Foot-washer

Every morning at 5:30AM (and at a slightly more merciful 7:15AM on Sundays), the Benedictine monks of St. Meinrad rise from their beds, gather together in their common prayer space, and begin to pray.  They have not spoken since 10PM the previous evening, making their first words of the day significant. Their leader speaks a line from Psalm 51: “O Lord, open my lips.”  His brothers respond in unison, “…and my mouth will proclaim your praise.”     This June, I spent five days at St Meinrad, a monastery nestled in rural southern Indiana taking a class on Benedictine spirituality with Fr. Brendan Moss, OSB, a monk of the house.  Along with nine other lay Catholics, I kept the liturgy of the hours, prayed lectio divina (an ancient form of reflection on Scripture), lived and ate in community, attended class, and practiced so-called “holy leisure.”  Of all the elements of our full days, I found rising early to pray to be the most challenging.  Getting...

On the Hill , St. Meinrad School of Theology's alumni magazine.  Winter 2013.   https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/25956083/winter-2013-saint-meinrad-seminary-and-school-of-theology

Reflection for Nanny’s funeral  Monday, January 14, 2013 Thank you all for coming today.  My name is Ned Berghausen, and Barbara Cassidy was my grandmother.  I am the oldest of her ten grandchildren.  I am sure she would have been overjoyed to see you all here today.  She always loved and thrived on social occasions, and the more people together, the better.  I know she would have especially loved to have seen all her family together.  The last time we were all in one place was for her and my grandfather’s 50 th anniversary.  Their marriage and relationship was such a strong bond, that we all have all looked to them as an example of married life.  As someone who is recently married, I have really come to appreciate their example and witness of a faith-filled marriage.  For their 50 th anniversary in 2005, the whole family went on a cruise together.  At the time, I was serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Bangladesh, and the...

 A Mystagogia, 2010  The most terrifying words ever spoken are these: Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. You are going to die. Perhaps not tomorrow, perhaps not next year, but as sure as you were born, so too will you die. We all enter the wasteland, the place where death shows us fear in a handful of dust.   And the astonishing thing is that we take that handful of dust, mix it with oil, and mark upon our foreheads the symbol of an appalling murder. Like the woman who anointed Christ in Bethany, we are preparing ourselves for our own burial. We are walking with eyes open to Golgotha, the place of skulls, to be crucified.   We return from the dark place in the ground from which we sprang. God crafted the human from the mire and the muck of the earth, fingers deep in soil, shaping it like a clay putty doll. This manikin the Creator called ha-Adam—not a name, but a moniker meaning creature of the dust, mudman, dirtclod, ash heap.   The ...

Thanksgiving Prayer Service Reflection at Mercy Academy during an all school prayer service in the gym.  This is the first "lay reflection" I ever gave.   Offered on Nov 25, 2008. https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/112819-thanksgiving.cfm Good morning, Mercy, and an early Happy Thanksgiving to you.    I have had the great fortune over the last 7 years to celebrate Thanksgiving in many different places and in many different circumstances around the world.   In fact, looking back at this period in my life, I realized that I haven’t spent a turkey day in the same place two years in a row.   Some of my Thanksgivings past have been pretty glamorous, and I’ll start by sharing some of those with you: In 2001, I was on a train to the Artic Circle in Finland for a weekend of skiing, saunas, hiking in winter wonderlands, and visiting Santa Claus’ “real” home in the North Pole.   That’s right, I got to meet Santa, his reindeer, the elves… the works...

 

 This is an article I wrote about my experience surviving the Indian Ocean tsunami on December 26, 2004.  On another post, I (badly) shared the images from Bellarmine Magazine where it appeared.  There are two sections that are included here that did not make it into the print version.   Bellarmine alumni Ned Berghausen writes about his  experience in Thailand during and after the tsunami I was in southern Thailand on December 26 th when the tsunami hit.   I was staying on a small island called Ko Phi Phi east of Phuket. The island is only accessible by boat, and there’s no transportation on it beyond foot traffic.   Most of the development on Phi Phi is on a narrow isthmus, called Ton Sai, between two bays, which is where I was staying.   I had decided to spend Christmas on the beach, taking a vacation from my life in Bangladesh , where I’m a Peace Corps Volunteer.    I was traveling by myself.   The plan was to meet up...