Last Saturday I went to to the Junge Ordens Leute Treffen (or, JOLT).  It is a day to meet other members of religious orders in Austria.  Everyone who goes is either a novice or in simple vows.  This meeting was held in Stift Heiligenkreuz.  It is a Cistercian Monastery founded by St. Leopold (the founder of our Stift).  You may be familiar with it, they are the ones that came out with the CD ‘Music for Paradise’.

It was a good event.  It is really geared for ‘kennenlernen’ (this is the German verb ‘to become acquainted with, become friends with’).  Overall, it was a pretty good day.  I was able to meet my inner monk (and reaffirm that I should not be a monk).  I was able to meet some people from other orders.

Two of the people I met on Saturday came to visit us on Monday.  It was nice to have visitors.  They are from an order that is in the 15th District of Vienna.  I had met one of them a week earlier at a Wander Mutter Gottes prayer group meeting.

One of the difficult things about moving to a new country and joining a religious order at the same, is that you do not meet a lot of people.  Events like JOLT are nice for this reason.

Two pillars of the Canonical Life are: Common Prayer and Common Table. This means that we pray together and we eat together as a community. Most people know the phrase “A family that prays together, stays together.” In American society we are now learning that a family that does not eat together does not stay together, either. By praying together and eating together, we are sharing the two most important things in our lives. Without food our bodies whither and die. Without prayer our souls whither and die.

Read the rest of this entry »

Well, I promised to put up more pictures of the Clothing Ceremony.  I really have been dreading wading through all of the photos I have received.

Instead, I have made a short video. The pictures cycle through fairly quickly.  I am not a video editor.  I wanted to just provide you all with an idea of what the ceremony is like.

I hope you all enjoy the video.

I have not posted in a while.  It has been almost 2 weeks.  Many things have happened.  My first few weeks here in the Stift have been ones of change and adjustment.  I have now settled into my new routine.

At First Vespers on the Feast of St Augustine, I officially entered Stift Klosterneuburg as a Novice.  I was clothed in the habit of the Canons Regular of St Augustine and given a new name.

Read the rest of this entry »