Small crowd at mass this morning. Even some of our most devoted regulars are not there. Icy conditions on the roads this morning are disrupting even the most basic daily routines of the monks and our neighbors. It's really, really, cold. I desperately crave some fresh air and an opportunity to stretch my legs. After mass, I make my way out past the deck behind the infirmary toward the Quarry Field, a vast expanse of clean snow, brilliant under a sun heralding the new day. I keep slipping on the ice. The deep freeze has settle deep into the ground and a chill is stealing into my lower legs only minutes after I set out. Occasional gusts are biting my nose and making my eyes water so it's hard to read the sermon of St. Bernard I'm trying to meditate on as a I walk. To protect my nose, I hike the scarf up to cover the lower half of my face with the result that my breath immediately fogs my glasses. This isn't working. I turn around and head back toward the monastery. My cherished routine of taking a devotional text and meditating on it as I walk in nature is proving impossible this morning. As the sheer lack of hospitality shown me by mother nature sinks in, I feel my heart constrict. I vaguely resent her mood swings and am telling her so as I make my way up the steps behind the infirmary when I realize a monk shoveling snow has heard me talking to myself. This startles me into sudden self-awareness. Is it just the weather that is spoiling my mood? Might the frigid weather be stinging me the way it is because it's such an apt metaphor for a world whose harshness is insinuating it's way into the cloister through breaking news items every day? Is the constricting in my heart a reaction to the icy air or yesterday's newspaper? I don't want to constrict. I was not born like this. I was bubbly and hopeful as a child and believed implicitly that God made me for joy. It's not God's will for me to greet the sun in it's splendor this morning with angry mutterings. Besides, it's Christmas time. So how do I unbind this constricted heart? A memory flashes in my mind of a woman in her eighties now who, with her newborn daughter, had an accidental meeting with Mother Theresa at a day care center in St. Louis more than forty years ago. Entering the room, Mother Theresa made a bee-line for the infant. The saint took the child in her arms, held her fast, talked to her, beaming with joy at the miracle of the new life in her arms. She rocked her, squeezed her, caressed her cheek and drowned her with love, the whole time, holding her so fast the mother began to wonder if she was going to get her back. Her little girl had been born with a pinched nerve in one shoulder making any movement of that arm very difficult. Changing the infant's diaper later that afternoon, the mother's eyes widened as the little girl suddenly swung her arm up playfully mussing her hair like one stretching after a long night's sleep and then smiled at her mother. The woman gasped and burst into tears. Oh Mary, help of Christians, hold me a while. Take in your arms this pinched little heart of mine; make it supple and enlarge it. Hold my constricted heart in your arms as if it were your new born Son. I will be newborn son if you will have me!

Father Raphael