De La Mennais Brothers: Making Jesus Christ better known and loved by young people

Some random thoughts jotted down during the retreat: There are moments, generally those quiet, late-night ones, or the stunned-by-the-beauty-of-creation ones, when I feel a kind of vertigo at the fact that I am there at all in that place and at that moment. This happened to me twice in particular during the retreat. Both times the feeling came over me like a wave crashing on the shore. What convoluted chain of events, what minor miracles have led me to be right here, right now? So many of these have depended on the intervention of other people... other minds, other hearts guided by God's hand to help me get here... but also moments of defeat and darkness, yet through which grace was born. A chain reaction of divine circumstance mixed with human weakness, making of each day a crazy, wonderful gamble... Destiny? Free will? Chance? Who knows exactly the balance that these achieve. All I can do is put my total trust in him who has got me this far despite me. I stand and look to the s...

Well, it's now been 5 days since I got back from my annual retreat (see previous blog posts); 5 days since, like Peter, James + John in the account of the Transfiguration, Jesus invited me (not that I had much choice! :-) to come back down the mountain into the "world" and share with others the graces received during our time in the "desert". The view from my room in the monastery one glorious morning. First of all, the monastic prayer. Benedictine monasteries follow a daily rhythm of prayer, manual work and study which actually creates a very full timetable. Our routine during the retreat certainly followed their prayer timetable (Laudes, Terce + Mass in the morning, Vespers + Compline late afternoon and evening, with optional None after lunch and Vigils in the early hours of the morning for the more courageous). These prayer times (with the exception of Mass) follow the same basic structure with an opening hymn, psalms and canticles mainly from the Old Testa...

Well, tomorrow I leave for Brittany to do my annual retreat with about 30 other Brothers (all French) at the Benedictine monastery of Landevennec, situated on an isolated peninsula on the west coast of Finistère (Brittany, France). I've been on retreat there before a couple of times and there are some glorious walks along the coast and through the forests. The abbey church. It is part of our congregation's Rule of Life that the Brother must go on an annual retreat, if possible with confrères, to recharge his batteries spiritually (and physically), to take stock of his life, to further discern the meaning of his vocation, etc... We will be having a few talks given by the Abbot of the monastery and by a member of our congregation's Provincial team. I always look forward to such times as privileged moments of grace for various reasons. One is that even though we do not talk (at least for the majority of the week) it is good to spend time with confrères, i.e. members of my reli...