Archabbey featured in Sports Illustrated!!!

Steel Memories made at Latrobe

By Peter King - Sports Illustrated

Do you know how rare it is to stand on the sideline of a football field and have to move your feet quickly to dodge a tackle in front of you? Do you know how often it happens that there's a fight five feet in front of you, and you have to have incredible peripheral vision to avoid the bodies flying into the fight? And do you know how rare it is to stand alongside the head coach of a National Football League team as he twirls his whistle, with cornstalks one long spiral behind him, as he prepares to start his team's afternoon practice?

Welcome to the best site to watch America's most popular sport. That's what I'd call St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pa., the camp of monks (really, there are cloistered monks here) and Steeler faithful an hour east of Pittsburgh in the rolling Laurel Highlands of west-central Pennsylvania.

I've watched the Steelers here over the years -- I actually interviewed Mike Webster in his dorm room in 1984, the first year of the camp, and showered alongside the players before their morning meetings in the same shower where St. Vincent freshman lathered up. My annual though is this must be what it was like to watch NFL teams before the days of fame and fortune and $700 Super Bowl tickets. "It doesn't get any better than this," former Steeler coach Bill Cowher told me in 2003 after one practice, as he looked out at the cornfields to the southwest of his practice field. "This is football, classic football. I know there's been a lot said recently about where teams practice, and some teams are going back to their facilities to have training camp. But look at this place. How can football get better than this? Four weeks of being together, no distractions, everything within walking distance? Fields all here. Nothing but football. Nothing. Just four weeks of you, your roommate and football. I think there's a lot to be said for how you start your season, and every year we feel like we get a great start to what we're going to be as a football team by being up here."

Come here around 8 in the morning some early August day. Watch the mist rise from the highlands. Sit on one of the hills surrounding the practice fields. Soak it all in. One of two or three things will happen. Joe Greene will stroll by, rolling an unlit cigar in his fingers, and say, "How are you today?'' Or a St. Vincent monk or priest will say hello and ask if you need anything. Or you'll see a player hustling to morning meetings--a player or maybe a coach, and you'll be pleasantly surprised that neither will ignore you.

It's the best training camp in the NFL, the best venue for watching real football in the NFL, and my favorite place to soak in what sports should be.

The Richness of Benedictine Liturgy

Interview With the President of Pontifical Liturgical Institute

SANTO DOMINGO DE SILOS, Spain, OCT. 1, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Is there a Benedictine liturgy?

In this interview with ZENIT, Benedictine Father Juan Javier Flores Arcas, president of the Pontifical Liturgical Institute of Rome, explores this question.

Q: Can one speak specifically of a Benedictine liturgy, or is it an inadequate expression?

Father Flores: There is no "monastic liturgy," as there is no Benedictine liturgy, nor has it ever existed, as the liturgy belongs to the Church and is planned, acted and lived for all Christians. What does exist is a monastic or Benedictine way of celebrating the sacred liturgy.

Monks do not distance themselves from the liturgy of the Church; rather, they take advantage of it and live from it, as the liturgy belongs to the Church.

With this principle as base, I believe that, in today's monasteries, the liturgy must be one that reflects the spirit and letter of the liturgical books renewed after the liturgical reform.

Without nostalgias or returns to a romantic past, monasteries were in the vanguard of the liturgical movement and, in line with this, must continue to be places where the liturgy of today is celebrated and lived with the same spirit as always.

St. Benedict's Rule has no peculiarity in regard to the Eucharist or the rest of the sacraments. It is a 6th century document; immediately reflecting the ecclesial situation of the moment.

Only with reference to the Divine Office, which we now call Liturgy of the Hours, does it have a great peculiarity and originality. In the course of time and until today, there have been two types of offices in the Latin Church: the monastic office and the cathedral or clerical office.

The Benedictine Office is based on principles of the previous monastic tradition; it brings together and orders liturgical elements that, at the time, were in use in different churches. Both as a whole as well as in innumerable details, the Divine Office of the Benedictine Rule has great originality.

Q: What has been the influence of the Benedictines in the history of the liturgy?

Father Flores: Since their beginning, therefore, Benedictine monasteries have had a Divine Office different from that of the diocesan clergy and other religious, based on the distribution of the Psalter made by St. Benedict.

The principle of the Rule which has been categorically maintained over the centuries until now is that "care be taken that each week the whole Psalter of 150 Psalms is recited ..." (BR 18).

And one must also acknowledge that from the beginning monastic piety has been marked to a great extent by the piety of the Psalms.

Given that it is true that Benedictine monasteries should not be museums of Church history or of the history of the liturgy, they should consequently not be transformed into this. Nevertheless, the hope is very legitimate that the Psalterium per Hebdomadam, which has more than 1,500 years of tradition, might be maintained in Benedictine monasteries, at least in the monastic office.

However, Benedictine monasteries adapt to time and place. The possibility to move away from the principle assumed by monasticism of praying 150 Psalms in a specific way, was already foreseen in chapter 18 of the Benedictine Rule: "Above all we note that if, perhaps, some one might not like this distribution of the Psalm, that he order them in another way, if it seems better" (BR 18,22). But, St. Benedict adds, maintaining the previous principle of the weekly Psalter.

Q: How is the distribution of the Psalms organized?

Father Flores: The reform of the Divine Office in Benedictine monasteries is based solely on the "Thesaurus Liturgiae Horarum Monasticae," prepared by and for the Benedictine Confederation, where other ways of distributing the Psalter were not being set out according to the possibilities of the different monasteries.

Among the four possibilities that monasteries can choose is plan A -- or of the Rule -- plan B -- Fuglister -- which distributes the Psalter in one or two weeks with different exegetical and biblical criteria other than those that St. Benedict had in his day, in addition to two other plans that have had less resonance.

Therefore today the different monasteries have the choice to opt for a Divine Office that responds more to the exigencies of time, place and work of each monastery.

Some have opted for maintaining the traditional Benedictine plan; a great majority today follow plan B with the distribution of the Psalter in one or two weeks. Some have actually opted for adopting the Roman Liturgy of the Hours itself.

It is, therefore, more the responsibility proper to each Benedictine monastery to choose one or another plan, knowing that among the elements of Benedictine life the Divine Office must occupy first place (BE 8,20; 43,3) , and nothing must be preferred to it.

Q: What repercussion do Benedictine monasteries have in the liturgical life of the Church?

Father Flores: In the course of the centuries Benedictine monasteries have been places of spiritual and liturgical radiance; more than that, they maintained culture during the Middle Ages and from their schools arose the personalities of the Church of the moment. Let us think of the great monasteries, such as Cluny, Saint Gall, etc.

In 1909, specifically around the Belgian monastery of Mont Cesar, a "liturgical movement" arose led by Dom Lamberto Beauduin who from being a priest dedicated to the labor world became a Benedictine monk in the said monastery. From this liturgical movement the Church moved to the liturgical reform stemming from the Second Vatican Council.

The Benedictine monasteries were centers of spiritual -- and therefore of liturgical -- radiance. Let us think of Solesmes (France), Beuron and Maria Laach (Germany), Montserrat and Silos (Spain), Montecasino and Subiaco (Italy), Maredsous and the already mentioned Mont Cesar (Belgium), etc.

All these monasteries have their doors open to their most precious treasure, their liturgical prayer, so that the prayer of the community living there is shared with guests and visitors, who are thus introduced to the great prayer of the Church.

This can be considered the monastic apostolate par excellence; monasteries have evangelized in this way. Also today there is an excellent way of spending one's "vacations" by staying in a monastic guest house and participating in the different Hours of the day, to the rhythm and with the help of the Benedictine monks and nuns.

Q: Has Pope Benedict XVI been influenced by this Benedictine liturgical spirituality?

Father Flores: Benedict XVI has expressed great love and appreciation of the Benedictine Order and St. Benedict throughout his trajectory. The fact that he chose the name of the father of Western monasticism is very significant, as he himself explained a few days after his election.

The liturgy has been part of his life, as he himself says in his autobiography, already from his seminary years. He regularly visited the German Benedictine monastery of Scheyern in Bavaria and every year, for the feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, now living in Rome, he went to the convent of the Benedictine nuns of Rosano, near Florence, where he participated in the nuns' liturgy and presided personally at the Corpus Christi procession.

New Vocations Site features St. Vincent Archabbey

 
Check out this new website: www.religious-vocation.com which features great information, pictures, and media all about discerning a religious vocation. We are also happy to announce that St. Vincent Archabbey is featured on this great website via the pictures sections and links. Thanks to Davide A. Bianchini who runs the website.

Papal Wisdom and call to vocation!!!

From the Holy Father's homily at the closing Mass of World Youth Day 2008:
"Dear young people, let me now ask you a question. What will you leave to the next generation? Are you building your lives on firm foundations, building something that will endure? Are you living your lives in a way that opens up space for the Spirit in the midst of a world that wants to forget God, or even rejects him in the name of a falsely-conceived freedom? How are you using the gifts you have been given, the “power” which the Holy Spirit is even now prepared to release within you? What legacy will you leave to young people yet to come? What difference will you make?
The power of the Holy Spirit does not only enlighten and console us. It also points us to the future, to the coming of God’s Kingdom. What a magnificent vision of a humanity redeemed and renewed we see in the new age promised by today’s Gospel! Saint Luke tells us that Jesus Christ is the fulfilment of all God’s promises, the Messiah who fully possesses the Holy Spirit in order to bestow that gift upon all mankind. The outpouring of Christ’s Spirit upon humanity is a pledge of hope and deliverance from everything that impoverishes us. It gives the blind new sight; it sets the downtrodden free, and it creates unity in and through diversity (cf. Lk 4:18-19; Is 61:1-2). This power can create a new world: it can “renew the face of the earth” (cf. Ps 104:30)!
Empowered by the Spirit, and drawing upon faith’s rich vision, a new generation of Christians is being called to help build a world in which God’s gift of life is welcomed, respected and cherished – not rejected, feared as a threat and destroyed. A new age in which love is not greedy or self-seeking, but pure, faithful and genuinely free, open to others, respectful of their dignity, seeking their good, radiating joy and beauty. A new age in which hope liberates us from the shallowness, apathy and self-absorption which deaden our souls and poison our relationships. Dear young friends, the Lord is asking you to be prophets of this new age, messengers of his love, drawing people to the Father and building a future of hope for all humanity.
The world needs this renewal! In so many of our societies, side by side with material prosperity, a spiritual desert is spreading: an interior emptiness, an unnamed fear, a quiet sense of despair. How many of our contemporaries have built broken and empty cisterns (cf. Jer 2:13) in a desperate search for meaning – the ultimate meaning that only love can give? This is the great and liberating gift which the Gospel brings: it reveals our dignity as men and women created in the image and likeness of God. It reveals humanity’s sublime calling, which is to find fulfilment in love. It discloses the truth about man and the truth about life.
The Church also needs this renewal! She needs your faith, your idealism and your generosity, so that she can always be young in the Spirit (cf. Lumen Gentium, 4)! In today’s second reading, the Apostle Paul reminds us that each and every Christian has received a gift meant for building up the Body of Christ. The Church especially needs the gifts of young people, all young people. She needs to grow in the power of the Spirit who even now gives joy to your youth and inspires you to serve the Lord with gladness. Open your hearts to that power! I address this plea in a special way to those of you whom the Lord is calling to the priesthood and the consecrated life. Do not be afraid to say “yes” to Jesus, to find your joy in doing his will, giving yourself completely to the pursuit of holiness, and using all your talents in the service of others!"

Our Holy Father and the Creatures of God