Welp, I am back in Tucson from St. Andrew’s Abbey and am now officially a Benedictine Oblate.
The experience was huge, partly because it represents a more radical consecration of life and intention; partly because my faults and failings and wounds were revealed to me in a new way, along with what I am obligated to do to insofar as possible correct/amend them; and partly because, also in a new way, I saw the power of prayer and the communion of living saints.
Here, for example, is the email I received from the good Br. Sixtus at Portsmouth (Benedictine) Abbey in Rhode Island:
“Good morning, Heather,
Hoping that everything went well this week for your retreat at Valyermo, culminating in your oblation yesterday to the abbot of St. Andrew’s. Abbot Matthew asked me to let you know that he offered his Mass for you Thursday morning. I just got back Thursday evening from NYC and, before I went to Penn Station for my lunchtime train back to RI, I attended the 7 a.m. Mass at Holy Innocents Church on W. 37th Street. You may know of it, but Servant of God Dorothy Day made her first Promise of Oblation in that very church on April 26, 1955…
I offered up my own Mass Thursday morning for your intention. Later that evening, as the monks were gathered in the Calefactory for recreation after dinner and before Compline, I added your intention to the intercessions prayed for by the community. Lastly, on Sunday, December 1, the Portsmouth Oblates and Friends gathered on campus for an Advent Day of Recollection. I gave a presentation on next year’s Jubilee Year of Hope and the opening of the Holy Doors in Rome and elsewhere. I began by letting them know of your connection to Portsmouth and of your big day on Dec. 12, and we offered a prayer together for you. All in all, there has been a river of prayers heading your way!”
My friend Rita was praying for me from Rochester, New York. My old friend Lucy from St. Francis in LA, I believe she is 87, and will fly back to her beloved Phillippines on Dec 26th, and has suffered long and deeply from a variety of physical ailments, and watches EWTN Mass every day as she is now largely homebound, was offering fervent prayers from Silver Lake.
Dear friends Tensie and Dennis from the Guadalupe Catholic Worker drove 4 hours to spend the night before and to be at the monastery for the big Mass, and my brother Ross took the day off from his job as a teacher in Victorville, CA, to join us also. I can’t possibly say how much it meant to me to have the three of them there.
I also saw during my week there how, as an introvert, I tend to hang back. I’ve been going to the Abbey for 24 years, for example, and really only had contact during that whole time with one priest, Fr. Francis. Who died this year! I “know” the monks by name and bio, and have seen many of them every single time I’ve gone on retreat there over the decades, and they are therefore dear to me in an obscure way, and yet I never “interpose” myself. It’s true I dislike “intruding,” especially on people of prayer, but on the other hand, I will then notice that another retreatant is friendly and chatty with the monks and become judgmental and loathe as I am to admit it, jealous.
So THAT’S what I noticed. I can’t have it both ways. Plus I am now seriously pledged to join myself spiritually to the monks. So–I made contact with the new Oblate Director and said a bit about myself and went to Confession with him. I made sure to chat with a couple of fellow Oblates who live in the vicinity and volunteer at the Abbey, and to chat with Julie, who is lovely and schedules the retreats, and I pitched myself to give a retreat there possibly in 2026, and I approached one of the monks who gives spiritual direction and asked if it would be okay to write to him (huge quiet beneficient smile–“Of course it would”). And altogether just opened my heart and person in way I hadn’t quite there before.
We all have these kind of personality tempates that get put in place early on, and then life events conspire to cement them in place, they become the sea we swim in, and…we forget sometimes that we can change, and that we’re called to be at least open to change. If you’re the sensitive type who has experienced, or perceive yourself ot have experienced, a certain amount of rejection and abandonment, you can develop a whole persona that protects or purports to against more of the same. And the telltale sign that something is off is if you then start feeling sorry for yourself because no-one notices you, or validates you, or sees your questing, fragile heart, ravenous for God, and accommodates, connects with, and reinforces you!
You see the problem. Where is the desire and determination to accommodate, connect with and reinforce SOMEONE ELSE??
St. John of the Cross points out that God is concealed, and that if we want to meet Him, we must be concealed, too. Must forget ourselves, lose ourselves, hide ourselves in a way.
So: How can I surrender? How can I serve? How can I share?
Meanwhile, I’m flying to NYC Sunday for Christmas in Manhattan. Good news is I am already half-packed from St. Andrew’s. I’m so grateful to be in my beautiful house, strung with vintage mercury glass bulbs, lights, candles and cards for the week, as we begin the O antiphons at Evening Prayer tonight.
Today I have a “fun” day planned–taking off at 7 am to drive to my dentist in Nogales, Mexico! That’s right. A couple of fillings, no doubt yet another piece of the dire news I seem to get every time I visit the tooth doctor. Big deal. A small sampling of humanity reminds me of the burdens and crosses of the rest of the world and I am humbled. A mother of a wheelchair-bound, deeply autistic daughter, and another newborn who is herself, the mother, trying to get clean and sober. Lucy, who has terrible back pain and will endure a 17-hour flight to the Phillippines to be with her people. The refugee, the homeless in winter, the war-torn. The lonely, the lost, the rageful, the depressed, the addicts of every stripe so dear to my heart.
I will pray for us all as I drive through the desert this morning. Blessed Third Week of Advent.
AN UPCOMING EVENT IN DENVER
FEBRUARY 1, 2025:
KEYNOTE SPEAKER: MAGNIFICAT OF DENVER LUNCHEON, 11 am-2 pm
TITLE OF TALK:“My Conversion Story”
Venue: St. Thomas More Church, 8035 South Quebec Street, Centennial, CO 80112
Organizer: Celia Kulbe, (303) 884-3902, magnificatofdenver@heather
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