benedictines!

(The point of this post is this).

As some of you know, during the Fall of 2001, I stayed for a month with a community of Benedictines in Italy. Their monastery is in Norcia -- anciently "Nursia," the birthplace of St. Benedict himself, and his sister Scholastica -- in Umbria. The monastery's basilica church is built on the Roman period house where the holy twins were born.

Its a terrific place and its story is very interesting: monastic life was re-established at Norcia in late 2000, after having been absent since 1810, when Napoleon evicted a community of Celestines. The vision of Fr. Casian, the current prior, who had been living in Rome with a very small community of monks, was for the proclamation of the gospel consonant with the call of Vatican II (real Vatican II, not the siprit thereof) for a return to roots. Thus after times, a time, and half a time, religious life returned to Norcia: Benedictinism pure and simple: the full, sung, Latin office, daily mass, all charged with a spirit of apostilicity, hospitality, and honest evangelism, in the truest sense. This place is a real icon of the civitas dei: their walls are called salvation, and all their portals, praise.

And so it is. The community has tripled in size in the last five or six years, and also happens at the moment to be 100% American.

But the point of this post is that they have a new website! And its pretty impressive. Visit it. And donate money to them, if you can afford it. They will put it to good use. I promise. And its easy: they've got a little paypal link in the "giving" section of the website. Seriously: give them a little money, whatever you can afford. And tell your friends. Its a very worthy cause.