Mass Today and Work Tomorrow
Hodie ora, cras labora?
This morning I went to Mass at the Abbey of Regina Laudis, a community of Benedictine nuns in western Connecticut.
Apple Maps brought me to one driveway, but with no discernible church or abbey building, I circled back to another driveway I’d passed not two hundred feet down the road. I found the abbey, but the church had still not manifested. I parked my car in front of the abbey and had just begun to pull out my phone to see what I could figure out about this elusive church building when a nun approached my car.
She was dressed in the iconic Benedictine habit, a regular penguin, but she had with her two hiking sticks.
I rolled down my window and said I was hoping to join the nuns for Mass, but I couldn’t find the church. “Could you tell me where it is?”
She could, she said, and would gladly show me where it is—if I gave her a lift to it.
Mother Praxedes helped me find the church, which was up a third, surprise driveway on the other side of the abbey’s not insignificant campus. She described what it was like as a young nun when the abbey church was under construction; they were as involved in the design and construction of the church then as they are in the day-to-day ora et labora now, by the sounds of it.
We stepped aside onto the front lawn of the church because if we stood on the path, the others would see us chatting when we were running late for Mass already (“I’m a sneaky one,” she said with a laugh). She told me about the church, which “brought the outside in” with its numerous and massive windows, its gardens built into the floor, and its tall, barely finished wooden ceilings. To put it into my own words, the church seems to have been designed at the intersection of Mother Nature, the Church as the Bride of Christ, and the divine feminine. A very blessed Trinity Sunday, huh?
Once we finished a little chat and went inside, Mother Praxedes ushered me into a confessional room to show me a piece of art that influenced her given name. She had no say in the matter, so believe it or not, “Praxedes” is not her God-given birth name (but her God-given vocational name). In the little room was an art piece depicting Christ surrounded by four angels, the five of them then surrounded by all kinds of Greek script I could not begin to discern. A very, very similar piece of art exists on the roof of a chapel in Rome dedicated to Saint Praxedes, but the connection between Mother and the chapel escapes my memory. I was a little distracted—we were still late for Mass!
I gave Mother a lift back to where I found her, and on the way she told me all about the abbey’s theater, their year-long internship program for both young men and women, and their art shop, through which they sell (in addition to art made by the nuns) grass-fed beef, hard cheese, ricotta cheese, yogurt, raw milk, and yarn—all of which is sourced and produced at the abbey by the nuns. From my understanding, that does, in fact, include the beef.
Regina Laudis is one of nine Benedictine/Cistercian communities I have visited recently. By the grace of God alone, I secured a job for the fall, so I can continue my travels and enjoy my summer with an easier heart than that which has been beating a little extra hard these last few months. I’m over the moon to share that I’ll be teaching freshman and junior Theology at a fabulous college preparatory school in Chicago, and while it is nowhere near what I had planned, I can hear God laughing, and the sound is a balm to an anxious heart.
Why anxious? Well, why not? I’m not at that place in my life yet where I can just sort of pick a little house in Kentucky or northwestern Missouri or Vermont or NorCal with a front porch and plants hanging from the eaves and a winding driveway between rows of pecan trees and settle down for good, for real, and not be more than a little anxious about “tomorrow”; but there’s a dream for you. No, I’m at that still-early stage in which I spend as much time arguing with God as I do thanking God but also wondering why God places dreams on our hearts and what we’re supposed to do when we identify one or more and call it by its name and lift it up in prayer. Not that I’m complaining, it is what it is, and it’s not a bad thing, but it’s also what’s up.
So if I ask God to drag me where God wants me, and God drags me to Chicago…? God knows better than I, so let’s call it a practice in trust and treasure the journey. All that said, I cannot wait.
Besides, isn’t Chicago something of a de facto holy city as of May 8, 2025?
Audiobooks listened to:
The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman1
Monasteries visited:
Saint Meinrad Archabbey, St. Meinrad, IN
Abbey of Gethsemani, Trappist, KY
St. Emma Monastery, Greenburg, PA
Saint Vincent Archabbey, Latrobe, PA
Newark Abbey, Newark, NJ
St. Mary’s Abbey, Morristown, NJ
Saint Paul’s Abbey, Newton, NJ
Abbey of Regina Laudis, Bethlehem, CT
Weston Priory, Weston, VT
Grand total: 46 of 76
If there’s two things I have strong opinions on it’s The Phantom of the Opera and Arthurian retellings, so as much as I did like most of this book, ask about it at your own risk.