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.
We need to look upon others with love regardless of their perfections or imperfections. We need to imitate the loving Savior who risked it all in order to capture your soul alone.
He entered once for all into the sanctuary, not with the blood of goats and calves but with his own Blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption.
Priests, as mediators, are called in a special way to live out two virtues: purity of heart and mercy. Christ's interactions with the Pharisees give us a deeper insight.
We earnestly desire each of you to demonstrate the same eagerness for the fulfillment of hope until the end, so that you may not become sluggish, but imitators of those who, through faith and patience, are inheriting the promises.
The mystery of divine light begun at the Christmas Midnight Mass is here brought to completion, for the message delivered directly to simple Jewish shepherds is today revealed through a star to the educated Magi from the East.
Tonight is a night of darkness and silence. If darkness is the utter lack of light, then in that blackness, a lonely beam of light, a single ray of heavenly favor, has no competition. All eyes are fixed on the glory of the Lord.
In these last days of the Advent season we have a whole succession of astonishing conversations to help us prepare for Christmas: the angel speaking to Joseph in his dream; another angel speaking to Manoah’s wife about the birth of Samson; the Archangel Gabriel appearing to Zachary in the temple to announce the birth of John the Baptist; and then, of course, the same great Archangel appearing to Our Lady in today’s recounting of the Annunciation.
Bernal Díaz was a conquistador in the company of the great Hernán Cortés, who wrote his eyewitness yet famously objective account of what it was exactly they saw and experienced as the relatively small group of Spaniard soldiers and adventurers made their 1519 trek from Vera Cruz inland to what we now call Mexico City.
“To You Lord I have lifted up my soul…”. These words, which we prayed in today’s Introit, and which start us off on this Season of Advent—the immediate preparation for Christmas—have a touch of “holy irony” about them, an irony which will be completely manifest on Christmas Morning.
St Josemaria Escriva (1902-1975), priest and founder of Opus Dei, believed that “those who are called to the married state will, with the grace of God, find within their state everything they need to be holy, to identify themselves each day more with Jesus Christ, and to lead those with whom they live to God.”
We will be meditating on the fifteen promises given to St. Dominic and Blessed Alan de la Roche by Our Lady – fifteen promises to those who pray the most holy Rosary.
We invite you to join us in this novena, reflecting upon the influence of one of the greatest saints in the Western Church, St. Augustine, Bishop and Doctor. During these days, different priests from St. Michael’s Abbey will be sharing their reflections.