God's Gifts are So Simple

I was at Gradual School last weekend. Friday night I had a horrible dream. I woke up feeling terrible Saturday morning; still feeling the effects of the flu, and shaken from the dream. I decided that I probably needed to go to Mass more than I needed breakfast before class.

I don't usually go to Mass, because it gets out just about the time class starts, but we are lucky this semester because our professor is one of the Monks. As he told us the first weekend; "The Rule of St Benedict says to prefer nothing to Liturgy, so I don't prefer you." As a consequence, he shows up late for class on both Saturday and Sunday mornings in preference to his monastic liturgy schedule.

Anyway, I went to Mass on Saturday morning and got the most amazing gift from God; my friend David, a fellow student in my Gradual School program who graduated last May, has taken a place in the stall with the monks in the monastery! He told us this summer that he had discerned that he was ready to take this step some time this fall, but I had heard that the monastery had taken two postulants earlier and he wasn't one of them so I thought perhaps there had been a hitch.

I was so happy to see him there, a man (dressed in street clothes yet) among the monks. He looks like he is growing comfortable already. I can't wait to see him next month when I go back, because by then he will be wearing the habit of a postulant, and he will look even more as though he belongs in the stalls.

We are joking in our class that we need to get to work and come up with his monastic name, because he will submit three to the Abbot. We think it is our duty as his previous community to share in this transition by helping him to come up with is name. Some of the men in our program have been suggesting names like Thor and Flash . Well, you get the idea, we love David, and we want him to have the proper kind of name as he begins his monastic life.

I am so happy for David. It really makes me feel good that he is there, praying and working and living out God's call to him. And now even though he has graduated I will still get to see him when I go to Gradual school; if I get up and go to morning prayer that is.

Pax