Today we’re celebrating the feast of the dedication of our Oratory. It’s always struck me as a time for going back to the most basic call of Benedictine life, to pray and to seek God. I find myself thinking on all the people who have joined us in our prayer through the years, in person and online. Every year I am touched by these words from the prayer of dedication printed on the front of our Vespers booklet:
“Here may prayer, the Church’s banquet, resound through heaven and earth as a plea for the world’s salvation.”
They seem to me to set the tone for the feast, reminding me that the Oratory is where our Benedictine hospitality begins. It’s the place where everyone is welcome, everyone invited to the rich banquet of prayer that is the heart of Christian life. The Oratory gives us all a place to bring the whole of our experience, our joys and sorrows, our doubts and fears into the presence of God. Drawing us together into God’s presence it allows us bear one another’s burdens and rejoice and mourn with and for each other.
It’s safe place where we can wrestle with the many challenges that the liturgy and life present, refusing, like Jacob, to let go until we receive God’s blessing. And in those times when we are too exhausted, anxious or beaten to wrestle the Oratory provides a place where we can rest, knowing we are held in the embrace of God.
Where do you feel held by God’s presence today?
