During the week of March 3-10, Fr. Terrence gave retreats in Jerome, Idaho, to the monks of Ascension Monastery and also to their Oblates. About 30 people participated in the Oblate weekend. In his talks to the Oblates, Terrence outlined a “Profile of Saint Benedict,” using only the Holy Rule as a source. During the following week, he gave two conferences a day to the twelve monks on St. Benedict’s Chapter 7 on Humility.

The community meeting of March 14 focused on the Abbey courtyard. It seems that some kind of renovation is needed in that interior garden, since the vines have died and the great pine tree also appears to be moribund. Like all open meetings, this one brought forth all sorts of ideas, suggestions and emotions. One monk declared that tons of sand must be brought in to rework the lawn. Another declared that the courtyard cats are a nuisance. Some people feel that the night crawlers have ruined the lawn and therefore must be poisoned. And so forth. The courtyard is photogenic, but it is rarely used by the monks.

It was a sort of cold and dreary March hereabouts, but at least two of the monks managed to find some relief from winter. Fr. Thomas traveled to Phoenix, Arizona, for a week of contacts with our benefactors. He was the guest of Ann Kryzanauskas, the cousin of the deceased Bro. Juan Diego. Ann donated the “Joe Torre” bronze archangel in the vestibule of our church.

Bro. Alban got even further south when he flew to Puerto Rico at the end of the month. He is serving as secretary of the Abbot President’s Council, which held its semiannual meeting at the Abbey of San Antonio Abad in Humacao. This community is a foundation of St. John’s that runs a day school for some 400 students. There are about fifteen monks at San Antonio, and Bro. Alban reports that their spirit and their observance is very good. So he was edified as well as sun tanned.

April is often a fairly cold and nasty month hereabouts, but this year was an exception. Balmy temperatures were common, and the seventy degree days during Holy Week were almost unheard-of. But of course nice days are not all that is needed in an agricultural area such as this one. We need rain in spring and Praise the Lord!—we got it! In the week of April 18-20 we got over two inches of slow, penetrating rain. The lawns and pastures began to green up and the farmers were smiling in anticipation of a decent hay crop.

Around Easter, the kitchen is always the scene of a lot of activity. Our spring open house in April drew very good crowds and so the hard labor of Fr. Thomas and Bro. Alban paid off in good bake sales. Bro. Basil sold a lot of gifts in his shop and Bro. Elias’ wine supply was sharply reduced. For Holy Thursday supper the cooks always purchase lambs from a local farmer and we enjoy this welcome variation in our diet. Why don’t people around here eat more lamb? We raise it; why not eat it?

Well, anyway, there was frantic activity over in the kitchen where Bro. Aelred set up a little well with running water, presumably as a reminder of baptism. And the long tables where we eat were reconfigured in a cruciform shape. The annual egg dying party ran into a bit of a problem, however. After they were done coloring the eggs, Bro. Nicholas decided to break one open to see if the color penetrated the shells. Much to his surprise, he found that they had not been hard-boiled! Bit of a glitch there, hey what?

Because our printing business has been closed down, we have started to sell off our presses. But there is a problem. There is still a market out there for our presses, because they are good ones, even if they are old ones. The difficulty is getting them out of the basement where our shop is located. To do so requires a good deal of skill and effort—so much that we don’t know if the big press can be disposed of. We could tear down the building, but this newsletter is being written on the top floor.

The Diocese of Cheyenne, Wyoming, has announced that our confrere, Fr. Hugo L. Blotsky, has been transferred from Pine Bluffs to Buffalo. This means that he will soon move from the southeastern corner of the state to a spot in the foothills just east of the Big Horn Mountains. As Pastor of Buffalo, Fr. Hugo will also have care of the mission churches of Kaycee and Clearmont. Buffalo is about two hours south of Billings, MT, so Hugo will be considerably closer to the monastery than previously.

Fr. Terrence attended the Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo, MI, during the five days of May 3-7. This conference, which draws a couple of thousand scholars from all over the world, features hundreds of talks, concerts, plays and assorted medieval activities. Fr. Terrence read a short paper concerning the earliest commentary on the Rule of Benedict by Abbot Smaragdus of St. Mihiel. The Congress is held at Western Michigan University.

At the beginning of May, Fr. Lawrence returned to the monastery from Colorado. Since November 2 he had been serving as chaplain to St. Walburga Monastery, which is a group of contemplative nuns. Since St. Walburga is very far from population, Fr. Lawrence had trouble finding partners for a pinochle game. Of course, he had ample time for contemplation and lectio divina, but, as they say, enough is enough.

Our community retreat this year took place from May 28 to June 1. The leader was Abbot Placid Solari of Belmont Abbey in North Carolina. Belmont Abbey is within a few miles of Charlotte, which is now a big city. Abbot Placid is a highly trained scholar, with a doctorate from the Augustinianum (Rome) in Patristics. Patristics is the study of the theology of the Fathers of the Early Church. That sounds like ancient history, but in fact much of the renewal of Vatican II amounted to a return to patristics sources.

During the period of May 11-19 a national workshop for female novices and their directors was held at our neighboring monastery of Sacred Heart. Three of the Abbey monks served on the faculty: Terrence, Valerian and Michael. Presumably they taught something related to their specialties of Rule Studies, Spirituality and Psychology.