Advent in the Monastery

These will be complemented by vestments and a tabernacle cloth radiant with violet. The monks return to the front of the Graduale to find the antiphons suitable for singing at this time, a very tangible indication that a new liturgical year is beginning. Perhaps less visible to most guests will be the exchange of binders containing the seasonal prayers of the Divine Office. Brother Joseph takes up the task, having compiled and edited these pages to make the prayers readily accessible, enhancing them with images of the season. Still less visible to most visitors, within the enclosure, the monastic community embraces the season as well with various modifications to life – its refectory reading, its annual retreat: it is a quieter time of year with the School absent. We hope that these visible gestures and quiet practices, expressions of the preparations of Advent, like the well-known definition of the sacraments themselves, make present an invisible grace, a grace made manifest in Mystery at Bethlehem.