Dear Friends,

We are getting into fall. I was recently up in Anchorage, Alaska for a meeting of NABRS. The initials stand for "National Association of Bishops and Religious Superiors." Every year the bishops and major superiors of religious orders of the various regions of the United States meet at some place in the particualr region (we are in Region 12) to get to know each other better and to have a program for our own education. This year the meeting was held at Anchorage, Alaska at the Holy Spirit Retreat Center, the retreat and hospitality house for the Anchorage Archdiocese.

About 27 people were present for the meeting: eight of our northwest bishops, 4 male representatives of religious orders in the region, and the remaining were leaders, provincials and religious superiors of religious women in the region. At these meetings we ask an expert presenter to come and give us something to think and talk about. This year Roger L. Freed, a psychiatrist from San Francisco, CA, came and talked to us about obsessive-compulsive thinking and behavior. It was quite interesting. A lot people in our society are involved in addictive behaviors, including some professional religious. So this was an apropos topic for our meeting.

Here at home, at the Abbey, we had the annual Regents Meeting on October 21. The regents are the bishops and vocation directors of all the students we have in our Seminary. Not all of them can come each year, but this year we had a goodly number. We serve about 25 dioceses and archdioceses, and this year we have a record number of seminarians - about 170. That is the largest number that we have had thus far. We also have some non-residential students taking theology classes and studying for degrees. During this annual meeting, reports are given to the attendants about Seminary matters and their advice is sought on special issues.

Fall is definitely here in Oregon, although our weather has been really good so far.We can still see the sun shining today as I write to you and it is November 1st. Today is All Saints Day and that is a special day for the Church and for me too. It is one of my favorite feasts. Our lives are filled with acquaintances, many of whom add to the quality of our existence. The saints of this life are those who influence us for the good. And we need each other to survive. We need to be social to survive. I think that is why St. Benedict was so demanding of those who wished to live the eremetical life. He suggested that those who wished to become hermits, should be tried by the fires of community life. Living together is difficult, but helps make us, and keep us, normal human beings; living alone is not really the usual way we spend our lifetimes. I think we often don't appreciate this. We are brought up in a world where we, generally speaking, live together, but we take that experience for granted. We need other people to help us grow up and learn how to be people ourselves; we need each other if we are to grow in learning how to be human. In fact, we need each other not only to survive physically, but to learn how to become human, psychologically, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually.

Christ came to enlighten us as to the spiritual aspect of our lives and our spiritual relationships. He said, "I am the vine and you are the branches." In another place in Scripture St. Paul said, "Christ is the head and we are the members." So we should not try to separate ourselves from one another. Jesus also said, "Love one another as I have loved you."

So, in thinking about the communion of the saints, we are thinking about the relationships between ourselves and God's friends in heaven. And in order to seek continual uniting with them we must have the proper attitudes. Christ called these attitudes the beatitudes.

We are to be poor in spirit, i.e. detached. We are to be able to mourn with those who are grieving, and to do so with a spirit of true compassion. We need to be free from deceit and conceit ourselves. We need to be holy and sincere peacemakers, accepting of injustice, when we cannot avoid it and we need to be faithful to Christ. Some of these beatitudes have to do with our relationship with God and others are based on our relationships with other people. At any rate, they all have to do with acquiring God's life and his friendship and making us finally confirmed members of his communion of friends.

I have always been impressed by the repeated scientific evidence of life-after-life experiences. People who have clinically died oftentimes have a similar experience: they feel themselves detached from their bodies and they move toward a great light. They experience being met, many times, by those they have known and loved in this life and who have preceded them in death. A person can scoff at this if one wishes, but it has been an experience of thousands of people who have reported it to medical and other authorities. It really fits right in with a concept of the communion of saints.

So let us love and support one another in this world and those in the next. We are so fortunate that God made us to be together.

Love and prayers,

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