Exhibition of Art Works of the Monks

From November 15- December 12, 2009, art works by the monks of the abbey are on display at the Miriam Hall Art Gallery at Anna Maria College in Paxton, MA. The gallery is open at the following times:

Miriam Hall Art Gallery Hours: November 15-December 12, 2009
Monday-Friday: 10:00 a.m. -12:00 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. -4:00 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday: 2:00 p.m. -4:00 p.m.
(Gallery will be closed Wednesday, November 25 through Sunday, November 29)
Saturday, December 11: 10:00 a.m. -4:00 p.m.
Sunday, December 12: 2:00 p.m. -6:00 p.m. (final day)


Items on display include watercolor, tempera, gouache, collage, pottery, photography, and hand-painted icons. A catalog of the works can be found here. Thumbnails of the works begin on p. 6 of the catalog. The gallery is located at 50 Sunset Lane, Paxton, MA. For directions click here.

Concert with the Bel Canto Choir of Anna Maria College

On Sunday afternoon, members of the Abbey Schola performed a concert of Medieval and Renaissance choral music with the Bel Canto Choir of Anna Maria College at the Worcester Art Museum in the beautiful Renaissance Court, which houses several splendid mosaics of the Hellenistic and Roman periods, most notably the Hunt mosaic, which covers about 500 square feet of floor space.

Throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance composers used the chant of the Church's liturgy as a foundation for their compositions. The pieces of the program were chosen to illustrate the influence of chant on liturgical music from some of the earliest Christian monophonic chants, the Ambrosian chant of Milan, to late Renaissance five-voice polyphony based on Gregorian chant.

Opera singer and friend of the abbey, Peter Campbell, also sang with the choir and performed a solo rendition of A madre do que Livrou, from the Cantigas de Santa Maria compiled by the Spanish king Alphonso X. He was accompanied by Jamie Thiesing on violoncello.

Snow comes early to the Abbey

Community members were surprised to find gentle snow flurries falling when they emerged from the church after Vigils this morning. By the time Mass was over about 7 AM, the grass, trees and buildings were covered with a thin layer of snow. By late morning the sun had melted it away. Nevertheless, we've had our first taste of winter already in mid-October!

The shot above is of the verbinum outside the "cottage", which is the former farmhouse now used as a place to stay for our candidates.

Canonization of Br. Rafael Arnaiz Baron

Today is a special day for our community and Order because this morning in Rome the Church celebrated the canonization of our fellow Trappist Br. Rafael Arnaiz Baron. Br. Rafael was born April 9, 1911, in Burgos, Spain and died at the Cistercian monastery of San Isidoro de Duenas on April 26, 1938. A brief biography can be found at our Order's website, or watch a video on YouTube. For more information on Br. Rafael  there is the book God Alone: A Spiritual Biography of Blessed Rafael Arnaiz Baron (Monastic Wisdom Series).

Br. Robert takes care to keep kindled his fire of incense as the lazy smoke beatifies sunlight streaming through stained glass windows.

The world is the gift of God. We must know how to perceive the giver through the gift. More precisely, since the time of the incarnation, the Passion and Easter, we can see the earth as an immense memorial, the tomb/womb in which Christ was buried and to which he gave resurrected power through the power of his own resurrection ... The Word both hides and reveals himself in visible forms as much as in the words of Scripture.

- Olivier Clement

Brother Vincent Rogers ... The community's newly ordained deacon.