New Skete Monasteries News

By Ida Williams, Director of Marketing and Communications Here we are again, nearing the end of summer.     The monks and nuns are on retreat.   Some stay at the monastery, some travel to visit family, and most head to a beach location as a group for a time of spiritual rejuvenation. It is pretty quiet here during monastic retreat time.   No church services, no bells ringing, no guests arriving, and no dinners being prepared. Bark, bark, bark, bark…   “Yes, Kahn, I know you are still here.”   While the monks and nuns are away, the dogs stay and play with the staff and volunteers.   Kahn enjoying the office time Josh comes in first thing in the morning for feeding breakfast, potty breaks, and clean-up. After answering phone messages and emails, I walk to the training kennel to get Kahn and bring him to my office.   Now that he is eleven years old, he moves a bit slower, and strenuous play with the other do...

By Brother Marc When I was a youngster our family would sit around the kitchen table on Saturday mornings for a late breakfast and to listen to the radio. This was a good family moment, a pause before our weekend chores and baking bread or gardening (for three seasons). We heard the news of the day and enjoyed a weekly program from KDKA Pittsburgh—a chorale of young men and women sang the great tunes and lush harmonies popular in the nineteen-fifties.  Sundays we attended 11:00 o’clock mass at the local parish. We caught the end of an earlier service, the men and boys’ choir singing Gregorian chant. Our liturgy used the usual parish music of the times, often with a soloist and organ, not so compelling to me as the chant was. From early grade school until the end of high school, twice a day almost every day, I served in the double-church at the Felician Sisters’ convent (one of their main headquarters, with over a hundred sisters living there). The spacious sanctua...