3rd SUN ADVENT- REJOICE

 

  

St. Mother Teresa of Cacutta viewed silence as essential for prayer, spiritual growth, and finding God. She believed that silence is where one can hear God's voice, and this leads to a chain reaction: the fruit of silence is prayer, the fruit of prayer is faith, the fruit of faith is love, the fruit of love is service, and the fruit of service is peace. This "silence" involved not just the absence of noise, but also a mental and emotional stillness—the silence of the mind, eyes, ears, and heart—to be truly present and open to God's will. 

The first reading for this Sunday, again from Isaiah (35:1-2): The desert and the parched land will exult; the steppe will rejoice and bloom. They will bloom with abundant flowers, and rejoice with joyful song... they will see the glory of the Lord, the splendor of our God.

These few lines set the tone for the day, giving us a very descriptive picture of place- a place that many have never seen, but for those of us who live in the west, the desert is a very mysterious and almost sacred place. To the natives who have lived on this land for hundreds of years it is sacred. 

Upon reflection, I don't think I ever visited the desert, that I was not aware of the silence that inhabitated the greatness, yet the vast emptiness of space.  Through most if the year it is a colorless place, but come spring it is glorious beyond measure. 

In the heart of the vast desert lies a profound stillness, a silence so powerful it speaks volumes without uttering a single word. One must listen to the "silent sounds", which permeate the place.

The Church gives us this reading to remind us that we are in a sort of desert, not only in Advent as we await the coming of the Christ Child, but our life is a desert as we travel to the heavenly homeland. In the midst of that waiting, we at times are given a glimpse of the glory to come. What is it about the desert that makes it a good meeting place for the Lord? It is in that stillness,  that we hear the voice of the Lord who waits for us.

...all men need enough silence and solitude in their lives to enable the deep inner voice of their own true self to be heard at least occasionally. When that inner voice is not heard, when man cannot attain to the spiritual peace that comes from being perfectly at one with his true self, his life is always miserable and exhausting. For he cannot go on happily for long unless he is in contact with the springs of spiritual life which are hidden in the depths of his own soul. If man is constantly exiled from his own home, locked out of his own spiritual solitude, he ceases to be a true person. He no longer lives as a man.  (Thomas Merton, The Silent Life)

Here is your God,
he comes with vindication;
with divine recompense
he comes to save you.
Then will the eyes of the blind be opened,
the ears of the deaf be cleared;
then will the lame leap like a stag,
then the tongue of the mute will sing. (Isaiah 35: 4-5)

Paintings:  Rick Jaramillo

SILENCE in the 2nd WEEK of ADVENT

 

 Biblical revelation and the lives of the Saints all make clear that God speaks to us the best in silence.  We need it, far more than we admit these days and Advent is a great season to make some time for it. When I read the lives of the saints, be they from ages past, or more modern ones, I am always amazed at how much they treasured silence- time alone with the Lord. Some were contemplative, living in a religious comunity, or even alone, but many had active works such as teaching or care of the sick and poor.  And many have been lay people. No matter the life, they found the time for quiet prayer.  They understood that silence is the basis for contemplative stillness, emptiness of the mind, freedom from the distracted mind, which leads us deeper into life with Jesus.

" Noise is a deceptive, addictive, and false tranquilizer. The tragedy of our world is never better summed up than in the fury of senseless noise that stubbornly hates silence. This age detests the things that silence brings us to: encounter, wonder, and kneeling before God." (Cardinal Sarah: The Power of Silence)

Living on a small island away from the hustle and chaos of the world, there is more opportunity to find times for silence, and since our community is a small one, we have more space to be alone, and more times for silence, especially in this time of Advent. In spite of the rains and damp chill, it is my favorite time in the monastery. My prayer is that all may find a small time, each day to prepare in silence for the coming of the Lord.

Icon:  “Our Lady of Silence” in the Vatican painted at the Benedictine Convent of San Giulio d’Orta in the Italian province of Novara. 

NEW ICON FOR SEATTLE

 

Our  Cathedral in Seattle has a new icon, written by an artist in New York. It portrays ST. KATERI TEKAKWITHA. It started when Corinna Laughlin, the director of liturgy for St. James Cathedral in Seattle, saw a series of 12 icons hung along a wall, including one of St. Kateri Tekakwitha.

The artist, Patricia Brintle, was originally from Saint-Michel-de-l'Attalaye, Haiti, but in 1964 moved to New York to marry her fiancé, who had moved there for work.

 Patricia began drawing and painting as a young child, developing a distinct style using bold colors. Some of her artwork has been shown at the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence, Italy, and she’s been commissioned to create a portrait of Servant of God Sister Thea Bowman for the Passionist Monastery in Queens, New York.

The 4-foot-tall icon represents the local connection along with St. Kateri’s New York roots. The nature behind St. Kateri, particularly the pine trees, represents the local environment. She’s adorned in a traditional Salish cedar hat, and a Mohawk skirt, leggings and moccasins. At her feet, among a group of lilies, sits a turtle. As part of the Turtle Clan of the Mohawk people, St. Kateri was known as the “Lily of the Mohawks.The icon also contains a canoe, two eagles and two salmon, a nod to both the Pacific Northwest and Native American communities.

The icon  traveled to local Native American Catholic communities after its blessing on Oct. 19, before being placed in its permanent home in the cathedral. “For Native Catholics to be able to recognize themselves in the iconography of the cathedral is important, but also the sense that she’s not a saint just for Native Catholics. She’s for everyone. She’s the patron of ecology — that’s so important to people in the Pacific Northwest, said the artist.

Why is this saint so important to our archdiocese?  The last miracle which put through her canonization happened in the children’s hospital just a few miles from the cathedral. (Blog Oct. 20, 2012) with the cure of Jake Finkbinner, a Lummi child suffering from strep A bacteria which started on his face after he received a cut on his lip during a basketball game. When the doctors gave up hope, telling the parents to prepare themselves, Sister Kateri Mitchell, executive director of the Tekakwitha Conference, placed a relic of Blessed Kateri on his leg.

The next morning, doctors were stunned to see that the flesh-eating bacteria had stopped. Five years later, St. Kateri was canonized on Oct. 21, 2012, with Jake and his family and many of his Lummi tribe, as well as Oblates from our monastery attending the ceremony in Rome.  Jake carried the gifts at the canonization Mass.

The artist studies each saint before her painting begins and in this case flew to Washington, visiting the cathedral as well as St. Paul Parish in La Conner on the Swinomish Reservation, which is the closest to us on the mainland.

“That was quite an experience,” Patricia said. “That was amazing. I can’t even put it into words. I was now walking on ground that the ancestors of the people who lived on the reservation over 10,000 years ago were walking. That touched me, that touched me a lot.”

“That was quite an experience,” she said. “That was amazing. I can’t even put it into words. I was now walking on ground that the ancestors of the people who lived on the reservation over 10,000 years ago were walking. That touched me, that touched me a lot.”  Her prayer is that the icon touches the many people who visit and pray in the Seattle cathedral. 

SILENCE IN ADVENT

 

Advent is a season for hoping, waiting, and silence. It is no coincidence that it falls in winter, which in many parts of the world can be harsh. It is the time when nature digs in and is silent in growth. When I was at our Abbey in Connecticut, I found the winters difficult, not so much for the cold, as for the lack of green.  Here in the Pacific Northwest  we have green all year, even though our winters can be quite wet.

This Advent in anticipation of the coming of our Lord, we shall focus on SILENCE. While the world seemingly spins out of control, Advent invites us to slow down and listen for the still small voice of God. It calls us to be still. 

Even before Thanksgiving this year, Christmas decor was on the market.  The push for Christmas celebration seems to get earlier and earlier by the year. Which perhaps says something of a culture which seeks more than it understands or knows for a desire for the spiritual. 

Many Catholics don’t realize the Christmas season does not start until Christmas Eve Masses. Most do not know that Christmas Day lasts 8 days (an octave). Or that the Christmas season lasts until the Baptism of the Lord, and for some, until the Presentation of the Lord, February 2. 

This season of waiting in silent expectation through prayer is essential for being spiritually prepared to fully live the joy of Christ's coming into our hearts, into our world. The answer to being overwhelmed and exhausted from the materialistic overload is the one Advent offers to us. It is to choose silence. This is how we prepare our souls for Christmas. We must seek silence with our whole heartsfor it is in silence that we encounter the Living God.

As the Church, through the Liturgy, invites us into the silence of waiting, may we be aware of the precious, holy moments presented to us.

Elijah found God not in the strong winds, nor earthquakes, nor fire, but in the silence (1 Kings 19:11-12).

(Painting Jyoti Sahi- India)

POTATOES, TULIPS, BERRIES, AND BIRDS

 

 

 

This is the time of the year when farmers on the mainland in the rich Skagit Valley, donate hundreds of pounds of potatoes to us for the winter.  We have been known still be enjoying them on the 4^th of July, which amazes our friends. We also receive beets and brussell  sprouts, which are still on their long stocks.

 "Skagit" can refer to the Skagit Native American tribe, a dialect of the Lushootseed language, or a geographic location like the Skagit River and Skagit County in Washington. In the Lushootseed language, the word originally meant "to hide away" or "place of refuge" and was applied to the people who lived in the area, specifically the Lower Skagit people on Whidbey Island, south of us. 

 This ultra-fertile valley is nestled under the Cascade mountain range, with farmers producing about $300 million worth of crops, livestock and dairy products on approximately 90,000 acres of land. 

The Skagit River valley is blessed with some of the most productive agricultural soil in the world. The valley's fertile soil has been rated in the top 2% of soils in the world, making the Skagit Valley one of the most important and productive agricultural regions in the world. 

Thousands of years of flooding on the Skagit River deposited a rich layer of topsoil in the Skagit Valley. European immigrants flocked here starting in the 1860s and built houses in the flats, along with an elaborate network of earthen dikes to capture land from the saltwater delta and prevent the rivers from flooding the land. 

Over 90 different crops are grown in the county. Blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, tulips, daffodils, pickling cucumbers, specialty potatoes, Jonagold apples and vegetable seed are some of the more important crops in this maritime valley. This summer one farmer brought us 30 flats of berries - to be frozen for winter- after we ate to satiety!

More tulip, iris and daffodil bulbs are produced here than in any other county in the U.S. And our friend at Roozengarden is the largest.  At Easter and Christmas (and special times in between) our chapel if filled with his flowers.

Ninety-five percent of the red potatoes grown in the state of Washington are from Skagit County.

In addition to food and fiber products, agriculture in this region provides habitat for thousands of swans, snow geese and dabbling ducks.  I remember the first time I saw the snow geese in a field. It was January and as we drove by I swore it had snowed. As we got closer and closer to the site I could see the wings flapping.  A magical sight, and people come from all over the world to see this wonderous bird, along with swans which feed amidst the geese.The Skagit Delta supports 70 percent of Puget Sound’s shorebirds during migration, the farmland being the reason why the Skagit Delta is one of the most important waterfowl wintering areas in the Pacific Northwest, supporting over 90 percent of the waterfowl wintering in western Washington.

The ongoing presence and preservation of farmland in the Skagit Valley supports one of the nation’s last strongholds containing all five species of salmon. The largest chum and pink salmon populations in the entire lower 48, as well as the most abundant population of wild Chinook salmon in Puget Sound are found in these rivers.

We are blessed to live in an area so rich in produce and to have so many farmer friends willing to share their crops with us.

Photos:

Top: Jacob R. King

Tulips: Ruth Choi

Bottom Geese:  Rahan Alduaij

CHICLAYO AGAIN

 

 

A statue of Pope Leo XIV has been unveiled in CHICLAYO, his former episcopal city in Peru. 

As part of the celebrations on Thursday, Chiclayo's  bishop Edinson Farfán celebrated Mass and blessed the sculpture. He asked Pope Leo XIV to "always protect us with his blessing and to always accompany us".

The statue, which is around  16 feet high, is made of white fiberglass and resin and weighs around half a ton. It was designed by Peruvian artist Juan Carlos Ñañake. It stands at a roundabout at the southern entrance to the city of Chiclayo, which the local authorities plan to rename the "Papal Oval". 

It is part of a new tourist route called "Ways of Pope Leo XIV", which will include 38 places of interest in four provinces where the Holy Father left his mark during his time in Peru from, 1985 to 2023.

On the occasion of its unveiling, the governor of the Lambayeque region, Jorge Pérez Flores, emphasized that Pope Leo XIV "is a Peruvian who has walked with us and is certainly always with us with his prayers for the well-being of the Peruvian people". 

Pope Leo had addressed the faithful of the Chiclayo diocese in the main loggia of St Peter's Basilica during the first speech after his election as Pope on 8 May, assuring them of his closeness.

A SLOWER LIFE

 

I have been remiss in keeping up with Blogs.  It has been a very busy summer, especially in the garden. Our now small garden with 12 metal container beds (looking like something from Star Trek) have produced an abundance of veggies and flowers. At its peak the garden looked like a jungle. For the first time in many years I made gallons of tomato sauce for the freezer. Now that life has slowed and the weather turned cold, I promise more saints or saints to be- there are over two dozen waiting! Photo below shows Mother Dilecta, gardener, sacristan, poet, and avid sports fan, especially of the Mariners!