Master Plan will Bring Exciting Changes to Conyers

To the Monastery of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit of which I have visited on many, many ocaisions, from the Georgia Bulletin (go to the link for a lengthy article on the community):

The master plan, with several phases, completed by the Pazdan-Smith Group and voted on by the monks will require support from the North Georgia community, and a capital campaign with an initial goal of $11.7 million is anticipated to begin in 2008. One of its central points is to develop what is already most viable about the monastery’s interaction with people into stronger industries so the community can be self-supporting again.

“And the Violent Bear it Away”

Father Mark has  a great meditation on this passage from today’s Gospel, including this for today’s feast:

Saint Lucy

And Saint Lucy? She could have saved her life in this world, had she not insisted on being altogether more violent than the torturers who took her life by violence. More violent? Yes. More violent, because Saint Lucy applied all the strength of her virginal love swiftly, intensely, and forcefully to bearing away the Kingdom of Heaven.

The Battleground of the Heart

From Father Mark:

The Battleground of the Heart

Do not let the grace of the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe pass with changing you. Even the loftiest mystical graces are useless if they leave us unrepentant and unchanged. Pray the humble prayer of the Rosary, not sparingly, but continuously, at every free moment. It decapitates pride. It extinguishes lust, envy, covetousness, possessiveness, and greed. It pulls up the seven capital sins by their roots. The great cosmic battle between the Woman and the Dragon is not fought in the fantasies of movie screens. It is fought on the battleground of human hearts, one heart at a time.