Monastère Saint-Benoît, Fréjus-Toulon

Fr Prior blessing the new refectory crucifix.

Tomorrow is the feast of St Benedict, so my thoughts go to a new Benedictine community in the South of France recently featured on the New Liturgical Movement. It is the Monastère Saint-Benoît in the diocese of Fréjus-Toulon. A friend of mine is going out to begin a postulancy with them very soon, so please do pray for him and the monastery, where there is a genuine desire, without any fuss, to live the monastic life of prayer and work very simply. Its liturgical life is in the classical form of the Roman and monastic rites. It is a community in its infancy and so needs much support. By God's good grace it has received a warm welcome by the priests of the diocese and by the local people of La Garde-Freinet, who have been helping them in practical ways to get started, even with such simple gifts of crockery and cutlery when they first arrived.