Let us pray.
That is a phrase common to the world I inhabit; a world of prayer in the liturgy of the Latin Rite of Western Catholicism, the Church founded by St. Peter and ruled to this day by the Vicar of Christ, Pope Benedict XVI. I am a Catholic, and a loyal one.
Although I style this site as an Abbey, and myself as an Abbot, those terms are notional. I do not live in a real abbey, and in that I am married, it would be scandalous for me to assert that I am an Abbot. My Abbey is Virtual, and as an Abbot I am virtual. But my prayer life is real.
This is my blog about this prayer life.
For now, I am allowing comments, though I will strike anything I consider profane. And although I follow the news of the outer world, my blog is very much a reaction to that world. I used to think that our culture was a thing that needed to be chided and reformed. I have now come to the conclusion that it is something that needs to be avoided. If our culture will be reformed, it will be a reform conducted from the ruins. I may make comments from time to time on the culture; but I will not make politics or the culture my regular beat.
My prayer life, which I will discuss on this blog, is of more interest to me than the outer world. The writings of the Church Fathers contain more wisdom than anything that is on television. The Liturgy of the Hours, which is my primary system of prayer, is more rewarding than anything the world could offer me. And my God, to whom I pray, is finer than anything in His creation.
And yet he chose to hallow this creation with his own incarnation, rather than condemn it as profane. He chose to save the world rather than destroy it. He does so primarily through his Church, which He put in place for a time until He returns.
We are, therefore living in a time between times. We do not know how long we wait; we only know that God's plans are not our plans, that his time is not our time.
While we wait, we pray. We preach the gospel, we baptize people of all nations. We do what He asked of us in the last chapter of the gospel of Matthew.
For me, my faith lay dormant for some years. Then in the Advent season of 2006, my faith awoke. I started to pray, got to confession, and go to Mass. And I started to pray, morning and night.
Then I discovered the Liturgy of the Hours, and that the church had a means of sanctifying time.
I pray all seven "hours" in the course of the day. The shortest hours take about 5 minutes. The longest hours take about 20 minutes.
I encourage all Christians to pray it. It will revolutionize your faith.
And, in a sense, this is what this blog is about.
Your faith.