Volmoed welcomed a substantial number of guests during the festive season. As a result, our Christmas and New Year’s Day (on which we observe the Feast of the Holy Name) chapel celebrations were well attended with many joining us for coffee/tea and confections afterwards. We are pleased to be able to offer hospitality in this way. Our monastic community brought the old year to a close in fellowship with several of the residential Volmoed community and friends on New Year’s Eve.
We were happy to welcome Br Luc on his return to us from the US in early December. He will be with us until early March, when he will return to the US for his Life Profession, an occasion for great celebration.
And, of course, it is very good to have Br Daniel back with us after his six-month sabbatical, which featured many and various adventures and enriching experiences in sundry places. He spent Christmas and New Year with family in relatively nearby Robertson before re-joining us on 2 January.
We were pleased to have the Volmoed staff join us for morning prayer before their year-end outing. Several guests at Volmoed also joined us in chapel prayer recently, including another group brought across from the US by Rev Michael Battle, and a motorcycle riding Dutch Reformed minister who values Jesuit spirituality and was at Volmoed for a week’s silent retreat. Pilgrims were blessed and then joined us for evening prayer. We continued to engage in spiritual accompaniment and guidance with various people, some in person and some online.
Most recently, our monastic community benefitted from an eight-day silent retreat together, a period when we are able to spend more time in relative solitude for individual prayer and study and refreshment.
We look forward to the visitation of Br Robert James, the Superior of our Order. He will be arriving on Monday 23 January. This will be the first time he is able to return to Volmoed since the start of the pandemic, and it will be good to have him with us for conversations in person.