from us.  The making of resolutions is nothing new to us.  The keeping of them keeps us within these walls, invisible though they are.

Even so, the first day of a New Year is an event, a milestone, and particularly for Cor Unum Abbey.  It was founded on New Year’s Eve, with these words . . .

Every evening, in Bethlehem, Connecticut, forty Benedictine nuns settle into the Grand Silence that follows Compline, the last Office of the day. All speech is curtailed but for prayer and praise during Matins at 1:50 a.m., and the profound monastic silence continues until well after daybreak . . .

We are cyber nuns here in Cor Unum Abbey.  We come from lots of different backgrounds, churches, and inspirations.  We are cloistered in houses and apartment buildings and dorm rooms; some of us have husbands and children, many are quite alone.  What we share is a determined search for the Nearness of God in the happy faith that if we seek Him, we will find Him. (Jeremiah 29:12-14)  We aren’t playing at monasticism, not at all.  We have discovered this truth, that no one can live out our lives in Christ for us.  No one can make us worship or pray, no one can hope or love or trust in our place, but then, no one can take any of that from us, either.  To each is given a place in Christ, and that is our monastery, our cloister.  Jesus promised, “I will come to you,” and we make of our hearts an Abbey where He is pleased to dwell and where, by His own word, He will abide with us.

We welcome you.  As the days go by, we will see with increasing certainty and joy that the human heart is the monastery where those who love the Lord may fellowship with Him, where He will come and stay, never leaving, never forsaking us.  Married or single, whatever your age, the nuns of Cor Unum Abbey welcome you.  Though we live thousands of miles apart, what we share is vital and valid.  Whether life for you seems frantic and beyond any hope of order or stillness, or if your life has become so quiet and lonely that you wonder why you’re still living it, there is a habit for you here, a holy habit of worship, of joy and fulness and of the peaceful, powerful obedience of Christ.  (2 Corinthians 10:5)

For today, on this first day of a new year, we are taking a moment to remember that Jesus told us how to find the “work of God.”  It is, He said, “to believe on the One whom He has sent.”  (John 6:29)  That is our vocation, a worthy one indeed!  As we live out our lives in the Abbey we will discover simple, happy, effective ways of laying aside every sin and weight that would keep us from running this divine race, the goal of which is CHRIST!

Inside these walls, you won’t miss the will of God, even while you hold down a demanding job, fulfill civic obligations, drive children to sports and practices, fold clothes, wash dishes, love your husband, or, as many women have found even more difficult, as you face another day alone and without even the anchor of work and obligation.  Postulants and novices are we all; tomorrow, we will take a look at our only vow.

– Fleury-François Richard of Milan Mourning her Husband