Pilgrim Path

This blog is the work of a seeker and poet. Walking stick in hand, I head out into the world, not of the world, but in the world. My words and my friends carry me along and light the pilgrim path of spiritual journeys.

Monday, June 06, 2011

COMPLINE – part two


A standard selection of Psalms are also chanted as part of the Compline service. While some might become bored by the same chants nightly, I find them soothing and assuring in their consistency. And while some sort of prayer or hymn to the Virgin Mary is included in all of the various Divine Hours, the Commemoration sung during Compline is particularly moving:


O Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy!
Hail, our life, our sweetness, and our hope!
To you do we cry, poor banished children of Eve;
To you do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping
In this vale of tears.
Turn, then, most gracious Advocate
Your eyes of mercy toward us;
And after this, our exile, show unto us
The blessed fruit of your womb, Jesus.
O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary.

Then, after a few moments of silence, the Abbey bell is rung for the Angelus – a prayer said silently in commemoration of the Incarnation.


As the bell continues to peal, the Guestmaster walks back to the area where the retreatants and guests are seated and opens the low glass gates to allow us to enter the monks’ area. First, all the monks process in a double line toward the abbot. Once at the front of the line, each monk slowly bows to receive the blessing of holy water from the abbot. After the monks have received the blessing, each of the retreatants and guests do as well.




And so begins The Great Silence until the Vigils service at 3:15am the next morning.

Labels: ,

5 Comments:

Blogger Psychiatric News Alert said...

Hi, im so glad you have enjoyed gethsemane. i wish i could have gone.
mark moran

2:17 PM  
Blogger John said...

I have got to visit this place!

9:25 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Virgin Mary was a hooker.
Mediterreanean is filth trash shit, and why the gods hammered them with the Noah's Flood event (Straight of Gibralter broke thru end of ice age).
THey are vile, immoral unrepentant debauchers.

Fresenius ensures the renal scam isn't going anywhere anytime soon ($5k/wk/pt from general fund).
Chevron/Rockafeller's efforts to repress alternate technologies/fuel sources, petrolium power plants in the 20th century has guarenteed petrolium won't be phased out.
The gods extensive use of this tactic occurred in this Situation as well:::The proprietors' financial interests and the career paths of their offspring ensures the gods are free to enforce their positioning to the end despite destroying my childhood to get here.
The only way Planet Earth will achieve sustainability is if we "take out the trash" and the gods allow the most disfavored among us to be terminated by eliminating reincarnation for those individuals. The bouy is sinking, social decay is becoming ruinous and unless it begins to rise to the surface the gods will get their way and life will end on Planet Earth.

2:33 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

And why the gods used the Mediterreanean's "Western Civilization" to initiate the "beginning of the end"

2:38 PM  
Anonymous Tyler said...

http://bit.ly/yt53It

10:18 PM  

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home