Happy Feast of St. Benedict

Greetings,

The Fransicans have been helping me celebrate the Feast of St. Benedict! I laid out a little center-piece where we pray using my Benedict Icon and a little Rule. They don't have any mention of Benedict in their prayer book, but I added a bit of Benedictine as we prayed along.

Today, they surprized me with a trip to the theater. We went to a simulcast of THE METropolitan Opera at a nearby movie theater. (It had wonderful cooshy seats.) "La Sonnambula" is an opera by Bellini that was sung in Itallian with English subtitles (thank God). The story is about a young couple that is about to be wed. Until...the former girlfriend was flirting with a stranger (long lost baron of the city) and saw the bride to be sleep-walking into the strangers room. She uses this as an excuse to get the groom to be to break the wedding off and denounce the young bride. Of course, the story ends with the bride and groom getting back together and even the former girlfrind getting a different boy and the mother of the bride getting the nobleman.

The show was fun and the music was AMAZING! The lead tenor was Juan Diego Florez and the sopranno was Natalie Dessay...I didn't know the names either, but the voices were so beautiful, it totally made up for the goofy storyline. They set the show in the rehearsal space of a theater. So they were dressed in rehearsal clothes and it was half story-telling and half chuckling at itself. They had part of the chorus playing costumers, tech folk, stage directors...it was very cool.

After the opera, we went to a late lunch or early supper. There was this wonderful little Mexican resturant. We came at an odd time so we had most of the resturant to ourselves! We could hear the cooks singing along with the music in the background.

I'm very grateful that the sisters are willing to celebrate with me. Honestly, it is a bit lonely while remembering our feasts on my own. Especially since I haven't experienced how the Franciscan folk commemorate their own feasts and celebrations. They kept asking how we celebrate the major feasts of Benedict and Scholastica. As I was trying to explain, it really came down to our remembering Feasts with liturgical prayer and good food (and wine) and time to share the two...hmmm...I miss home.

Blessings,