Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,
As I pen these few lines to accompany our Christmas greetings to you at the end of the Year of Our Lord 2020, much in the world remains uncertain. Our political destinies as Americans continue to vacillate amid our ever deepening divisions over the recent presidential election; the incalculable troubles occasioned by a virus unleashed on the world from China have not yet ceased to interfere with our lives; finally, 
the specter of war on a grand scale—with its particular horrors in our age of advanced technology—though remote for the moment, ever skulks in the background.
And yet, and yet… We Christians are a stubborn people in the sense that our hope cannot be stifled. Ever since the God-Man, born in the poverty of a cave, released upon earth the blessed contagion of His Divine Love, we have a light amid the darkness and an undaunted reason for good cheer, especially in the midwinter. It is upon this great theological hope that we monks of Our Lady of Clear Creek found our best wishes to you for Christmas and for the New Year to follow. Whatever the road of the year 2021 may bring us, we know that you will be walking with us toward the bright destination of our pilgrimage upon this earth, as the song of the angels echoes in our hearts, “Gloria in excelsis Deo et in terra pax hominibus bonæ voluntatis” – Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth to men of good will (St. Luke 2:14).
br. Philip Anderson, abbot
