Hope. It is a word that was not in my lexicon in the fall of 2004. My husband of almost 40 years had died unexpectedly in January, and I was in a very dark and desolate place. God allowed me a reasonable time to sit in the corner in the dark, but when He thought I was ready, He yanked me out of that chair and offered me the opportunity to live again and love again and hope again.
Some of my friends from Holy Trinity Church in Nineveh, IN, were going down to Saint Meinrad on retreat, and they invited me to join them. I didn’t really know the possibilities when we went around the curve and saw the steeple of the Archabbey Church, but I soon found everything that I needed in order to feel alive again: the spirituality of the monastic community, the knowledge of the seminary community, and the outreach of the oblate community — all of whom welcomed me and helped me to understand that the Church itself is bigger than each individual program or person. And so, now I live in Florida and am, perhaps, unlikely to return to Saint Meinrad any time soon, but, as with the entire community of Saint Meinrad, I live in their embrace as we await, just as the celebrant says at every Mass, “the blessed hope and the coming of Jesus Christ.”
Cathey Byers, Oblate