November 14, 2016
October/November 2016 News from Santa Rita Abbey
How did the year zoom by so quickly that Thanksgiving Day is next week?! Yet here we are! Fr. Casimir will return for another stint as our chaplain just in time to celebrate Mass for us on Thanksgiving Day. He will stay for all of Advent, Christmas and into the New Year, leaving on January 9, 2017. We are looking forward to having him here, and are grateful to his abbot and community in Utah for lending him to us once again.
Fr. John, our retreat master
In mid-October we had our annual seven-day community retreat with Fr. John Denburger of the Abbey of the Genesee in New York. He took his inspiration from the new book by Ronald Rohlheiser, “The Passion and the Cross”. His focus was on returning to the “garden” of our first love of Jesus, that secret place of the heart where God is our soulmate. His conferences gave us plenty to reflect on each day. A blessed time of renewal!
We make five different sizes of whole wheat altar breads
After our retreat, it was back to work in the altar bread bakery and elsewhere around the monastery. At Cistercian Altar Breads we are increasing our stock of whole wheat altar breads for all those extra Christmas Masses our parish customers are planning. We’ve also been working on our website’s altar bread pages. We now have a new altar bread page, “About Cistercian Altar Breads” to give potential parish customers a chance to learn about our history and our bakery work. We’ve added a button to make it easy to download our Cistercian Altar Breads brochure. And our newly expanded drop-down menu makes it possible for returning customers to go directly to the order form page. Check out the new page at https://santaritaabbey.org/cistercian-altar-breads-baked-nuns-santa-rita-abbey/
Our retreat house this past August
Aside from the altar bread bakery, the retreat house gets busy at this time of year, too. People of all faiths and walks of life enjoy taking some quiet time away to renew and deepen their relationship with God. We’ve updated our retreat house web page as well. Take a look! https://santaritaabbey.org/retreats-2/
As always, we’ve been enjoying God’s beautiful creation which surrounds us on all sides. The mild fall weather in these last few weeks has been lovely. Clear blue skies, golden fall leaves, our neighborhood deer and bird populations continuing to visit us. Just the other day, four deer were grazing just a stone’s throw from the kitchen door. Too bad the camera wasn’t handy!
We wish you a Happy Thanksgiving Day! May your heart be full of gratitude for all the blessings of God in your life. On Thanksgiving Day, let us all give thanks to God, and let us also pray for peace and unity in our families and in our country and throughout the world. No matter what our differences may be, we are all God’s beloved children. As we move into the Advent Season just a few days later, may we open wide our hearts to the Coming One, our Lord Jesus, who will be born anew in all of our hearts at Christmas. “Come, Lord Jesus, come, and teach us to love one another!”
If you look carefully, there’s a hawk in flight on the right edge of the photo. A lucky shot!
One of our deer families in the cottonwood grove
Oh, those sunsets! This one from mid-October.
This Arizona ash was the first tree to turn golden this year