St. Michael’s Abbey is a place for common worship and prayer. All that we do is directed at giving glory and honor to God. Walk with us as we work, daily, to strengthen our devotion and love for Christ, Who first loved us.
The practice of Christian contemplation can eventually permeate our every moment, readying us for the life of heaven.
God, the principal Author of Scripture, knows all times and souls in one eternal moment. The Word of God truly had you in mind when he inspired the ancient prophets to hide his infinite wisdom within human words.
Even the Old Testament passages that at first appear to be tedious “filler” become beautiful when we understand them as types of Christ!
This spiritual sense is more than just foreshadowing and symbolism; any good writer can do that. But because God is the Author not only of the Bible, but of Nature and of History, he can make the things described to really be signs of other things!
These are not just edifying stories, but the solid, really historical foundation through which God prepared and worked out our salvation!
God does not bless human sin, but he is more than willing to pick up children who try and fail.
Redemption means more than buying each of us back from a bad life; it means restoration. And what needs to be restored most in every human soul without exception is trust in God.
Valuing power and strength is clearly not wrong. But it is spiritually deadly to seek them apart from God.
We want God to deliver us from sin now. Right now! But the wisdom of the psalmist submits all desire for deliverance to God’s time.
Scripture tells us to have sorrow for sin, but warns about going to excess.
Then he sent out a dove, to see if the waters had lessened on the earth. But the dove could find no place to alight and perch, and it returned to him in the ark, for there was water all over the earth. Putting out his hand, he caught the dove and drew it back to him inside the ark.
Sooner or later, whether we are inside the monastery or out in the world, God is going to invite us to make that next step forward in giving our lives to Him.
Our Lord puts to each of us individually about the spirit of penance that He wants us to embrace. That is, your cross – the very one that He has custom made for each of us to be our own personal royal road to heaven.