New Skete Monasteries News

Written by Brother Luke, Prior   So here we go again.   Next week I will welcome another little fur ball bundle of joy into my room as I embark on the adventure of raising a German Shepherd puppy for our breeding program.   Her name is Jawad, which in Arabic means “generous.” Why that name?   Well, we keep track of our litters by means of an alpha-numeric numbering system, and little Jawad’s litter number was J-20. So, we give the puppy a name that begins with the letter J. I often search for Arabic names simply because I spent the first 24 years of my adult life in Middle East Studies. What that litter number means in terms of our breeding program is that she is a member of our 504th litter of puppies since we began keeping track of our puppy litters back in the mid-1960s. That’s 26 letters of the alphabet, times 19, plus 10 (A-J of the 20th iteration), or in other words, we’ve gone through the 26-letter alphabet 19+ times over the past 40+ years! My fir...

Written by Sister Rebecca and Brother Marc (Revised 2013) *The original article, A Commentary on the Art Piece: "Descent of the Holy Spirit" was published for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, sponsored by Graymoor Ecumenical and Interreligious Institute in 1998.     The icon of the Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost is inspired by the Acts of the Apostles chapter 2:1-4: When Pentecost day came around, they had all met together when suddenly there came from heaven a sound as of a violent wind which filled the entire house in which they were sitting; and there appeared to them tongues as of fire; these separated and came to rest on the head of each of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak different languages as the Spirit gave them power to express themselves. The icon portrays the twelve assembled together, representing the unity of the early church, awaiting the Holy Spirit as the scriptures say: “And now I am se...