It is twenty minutes to seven and I am struck again by something enchanting in this blessed evening interval between supper and Compline, (our last prayer service of the day). Work is finished. At 5:30, we celebrated Vespers with it's prayers and hymns, giving thanks to God for the gift of a day lived with each other in His service. Having completed the dome lid of a walnut casket at the carpenter shop this afternoon, I know that tomorrow I will repeat the many precise steps that assembly of these lids involves. Reflecting on this, I actually feel enamored of the sheer predictability of the day that awaits me. Maybe some people look to tomorrow for it's capacity to thrill and confront us with the unexpected. I like the interior freedom I experience when I realize that tomorrow will be much like today was and so doesn't need to much attending to. A stillness settles on my heart as I contemplate the plainness of my life in the monastery, the repetitiveness of so many simple routines, the extended silences that recur and lull me into remembrance of the mystery of God's mercy. His mercy, incarnate in the person of His Son, Jesus—that is what is touching me at this moment, what seems to have suddenly become so real. Jesus' gentle mercy is a mystery so vast, so all embracing, we can look right through it. It is too pure, too simple to register in the consciousness of someone who is busy or anxious, but impresses itself on you at moments like this. In the stillness of this evening hour, His mercy is manifest and appears with the delicacy of a deer emerging from a stand of corn, spotting me,; fixing it's gentle eyes on me, all in perfect stillness. Once the mercy touches me, I discover it is everywhere and in everything. The world is bathed in mercy as though the sky were the arch of Jesus' breastbone and the whole world was sunk deep in his Sacred Heart. I fear nothing, covet nothing, aspire to nothing except to know more intimately the One whose gracious presence has been made so real to me—and at the moment I least expected.

Father Raphael