On this first weekend of Advent we will offer a potpourri of monastic insights, enabling participants to experience the Advent season as a time rooted in scripture, history, art, music, and liturgy.

Christian monasticism was almost extinguished during the secularizing frenzy of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars that followed. Beginning in the early nineteenth century men and women rediscovered the value and beauty of the monastic tradition and created new Benedictine congregations that revived the monastic practice of evangelization in a variety of new forms. […]

On the Solemnity of Christmas we first contemplate the mystery of the Word becoming Flesh. The liturgical celebration at the Abbey starts with First Vespers on Christmas Eve and ends with Night Prayer on Christmas Day.

In the early sixth century the monk we have come to know as “Benedict” wrote a rule for monasteries that has been in continuous use for more than fifteen hundred years. Part of the reason for the success of the Benedictine Rule is its author’s willingness to gently adapt and improve existing ascetical and spiritual […]