Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Retreat Monday


Monday: I left Eldo at 11:30 and arrived at Subiaco around 3:15 in the afternoon. Somewhere around Mt. Petit Jean it started raining. Lots and lots of rain. After getting to the rectory of St. Benedict's Parish in Subiaco, where I'm staying with my confrere, Father Aaron, I got changed and went to the abbey across the highway for the annual jubilee Mass for our monks who are celebrating the anniversaries of their professions or ordinations. Father Hugh Assenmacher celebrates 50 years as a priest this year, and Father Brendan Miller celebrates 25 years also. Abbot Jerome presided at the Mass and preached.

This past year, we've lost three monks by death: Abbot Raphael, Father Harold, and Brother Martin. This month, two solemnly professed monks have received or are applying for dispensations from their vows and are leaving the community. One monk in temporary vows is also on the way out. This means that our community will have been reduced by six this year, with no new ones coming in. Such a situation cannot long obtain. We have to get more young men to come and to stay or else we will all be gone, sooner rather than later.

3 comments:

Edward C. Dodge said...

Father, why, do you think, you aren't obtaining the vocations from among your students as you used to?

Father Gregory said...

We stopped doing much of that in 1968. Now, student interest is more fond than real.

Edward C. Dodge said...

Interesting...1968....same year as the promulgation of Humanae Vitae. Not that HV did anything to hurt vocations to consecrated celibacy...rather, it's likely the selfishness of the dissenters.

I try, very hard, to teach the true meanings of sexuality--apart from the privation of the good, as it were--especially through the teachings of the ToB. Proper understanding=proper application, viz., honor to God.

Actually, there is one boy at school whom I've told could have a wonderful vocation to monastic life. Quiet, friendly, intelligent, searching, zealous for the Faith, desirous of improving himself philosophically and theologically. I think he'd be a terrific monk-priest. He'll be a senior this year. Let me know when you have a vocations retreat...!