Happy Advent to all of you! Advent is always an adventure for our new members who are used to Christmas decorations going up shortly after Thanksgiving Day (or even before!). Here in the monastery we are grateful that we are protected from the immense commercialism of this time of the year. Instead, we try to spend more time in prayer and Scripture reading, thinking of our Lady and how she prepared for the Light of the World about to be born.

     Speaking of our new members, please continue to keep our two postulants in your prayers. They are responding generously to the intense formation program they entered last July. Recently they shared their vocation stories with the members of the Owensboro Serra Club who had their November meeting here at the monastery.

     Currently, they are joyfully anticipating Christmas Eve Midnight Mass where they will help to welcome the Divine Infant by offering him their musical talent through their arrangements of organ and violin. If you live nearby we invite you to join us on that Holy Night as we worship and give thanks to the Eternal Father for the gift of Christ his Son. The Carols begin at 11:30 p.m.

The long twilight of November and December mornings, when it almost seems to us as if the day will never come, harmonizes closely with the soul’s longing for its Savior. The long delayed sunrise, followed at length by a new day, is a symbol of Advent, which, imitating the gloomy darkness of the years before Christ, is the beginning of the Church year. Accordingly, expectation, awakening, and fresh life are the characteristics of Advent. We cry with St. Paul: ‘Night is fading, day breaking’; let us awaken to strong and devout life, and hasten to Christ.

- Bishop Ottokar Prohaszka