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Second Sunday of the Year
13 January 2007
Dear Friends in Christ,
Last week when I was on retreat at Saint Michael’s Abbey in California, I had the chance to go up into the mountains to the Norbertine Sisters at Bethlehem Priory in Tehachapi to spend some time with this young, growing community. They had been praying for me since I entered the seminary and I wanted in some little way to repay the favor by visiting them. I left sunny Orange behind on a cloudless 70 degree day and worked my way through chaotic L.A., driving through the end of a magnificent rainbow (no pot of gold, though!) towards the Mojave where I was greeted with every weather phenomenon known to man. As my little Toyota Corolla borrowed from the Fathers struggled up to 5000 feet around Water Canyon, I arrived at the convent to be greeted by a blizzard!
I am glad none of my parishioners saw me trying to unload boxes of bread for the sisters as I was slipping and sliding around on the ice in my dress shoes as an implacable novice with her snowboots on assisted me; these tough mountain women had to laugh at the South Carolina boy flummoxed by the white stuff! But Mother Augustine and the sisters greeted me with smiles and warm soup, and the next morning I awoke to a winter wonderland and trudged over to enter for the first time in my life a cloister of contemplative nuns to celebrate Holy Mass. (None of you have probably been behind “the grille” before; it’s quite the experience!)
There’s not much you can do when you are snowed in with a gaggle of nuns but pray. And as I knelt there enveloped by icy white with these joyful young brides of Christ, I realized two things: what a sinful man and a sorry priest I am, and how blessed I am to be your sorry priest. My prayers are not as efficacious as those of my dear nuns, but I did pray for you and also in thanksgiving, not only for the man who ploughed me out of the snowdrifts but also for the inventions of first gear and good brakes!
What a wonderful way to spend a wintry storm, in holy conversation about the things of God. One of my old college friends is now the Novice Mistress, making good nuns out of good women; she said to me, “You know, an entire parish can go to heaven on the coattails of its priest!” So, hang on and let’s go!
Your sorry (but happy) priest,
Father Christopher