I wish to begin by wishing you all a good new year. This is the "millennial" year. Although some of the experts say it doesn't really begin until 2001, I am old fashioned and simple enough to prefer the "big 2000," even though I will have trouble for a while remembering to change four numbers instead of the usual one when I write the year down.

We had a magnificent millennial ceremony at midnight on New Year's eve. Some weeks previously we had a pre-millennial ceremony at which we locked, secured and anointed one of our church front doors, put an icon on it, blessed the icon and sealed the door shut. Then on New Year's eve, we solemnly blessed and opened the "new door" just before a midnight Mass. It all solemnized the idea that "Christ stands knocking at the door, wanting us to invite him in." Jesus is the door, the sheep-gate, the entrance through whom we move to God. It was all lovely. In other parts of this Mount Angel Letter you will find more about our celebration of the millennium's beginning

As I write to you, we're just approaching the end of the Christmas season here at the Abbey. Last Sunday we celebrated the feast of the Epiphany and this coming Sunday will be the Baptism of the Lord. Our Christmas decorations are still up, but I am sure the young monks will be taking them down soon.

We had the usual beautiful Christmas decorations: trees in various places, in the cloister hall, the recreation room and the church, of course. The main tree in the church is covered with about 200 various kinds of small figures of angels, as well as little lights. Then also in the church there are about l3 fir-bough wreathes scattered on the walls of the nave and the chancel and they are all covered with scads and scads of tiny clear lights. On Christmas eve, we had supper out in the cloister hall with all sorts of Christmas goodies, delicacies and hors d'oeuvres types of food, all prepared down in our kitchen. After supper we went into our recreation room and I, the abbot, and one of my "elves" (a novice) handed out a present to everyone and we sang Christmas carols. So Christmas was again very nice here in the monastery.

We received a lot of Christmas cards, many of them from you, and I want to thank you for remembering us at Christmas in this way and also the gifts you sent us and prayers you prayed for us.

For the past few months we have been having almost weekly community meetings after supper to help us be informed about all that our monks are doing, and to help us to not only learn about programs going on, but how to communicate better in a communal way. There is lots of silence in a monastery and we're told our monastery observes the monastic silence very well. At the same time, we also have to work at healthy communications and we have been less prone to do that until just recently. Commu-nity members communicate with each other one-on-one quite well, but we are learning to communicate better together and in front of one another on certain key issues that the monks are interested in. We need to have a way of hearing people say publicly what their opinions are on these issues. They say, "our whole world often suffocates because of a lack of good communication," so we are trying to remedy that in our house. The monks of Ascension Monastery in Idaho are doing the same sort of thing, and have actually been doing it longer than we have. It is somewhat easier there, though, as they only have a small group of 14 monks, whereas we have another forty or so. Being pleased with the Idaho process while I was there, before I was elected Abbot, I have been working with our monks to get something like that going here at the Abbey, and so far it seems to be working pretty well. Frs. William and Nathan manage the sessions.

A lot of our friends help us with donations, which in turn help us to continue to support our seminary. Seminaries have to be subsidized because of the limited number of seminarians and the need to have a good faculty. The tuition doesn't pay all the bills. So donors help us do that. Lately I have been going out making visits to some of the donors who are relatively close to home. I like to thank them in person for their help. I like those visits. I am an extrovert and it energizes me to have friendly visits with people. As a matter of fact, I have always spent my vacations and my days away visiting close friends. I used to visit my mother and dad during vacation time, but they have been deceased for 30-plus years now. And my only sibling, a sister named Frances, died 7 years ago, so I occasionally visit her children. All my other close relatives live in Ohio and Iowa, so I don't see much of them. But I have certainly enjoyed visiting the people who are interested in us and our work.

I haven't done any major traveling lately. My next long trip will be down to Mexico, in February, where we are having the annual American abbots' meeting. This year the Benedictine women superiors will also be there, so it will be a large group of people. Those meetings are always good.

Next September is the world meeting of all the Benedictine abbots and superiors in Rome. This meeting is held every four years. I haven't been to one of them as yet, but I will attend the one coming up in several months. While I am in Europe I will go up to Engelberg, our mother Abbey, for a visit there. I have never been north of Italy before in Europe. So that will be a treat for me.

We are praying for all of you, our friends, and we thank you for your prayers and other acts of generosity to us. May this new millennial year be one in which God guides us all to a closer relationship with Him and with each other. As we move into this year, our first novena will be to St. Joseph. We invite you to join with us in praying this novena to the Foster-Father of our Lord and the heavenly patron of the Universal Church. For many years now, St. Joseph has been a special intercessor for us here at Mount Angel. We have great confidence in his care for us and his care for those who join with us in praying to him.

Love and prayers,