Sunsets

I had the privilege to expend part of the school Christmas break with the Trappist monks of Frattocchie, suburb of Rome. Those days will remain in my memory for ever as days of profound reflection. I found there a beautiful biography, in its original Italian, of my dear hermano San Rafael Arnaiz, a Trappist novice who died very young in his native Spain in 1938.

I met hermano Rafael through another friend of mine: father Damian of Molokai. I didn’t know anything about Rafael until the very day of his canonization. Rafael and Damian were canonized together with other three saints in the same ceremony by Pope Benedict XVI. It was my first time in Rome. Hermano Rafael did not need to say a word to me before he called my attention. His image transmitted the peace and serenity that only someone who has God within can give. He inspired me right away to say to myself: I want to be like him.

The book I found there seems to have been written in the very same place I was at. After reading the first pages of the introductory chapter, I realized that I already had read the English translation of it, sometime after the canonization. I got that book in a quick stop I made by the New Melleray Abbey in Dubuque IA.  It is, by the way, a place very dear to my heart. It was there where I made the decision to become a priest for my providential archdiocese of Chicago. I read it again anyway. It is like s’mores melting on your mouth!

The truth is that during those days with the monks and reading Rafael, I realized how much Rafael and I share in common: men of flesh and bone, passionate for God and our Lady and lazy to wake up early in the morning. Not that I am a saint yet, but I am talking about when Rafael was more like me. This gives me hope!

Sunrises and sunsets are my favorite moments of the day because those are moments of great transcendence that claim contemplation and invite to praise the Lord. But because I have seen more sunsets than sunrises, I prefer for now sunsets until I learn how to wake up to watch the sun rise. However, I have a great difficulty with sunsets: they seek the night and as consequence allow the day to be overcome by darkness. But I turned on a camera and took pictures of sunsets in the monastery during the last week of 2011. I would like to take the opportunity of Lent to share some with you along with reflections about sunsets. I would like to invite you to let yourself be impregnated by them during Lent, which is like a long sunset seeking the night of death, overcome after, once and for ever by the great light of the Great Sunday. I hope that by then, I will have enough courage to wake up to contemplate the sunrise.

So alternatively with the stational churches, I will post a new sunset each Sunday of Lent to meditate upon.