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Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

Merry Christmas From Norcia

A holiday postcard from a kind of Bethlehem

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL8zW5O9UJo&w=525&h=300]

From a Bethlehem of our time, Christmas greetings. Pray for the monks, and help them with material needs if you can. Watching this video, I saw different monastic friends, and excitement surged within me, knowing that in just a few months, I will introduce them to you in The Benedict Option. What these good men are doing in their poor encampment on the hillside of the earthquake-ravaged town is so important for the salvation of the world. I deeply believe that. In the clip, you see Brother Ignatius Prakarsa ringing a bell. From The Benedict Option:

God will use the little things in a life ordered by His love, to His service, to speak evangelically to others, said Brother Ignatius Prakarsa, the monastery’s guest master. In the summertime, the monastery’s basilica church fills up with tourists, many of whom are lapsed Christians or unbelievers, who sit quietly to watch the monks chant their regular prayers in Latin.

When Brother Ignatius meets them on the church steps later, visitors often tell him that the chanting was so peaceful, so beautiful.

“I tell them we’re just praying to the Lord. We’re just opening our mouths to sing the beauty that’s already there in the music,” he said to me. “Everything is evangelical. Everything is directed to God. Everything has to be seen from the supernatural point of view. The radiance that comes through our lives is only a reflection of God. In ourselves, we are nothing.”

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