When you get a chance look up Nursia, St Benedict and beer. Oh and the Benedict option.
--This is a short entry I have a longer one to make about a talk I went to hosted by the Fatima Center, perhaps next week. It was very good and typical me I went for one selfish reason, to ask a question that I've found it hard to get an answer to with regards to the Fatima mystery/ investigation. But that will be a lengthy note because I have lots of things now for people to help me figure out.--
St Benedict founded in many ways Western Culture. I mean sure Marcus Aurelius, and probably Plato and others contributed, but when in about 529 St Benedict found his monastery in Monte Casino the burning ruins of the fallen Roman Empire had something finally to replace it. This time instead of being built on slavery and violence it was built on ora et labora. I don't really buy into the "Benedict option" because I think communities have to be organic, but the basic premise holds; honest people willing to work out their salvation through the sweat of their brow will find solace in the shade of the monastery and church that provides them structure in an unstructured world . I mean I would love to live outside of a monastery but they are in short supply. So instead I think in the current dark ages we can build up all those things the monastery offered. Learning, trade, medicine, culture and of course prayer.
So did you look up Nursia and beer? There's traditional monks who work, pray and make beer. https://birranursia.com/
We have the special pleasure of hosting Dom Martin Bernadine of Monastero di San Benedetto in Monte and he is going to offer mass and join us for a potluck after. We haven't secured a church but if that fails I have a very wealthy and fancy friend who's home isn't as over crowded and filthy as mine who will host. Now unless this whole thing falls apart because of my involvement we should have a great time. So I wish to invite everyone I know and everyone they know to my friend's home (if we can't secure an altar). Dom Bernadine really misses home cooked food and will love to be around normal people (there's a bell curve on "normal") rather than just his brothers at the monastery. We are shooting for the 28th of June, so keep your slow cookers ready.
In other news I shared prayer requests for of course Zelie, and Elizabeth and baby Pucek. But also 4 year old Patrick. Well Patrick is in a very bad way. The relic that proved efficacious for Joe is now in PA with Patrick but his internal bleeding has continued. Something about what I heard his mother said struck me very deep. She gave him permission ". If you need to go to Jesus", this just cut deep it reminded me of the Nuns of Compiegne of The Reign of Terror fame climbing the scaffolding and each asking Mother Abbess permission to die. https://youtu.be/12RJXxwSngk
Please pray for this child. I don't know him, but I know he and his parents need our prayers. It is very well that Our Good Lord wishes to have this child go to heaven, but we can't be wrong if we pray hard. Which reminds me of something else. Our Lord said "Blessed are they that mourn". Sadness is not a bad thing, and we can not eradicate it entirely in this fallen world, but we can utilize that suffering. Outside of Catholicism pain makes no sense and it is no wonder that so many Americans are on anti-depressants. So unite any and all suffering you have with Jesus. You have had two years of it to practice, but we shouldn't be novices any more. We are going to be called to heroic feats of virtue, patients and suffering. I know because the one question I had for the gentleman from the Fatima Center was answered in the affirmative.
Mass and pot-luck on June 28th, address and time to come.
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