Author: Fr. Peter Kavanaugh

“If several families, sharing this humble secret, buy old houses on the same slum block and fix them up, they will have restored a kind of Auburn right in the midst of their ruined city and begun the restoration of that ordinary, healthy, human thing, the neighborhood” (John Senior, Restoration of Christian Culture).

Greetings friends!

As you know, we have been gradually building an Orthodox community out here in Northern Texas centered around our parish life and homesteading. It may be far out, but one of my dreams has been to see our neighborhood bought up by friends and family — a sort of American, Orthodox village, if you will. Well, I just noticed a post that a beautiful little farm home and 5 acre lot – lovely setting just around the corner — just went on sell. Anyone interested? Shoot me an email: FatherKavanaugh@gmail.com

“It is time to go back to those conditions in which human beings can grow again… Simplify, as Thoreau said, not by changing governments — a change of collars on a dirty neck; not by denouncing IBM, Communism, the Catholic hierarchy, the Rosicrucians and Jews; but in a single, honest, unremembered act, as Wordsworth said, of kindness and of love. As the first significant act in the change of heart, really — not symbolically — smash the television set, then sit down by the fire with the family and perhaps some friends and just converse; talk alone, even one night a week, will cut your use of energy, and love will grow. Don’t force its growth. The hearth, like good soil, does its work invisibly, in secret, and slowly. After a long time beneath the hearth of a quiet family life, green shoots of vigorous poverty appear; you have become, in a small way, poor” (John Senior).

What every church should be doing. Come join us this weekend! Enjoy the good life, and good eating!

Ora et Labora:
Memories from Last Year’s Retreat at the Farm

“The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer” (Wendell Berry).

The day began with Mass in the biting cold, the moon above us, and the cattle lowing outside the chapel. It was peaceful…and wild. After a warming cup of coffee, we gathered by the barn to feed the pigs, tend to the sheep, and gather eggs. The day carried on as adults and children together worked the dirt, pausing only to pray the Angelus, heads bowed, and hearts focused on Our Blessed Lady. After work was done, it was time for Compline, and at last a refreshing meal by the flickering camp fire. Time changes when you spend consecutive days under the open sky. Eternity penetrates mundanity. The earth is charged with wonder.

Greetings! We are gearing up for our second Spring Retreat and Community Garden Planting at the Ave Maria Farm. If you are interested in attending please reach out by email: Father Kavanaugh@gmail.com

This will be an opportunity for prayer, fellowship, and hard work as we plant our community garden — putting St. Benedict’s philosophy to practice: Ora et Labora! Please feel welcome to participate in whatever manner you are comfortable and reach out if you have questions. Here is the itinerary and a few matters to help you prepare and have a great time.

“While everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds” (Matthew 13:25).

Prayer. Asceticism. Fraternity.

A few weeks ago, I overheard a conversation between two men discussing cold showers. It immediately peaked my interest. I had the idea once, and, after a 5 second trial jettisoned it as fast as you can cry ‘help’! For some months now, these men had formed the habit of taking daily showers in glacial temperatures. There are a lot of benefits, they told me. It increases metabolism, improves blood circulation, burns fat and glucose, lowers stress, and gives you a dopamine kick that far out rivals an extra large coffee.

All are welcome to join the discussions. Learn more here: “The Unfading Rose: Raising Families with a Healthy Relationship to God, Nature, and Dirt”

“The Unfading Rose” is a discussion group for Orthodox Christians interested in homesteading, farming, grappling with technology, and the Benedict Option, who are aspiring to rediscover a balanced life centered on sacraments and nature.

Someone once suggested to me, with a slightly dismissive gesture, as though the issue was simple and obvious, “We can’t turn back the clocks.” That statement has long since intrigued me. What does it mean, after all? It is the kind of thing we all grow up with, a bit like saying, “You can’t have breakfast without toast.” “You can’t go on a country walk without a GPS, heavens no.” We breathe in ideas like this without ever questioning them, and they become hardwired into us.

It’s been a while since I’ve sent out a blog. I’m afraid it has been a busy year, and I am struggling to keep up with some of my goals. To be honest, I have also dithered quite a bit about how much time I want to spend online at all. Nonetheless, I think I will start creating shorter entries here. Some topics need a lot of words to flesh out, but other times, a line or two is equally weighty.

Here are some words from a recent Paul Kingsnorth article: “Suffer Little Children.” Perhaps it plant a seed.

“It’s a sunny April day when I turn down a small side road near Lough Derg in County Clare on my way back from the morning school run. I’m not really going anywhere, it’s just that I pass this road every morning and I’ve never known where it goes. Sometimes I like to head down lanes and get lost. Getting lost is itself becoming a lost art. Somebody could write a book about it, if anybody still read books; but the art of reading is going the same way as the art of wandering aimlessly. If you want to know where something is today, you just Google it, and the little Satanic Rectangle in your hand obligingly offers up a characterless, inhuman little blue line to follow, precise to the last gigamillimeter, with the help of all the satellites spying on you every second from space. You don’t have to know how to read a map, or even where you are in the landscape. The Machine has your back.

Well, humbug to it. One reason I have neither a smartphone nor a satnav is that I like getting lost. I don’t want Elon’s Starlink to tell me precisely where I am. I reserve the right to know neither where nor who I am, for as long as I damn well like.”

Join us for our upcoming retreat at the Ave Maria Farm!

November 30 – December 2
Sung Mass & Vespers in the woods
Outdoor Camping & Bonfires
Make Beef Jerky & Pemmican

$100 fee per family to help cover the cost of food and utilities

Reach out for more information:

FatherKavanaugh@gmail.com

How can our ordinary lives be reordered and transformed? In the next few weeks, I will be looking at the Daniel Opperwall’s work, A Layman in the Desert. I hope this is not merely theological abstraction, but offers a little food for thought about how we are supposed to be living in this crazy modern world . . .

How Can We Achieve Enlightenment within the World?

“How, we might ask, can a married person learn about chastity from ancient celibates? How can a wealthy person in the world learn about charity from people who owned nothing? How can a construction worker learn about fasting from people who ate little more than a biscuit every day?” (Daniel G Opperwall, A Layman in the Desert 11).

“Lay people and monks do not each have their own ‘spirituality,’ and the Holy Spirit, whom they all receive at baptism, is one. The enemies and adversaries of the Christian are the same at all times no matter how well they disguise themselves. Victory will be gained also in one and the same manner, even when at first sight lay people and monks do not always put the same means into action” (Gabriel Bunge, Despondency: The Spiritual Teaching of Evagrius, 33).

The goal is simple, the attainment daunting. The one purpose of our life is spiritual perfection and unceasing communion with God. This sounds overwhelming, to say the least. The Church offers us 2,000 years of Holy Scripture and patristic teachings on how to undertake this journey, but putting it into practice is no easy task. Furthermore, most teachings on enlightenment were written by monastics. How can we apply these to our lay lives in the world, and especially in the 21st century?

These are the real life issues we will be exploring in the next weeks to come in our Spiritual Life Class. We will be following closely the work by Daniel G. Opperwall, A Layman in the Desert. Through his insight, the teachings of St. John Cassian and other patristics, and open group discussions, we can take the next step in our own, personal dedication to pursuit of holiness.

Our Goal and Telos

Anonymous Monk: “A monastery is merely a place where people come to help one another to salvation. Your home as a married man should be no different from that” (9).

Our task in the world is to work out our salvation through our daily lives, within our ordinary responsibilities and community. But how can we do this?

First, we must keep our goal and telos at the center of everything.

Our telos, ultimate end, is the Kingdom of God. Our goal, the means for attaining the end, is Purity of Heart.

Abba Moses says this of the distinction: “The telos of our commitment, as we noted, is the kingdom of God…but the immediate goal (scopos) is purity of heart, without which it is impossible for anyone to get the telos that we are talking about. Fixing our eyes steadily on this goal, then…let us make for it without wavering” (23). Opperwell explains: “People who wish to win an archery contest aim at a small target (their goal) and when they hit it, they immediately receive a prize (their telos). However, if an archer loses sight of his target, he will by definition be unable to obtain his prize” (23).

“This,” Moses continues, “must be our primary undertaking — this the never-altered destination and never-failing pursuit of the heart — that the mind might always cling to things divine and to God” (27).

What is Purity of Heart?

Purity of heart is as a state in which one is free of sin, and no longer falls away from holiness, tranquility, and love.

According to Abba Moses, through God’s Grace, one becomes victor over the passions. By tranquility he means “the ability to rein in the mind, avoiding the problem of having one’s thoughts run off in all directions uncontrolled” (Opperwall 24).

Abba Moses illustrates purity of heart in the words of Isaiah: “I will establish your rulers in peace and your bishops in righteousness. Unrighteousness shall no longer be heard in your land, neither destruction nor distress within your boundaries, but your walls shall be called Salvation, and your gates Sculptured Work. The sun shall no longer be your light by day, but thy Lord shall be your everlasting light, and God, your glory. For your sun shall no longer set, nor shall your moon be eclipsed, for the Lord shall be your everlasting light, and the days of your mourning shall be fulfilled” (27).

Christ describes theoria in his prayer to the Father: “that they May be one as you in me and I in you that they May also be one in us” (John 17:21).

Path to Inner Purity: The Five Key Virtues

Five key virtues are held up by the desert fathers: detachment, discernment, discretion, humility, and balance. As we aspire to cultivate these virtues in our life, by God’s grace and the aid of the saints and angels, we scale the mountain of enlightenment. These steps are the means to an end, bringing us to a state of theoria (unceasing contemplation), and eventual theosis (oneness with God).

“Our task as Christians is daunting but that we take it on with the full assurance that it is possible to walk the hard road of life — where we live it — in peace if we seek purity of heart and the kingdom” (50).