Julie Friedman (Misson & Student Affairs) is the official blogger of our seminar group as we tour Norbertine abbeys in Central Europe. Her photos of the group from the college are marvelous, and she captures some of the sense of what it means to live a common life, be it cloistered or as a priest active in parish life. Follow our travels through Julie’s perspective at http://home.snc.edu/juliefriedman.
Today, we visited Doksany Abbey in the Czech Republic and heard the sisters’ beautiful singing at Sext. I grabbed my iPhone and made this dreadful recording. (I don’t know how to use my phone to record audio, so just hit the video button and laid it on the hymnbook shelf of my pew.) But turn your volume up and hang in there, for some sense of what we shared in as the noonday bells began to peal.
We are all very excited at the prospect of visiting Strahov Abbey, Prague, tomorrow. The abbey sits high above the city and offers a view that Bill Hyland (Center for Norbertine Studies) describes as one of the best in Europe. Father Jay will celebrate Mass for us at the tomb of St. Norbert himself, within the abbey church. Norbert’s body was brought her from the place of his death, Magdeburg, which is not far from present-day Berlin. After lunch at Strahov, in fact, we travel to Magdeburg – the first group from the college ever to visit the Norbertine foundation there.
