EWTN Monastic Series. A Benedictine oblate blog

St. Anthony

Thanks to a friend’s reminder, I wanted to make sure you know about the “Major Religious Orders of Men” a new EWTN series by Father Charles Connor.

The first episode was on the history of early Eastern Monasticism, it aired this week.

The next times for the show on the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) are:

US Eastern Time on EWTN:

Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2009 at 11:30 pm
Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2009 at 11:30 pm
Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2009 at 4:00 am
Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2009 at 11:30 pm
Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2009 at 4:00 am

For anyone who saw the first episode, did you like it?

The second episode will be a continuation of the history of monasticism in the East and its effect on the development of monasticism in the West.

I liked the first episode. The show gave a fine introduction to the history of monasticism. The show’s content was similar to the material in RB 1980 on the history of monasticism in the East, which helped confirm my appreciation for the RB 1980 book as a first reference book (see previous blog) for Benedictine oblates. Father Charles Connor is a historian and the first episode contained several interesting insights.

I liked Father Connor’s statements about the ascetic and consecrated life being a part of the Church from the first century. Connor said that what was new at the beginning of the fourth century was not the monastic life, but the adaptation of the monastic life to the world in which the Christians were then living when the persecutions ended (from about 305 to 313 AD). The monks and hermits were trying to preserve intact the ideal of the Christian life as it had been lived from the very beginning.

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References:

EWTN
home page.

St. Anthony the Great -- "Founder" of Eastern monasticism

What I did this week. A Benedictine oblate blog

I was inspired by all the oblate, monastic, and spiritual blogs I read this week. All the blogs I link to were particularly meaningful to me this week. Each one described some aspect of God’s love, mercy, grace or my relation to it and a path to a more spiritual life. I found myself saying, “oh yes, now I see that more clearly than I did before.”

I have also remembered the saints this week, with a focus on the Benedictine saints. I have thought about saints, read about them, watched EWTN shows(1) on saints, and prayed the divine offices about saints this week — all those activities were particularly meaningful to me this week.

Lastly, I watched several EWTN TV shows (I had recorded previously) on Catholics in Russia and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church under the Soviets.

These TV shows gave me just a glimpse at how many people have suffered and died for their faith in the recent past.

The movement of the Church from decades of underground existence to more public expressions and the rebuilding of Catholic churches and institutions such as seminaries is one of the major Church events happening in the world today. It is a big deal.

To help document the time when the Church in Ukraine was underground, about 100,000 pages of interviews have been taken so that this chapter in history will not be lost.

Being underground meant that nothing was written, no pictures were taken, everything was secret, no buildings were built, no media campaigns were conducted, no one blogged about being a Catholic, no conferences were held, because to do so meant imprisonment or death.

All worked far more than me, they faced suffering that I cannot imagine, but they never turned their backs on Truth or God’s love.

Doesn’t everything happen in or in relation to the United States? To me, as I live in the United States, I was wrong to think that those courageous Christians in Russia and the Ukraine were somehow disconnected from the life of the Church, instead I think that it was through their hands that the Church was brought to the third millennium. It was their hands on the line, not mine.

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Footnote

(1) “Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) is now “the largest religious media network in the world, transmitting programming 24 hours a day to more than 148 million homes in 140 countries and territories on more than 4,800 cable systems, wireless cable, Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS), low power TV and individual satellite users.”

EWTN's web site, has extensive written materials on Catholic topics. EWTN's reference materials are some of the best on the Internet.