We will be making improvements to our website the first half of January and no new content will be added until the updates are complete. Watch for new posts soon!
Monastic Life Is...
Sister Val Luckey's new Erie Times News OpEd deals with snow and gratefulness...
Are you in need of some hope? What can it look like? Once again we turn to Pope Francis and Laudato Sí. “Hope would have us recognize that there is always a way out, that we can always redirect our steps, that we can always do something to solve our problems.” #61
Sister Placida Anheuser, OSB, 107, died on December 25, 2024, at Mount St. Benedict Monastery in Erie.
Sister Joan Chittister and Sister Linda Romey are among the contributors to Wisdom from the Global Sisterhood, a new book of contemporary reflections by Catholic sisters compiled from ten years' of Global Sisters Report (GSR) writings.
New in the Brick by Brick substack: When first thinking about Catholic religious life as my next step, I wondered how one even goes about that these days and how one chooses among the different orders. Then the podcast I was listening to said Benedictine right as I drove past a Church of St. Benedict, so the matter was settled.
I like wordplay and books, so I keep my eye out for clever names, including titles of cozy mysteries (Buried in the Stacks, by Allison Brook) and book/gift shops (the Bayfront Bookshelf run by Friends of the Library at Blasco, for example). But I didn't know why the gift shop at Mount St. Benedict (6101 East Lake Road) is called Chapter 57 until Sister Valerie Luckey, OSB, director of Emmaus Ministries, explained its origin. (I am also a freelance writer for Emmaus.)
If you haven't checked our Substacks, Blogs, and Podcasts page in the last few days, there is new content in all of them. These are the most recent titles: Spaces and Liberation; “Symbolic Monks” and the world's ways; OMG!; We need culture; The Earliest Struggles; Nature At Its Best.
This week is a confluence of meaning. We celebrated the Solemnity of Christ the Annointed One (Christ the King) last Sunday, November 24. We celebrate Thanksgiving Thursday, November 28, and next Sunday, December 1, Advent begins. On Sunday, Oblate Priscilla Richter offered insightful reflections that illuminated the meaning of all these events in light of the gospel reading from John 18:33b-37 and our current reality.
