The annual college retreats begin tomorrow, marking the start of the second semester. After a successful exam week followed by a leisurely week off, the house assembles again today prior to the retreats. 3rd and 4th years have their canonical pre-ordination retreats in Nemi led by Fr John Carlyle; 1st and 2nd years remain in-house and will be led by Fr Peter Verity. Please keep all our students in your prayers.
In sending greetings for the New Year to the Beda family, Canon Gillespie highlights Mary's example from the Gospel of 1st January. To treasure and ponder the Christmas feasts will be a solid 'centre of gravity' for the months that lie ahead. His full message is below. Photos are from the Beda community Mass of St Thomas Becket on 28th December in the Basilica of San Stefano Rotundo.
As we enter these first days of 2021, we send greetings from Collegio Beda with a sincere prayer for you and for those dear to you that we will be nourished by the grace of the first day of the new year, the Solemnity of Mary Mother of God, as we hear that she ‘treasured these things and pondered them in her heart’.
To treasure and to ponder, reflective words which sum up well the attitude with which we need to live these coming months. Absolutely we have to be active and determined and, despite vaccines and great steps of care and medicine, things will still be difficult and challenging in so many ways. However, without the inner ‘centre of gravity’ brought to us by the mysteries which we celebrate, we always run the risk of being busy for busy sake.
T. S. Eliot in his Four Quartets warned us against letting the doing overtake and ‘crowd out’ the being,
We had the experience but missed the meaning. And approach to the meaning restores the experience in a different form.
May the deep meaning of the Feasts of Christmastide be a constant strength and inspiration for our living in the months which lie before us;
‘the loving mercy of the heart of our God who has visited us from on high‘.