The prioress of the community, Mother Cecelia, said five years ago there were 18 sisters in the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of the Apostles community.

Now that number has climbed to 31. It includes four new postulants who joined the order this week. Another two are due to join next year.

The community is multicultural, with sisters coming from Canada, Germany and the Netherlands, as well as the United States.

This diversity is reflected in the choice of songs included in the album, which is called Caroling at Ephesus.

Although most are in English, there are "two in Latin, and one each in German, French, Polish and Spanish.

"Along with a little help from my mother, who is Polish by birth, there are enough speakers here of each language now to guide us through the pronunciation," Cecelia said.

"While Latin is easy (we chant in Latin everyday) the others certainly added a challenge to the recording," she said.

The carols include old favourites like God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, O Holy Night, and O Come All Ye Faithful as well as a Christmas poem written by G.K. Chesterton.

Called "Carol of the Christ Child", the sisters set the poem to music themselves.

Source

• CNA
• Image: You Tube

Forcades — a Benedictine nun, activist, feminist theologian and physician from Catalonia in Spain — and Francis — a Jesuit pope from Argentina — share a kindred vision of empowering the poor through nonviolence.

Both understand the relationship between capitalism and poverty.

Francis has denounced the "idolatry of money" and implored world leaders to assure all people "dignified work, education and healthcare."

In a way, Forcades takes it further by advocating that the state must be challenged from the bottom up. The people must be the agents of change.

"When I talk about church, we talk about how the Gospel inspired us. There are many kinds of church, and I identify with the people at the bottom, at the base.

"Many people have a hope that the Catholic church might change because of the pope, but if you look at history, change comes from bottom up, not from top down," Forcades said to a room overflowing with "local radical activists" Continue reading.

Source: National Catholic Reporter

Image: psalmboxkey.com

The Lord has come; the Lord has redeemed us on the Cross; so why do we begin again this annual cycle of reading the Old Testament prophecies about the coming of the Messiah?

Are we play-acting, pretending to wait for that which is already here? Of course not. We are doing two important things.

First, we are entering into liturgical anamnesis — a remembrance which is more than a mere recalling of events. Continue reading.

Sr Catherine Wybourne is a Benedictine nun of Benedictine nun from Holy Trinity Monastery, Howton Grove Priory, U.K.

Source: iBenedictines

Image: @DigitalNun

Now Mother Dolores, the prioress of a Benedictine monastery in Connecticut — and still known as the nun who kissed Elvis Presley (in King Creole) — she has just had her autobiography published.

Titled The Ear of the Heart: An Actress' Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows, it follows a documentary featuring her life as a cloistered nun that picked up an Oscar nomination last year.

In her Hollywood days, Dolores Hart made 10 movies, including Loving You (also with Elvis), Where the Boys Are and Come Fly With Me. She also appeared in several television series.

Of Elvis, she says: "He was a doll. Anyone who has any problem with him, you don't know the truth. He was a beautiful person."

She is most proud of playing the title character in the 1962 drama Lisa, as a Jewish girl who survived the Nazis' Auschwitz death camp only to be pursued by traitors after World War II intending to force her into prostitution.

Explaining to Catholic News Service the background to the documentary on her life, God is the Bigger Elvis, she said Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the late papal nuncio to the United States, summoned her to his office one day and told her, "You are to make a movie about consecrated life."

Mother Dolores protested, saying all her Hollywood contacts were dead.

"And he said, 'No, no, no, no. God will help you do this, because this has to be done,' " she recalled. Four days later, representatives of the HBO television network — none of whom had ever heard of Archbishop Sambi — called to ask permission to film at her convent.

Mother Dolores is the only nun to be accredited as a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — the group that chooses the Oscar winners.

Catholic News Service said that comes in handy for the occasional movie night at the monastery.

Sources:

Catholic News Service

NBC Connecticut

Patheos

Image: NBC Connecticut

"This is an unprecedented accomplishment for … a group of contemplative nuns, this devoted, hidden prayerful group who do not tour and remain close to their Benedictine rule of life," said Monica Fitzgibbons of De Montfort Music, which produced the album.

Titled Angels and Saints at Ephesus, the album topped a group of classical albums that includes Fifty Shades of Grey: The Classical Album and Downton Abbey: The Essential Collection.

The order of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles was founded in 1995 in Pennsylvania, but in 2006 moved to the diocese of Kansas City-St Joseph at the invitation of Bishop Robert Finn.

The sisters sing together eight times a day, chanting the Divine Office in Latin.

The prioress, Mother Cecilia, who also arranged the songs on the album, gave up her position in the horn section of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, Ohio, to enter religious life.

The sisters' latest album, recorded at their priory, features 17 English and Latin pieces sung a cappella. Their harmonies were described a Washington Times reviewer as "an oasis of serenity in a dissonant world".

Last year the sisters' previous release, entitled Advent at Ephesus, spent five weeks in the top position on Billboard's classical traditional chart, making them the highest-selling traditional classical artist or group for 2012.

Sources:

Religion News Service

Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles

Decca Records

Image: Catholic World Report

Scaffolding is needed for major repairs and maintenance, such as replacing a roof, or painting a tall building. Sometimes, this scaffolding is then plastic-wrapped, to provide privacy, safety, and a weather-proof working environment.

Once work is completed the scaffolding is dismantled. Ladders, cherry pickers, or long poles are then used to effect minor repairs and on-going maintenance.

We are a building - Shekhinah, a temple of God. Well-designed. The intrinsic design and health of my temple will enable it to weather many storms. But it still needs regular upkeep … and sometimes a major overhaul.

How do I maintain the spiritual life of this temple?

There is an infinite variety of 'scaffolding' available to us on our spiritual journey. Sacraments. Prayer. Worship. Community. Retreat. Spiritual teaching and reading. Spiritual direction and companionship. The framework provided by different spiritualities, such as Marist, Benedictine, Franciscan, Ignatian. Silence.

Some of this scaffolding is designed for major events … initiation, marriage, ordination, death. It shapes us, moulds us, gifts us with grace … but then we take it down and allow that grace to become visible in our temple.

Sometimes we erect scaffolding and wrap it in plastic, to effect a major change. Entering a time of retreat or discernment, when we become especially attentive to the voice of the divine, is a time when we are particularly vulnerable. We need the protection and privacy that exclusion of the outside world offers. But then we strip away the scaffolding and the protective wrap, and slowly the metamorphosis that has taken place deep within, will become evident in our attitudes, our words, our actions.

There are many tools available to us to effect minor repairs and on-going maintenance. Communal worship and liturgy nourishes and sustains us. Reconciliation and conflict resolution repairs cracks and dents in our relationships with others and with God. A personal prayer discipline, unique to each of us as we seek to relate to the God-within and the God-without. Service to others … being the eyes and ears and feet and heart of God to others. Reflection on sacred scripture. Small group interactions.

Our institutional churches are also temples - literally and metaphorically. Well designed. Intrinsically good. But the scaffolding has been up for many years - and I wonder why it has not been taken down. Scaffolding in the guise of Vatican 2 enabled major renovations within the Catholic Church - a major transformation. But not only is this scaffolding being dismantled, many of the renovations have also been removed. A little counter-productive.

I wonder if ancient, ineffectual scaffolding is shoring up a crumbling edifice. Perhaps it is time for this scaffolding to be removed, and demolition experts invited in to remove all that is rotten. This is not a time for plastic-wrapping: everything must be done in plain view, open to inspection and inspiration.

Scaffolding is always a sign of hope; of new beginnings; of creativity and hard work; of attentiveness to what has been done, what needs to be done, and what needs to be protected. Scaffolding is always unique. It is shaped to the building and to the work that must be undertaken. Scaffolding can be used again and again but each time it will be different and will enable different work to be done. While scaffolding is designed to facilitate construction work and repairs, its primary purpose is ALWAYS the health and safety of those who use it.

Can we say that the scaffolding we use in our spiritual life is healthy - for us and for those who encounter us?

Can we say that the scaffolding our churches use is healthy - and considers first those who dwell within and those who are passers-by?

• Liz Pearce, a mother of three adult children, loves story, writing, and dollmaking www.heartfeltdolls.weebly.com

Benedictine Sister Stella Matutina works in Mindanao, the most conflictive island in the southern Philippines. Now 44, she spent 18 years studying and performing pastoral work in Europe before returning to Mindanao in 2007, when she says she quickly realised an environmental crisis was at hand.

Continue reading

With 25 participants from several Australian dioceses, we set out for Germany, Belgium, France and Italy, ready to face the beginning of a European winter. The aim of the tour was to expose participants to several of the key Catholic and ecumenical centres in Europe that gave birth to the Liturgical Movement and which inspired Vatican II's charter of liturgical renewal, and also places where the liturgical vision was still being realised and given different expressions.

Why, at this time, did we embark on such a quest, almost 50 years after the Council and over 100 years since the pivotal event of 1909 when the young Benedictine monk, Dom Lambert Beauduin from Mont César Abbey in Belgium, delivered an address on "The True Prayer of the Church" at a national congress? Although it is recognised that there was an earlier stage of the liturgical movement in the nineteenth century through the reform efforts of Dom Prosper Guéranger at the Benedictine Abbey of Solesmes in France, this 1909 event, according to many historians, inaugurated a new era for the liturgical movement and set its agenda.

Exciting and heady years followed the promulgation of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy in 1963. We saw the presider facing the people, a vernacular liturgy, a richer fare of Sacred Scripture in the Sunday liturgy, preaching based on the scriptures, the baptised laity exercising liturgical ministries, and so much more.

But, nearly 50 years later, we are a Church from which many are walking away, and only 12 per cent of which regularly celebrate Sunday Mass. With a new translation of the Mass that seems to prize literalism over inculturation and the language of the people, a hugely attended Third Rite of Reconciliation withdrawn from practice, and various agendas calling for "reforming the reform" or "restoring the pre-conciliar", could there be no better time to visit places which were the inspiration of the liturgical movement, and places giving new hope through the implementation of that vision? Continue reading

Sources

• Sr Margaret Smith SGS in The Good Oil
• Image: Pertinacious Papist