Welcome to The Abbot's Circle

The sublime dignity of the Christian vocation is to be conformed to and united with the Person and Priesthood of Jesus Christ. This is true of all the baptized, and yet the Church teaches that it is all the more incumbent upon that man whose share in the priesthood of Christ is not only the common royal and prophetic dignity but also what we call the ministerial priesthood, the power to administer to all the faithful the means Christ has instituted to save souls from hell and usher them into heaven.

It was an event like no other. What we heard in the first reading has resounded throughout the centuries as the birthday of the Church, the day on which her missionary movement began, never to cease until the last day on earth. The sky cracked, wind rushed, fire roared.

It can happen that when we desire something good with all our heart, and pray for it longer than we can remember, yet without attaining it, we can then enter a kind of malaise, a detachment so thorough that it enters natural despair. Sure, God could do it, but He obviously won’t. And then He does—so wonderfully, so amazingly, so unbelievably that our only reaction is to hide away.