ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

It’s a wonderful insight to grasp the core of Jesus’ message by realizing the magnitude, the depth of the divine embrace, the depth of Jesus’ ardor for you. It is spiritually inebriating if you let it touch you as deeply as Jesus intends.  But there is more!  The more here is simply the realization moment by moment that each of us is always and everywhere the beloved of God, someone with whom God is madly in love. When we live this out, we allow grace to transform our eyes, our minds, our hearts. We experience our brothers and sisters as the beloved ones of God, and interact with them in such a way that this foundational spiritual realization grows in them and in us. We empower one another in family and community to believe this saving gospel truth by the very manner in which we relate to one another.  The greatest gift we can give at Christmas is to so honor our brothers and sisters in our interactions that they realize they are the beloved ones of God....

Ordinary people not unlike you and me came to experience something in the living person of Jesus, something in who he was, in what he said and did, in how he lived and died, that was like the opening of a door to faith in him as the Son of God, the incarnate divine Wisdom or Word who was with God from the beginning, through whom all things were made. The “Light that shines in the darkness” first shone in the person of Jesus—in his birth, life, death, and presence in the community of believers today. Mary and Joseph, the shepherds and the angels from on high, saw something of this light and life in the baby whose birth we celebrate. As we celebrate Christmas, we are drawn to a newborn baby in whom we experience the face and heart of God our Father. We do not have to reach to something infinitely beyond ourselves, but only embrace Someone who gives himself to us, even as a baby. Ultimately, it is our experience of Jesus Christ, a person born in human flesh who “pitched his te...

       “Now there were shepherds in that region living in the fields and keeping the night watch over their flock. The angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were struck with great fear. The angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy.” The word ‘joy’ appears more often in Luke’s gospel than in any other New Testament writing. In the theological world view of the Gospel of Luke we live in a world redeemed and transformed by the birth, life, ministry, passion, death and resurrection of JC. In such a world there can be no other Christian response than joy!      Is joy an integral part of my response to life? I would like it to be. On Gaudete Sunday Pope Francis, in his Angelus address said, “It is not a joy that is merely anticipated or set in paradise….here on earth we are sad but in paradise we will be happy. No. It is not that. Rather, it is a joy th...

We welcome our guests to join us for all the liturgies of Christmas. On Christmas Eve Vespers will be at 4:40 PM. Solemn Vigils begin at 12:50 AM with Mid-night Mass at 2 AM. On Christmas Day Lauds will be at 7:30 AM with an Aurora Mass immediately following. The Solemn Day Mass is at 11 AM; Christmas Vespers begin at 5:10 with Benediction to follow. The other Offices are celebrated at the usual times.  Let us rejoice and be glad, for Someone who   longs for us  and  loves us with love beyond all telling is drawing near- ever and always. Let us dare to open our hearts  wide   in welcome. Photograph by Father Emmanuel.

How to welcome One who longs to visit us from on high, longing to dwell in our hearts, in our very flesh? If I pause and ponder too long and hesitate, stubbornly insisting that God could not possibly want to dwell in my broken heart, my too wounded, sin-scared flesh, then I may miss the opportunity that my neediness affords me. He only wants my weakness, that rough straw for his bed. The Desire at the heart of all our desiring is begging at the door of our hearts. Let us open in haste and hope and almost rash confidence. His desire for me trumps my unworthiness and makes my flesh his flesh.  Madonna after Carlo Crivelli at the entrance to the Abbey church.

"Behold, the virgin shall be with child." Let us stay close to the Virgin who said, "Yes."  For there we will be near to her who accepted the fullness of light, she who received grace without fear, Our Lady who looked upon love and accepted it fully. Let us follow in her footsteps.

A preeminent chapter in the history of the Trappist community at St. Joseph's Abbey ended late Friday evening, December 12, 2014, with the passing of our Father Laurence Bourget. Born in Central Falls, Rhode Island, he was thoroughly immersed in Rhode Island's Catholic culture. He entered the Abbey of Our Lady of the Valley, Lonsdale, Rhode Island, in 1933 and, after a fire in 1950 that forced the closure of that monastery, he moved with the rest of the monastic community to St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer.  Father Laurence pronounced his solemn vows in 1938 and was ordained a priest in 1942. Throughout the span of his long career in monastic life he filled many posts: organist, abbot's secretary, enrollment secretary, choir master, guest master, retreat master, archivist, professor of history, patrology, philosophy and scripture, claustral prior, counselor to the order's Abbot General in Rome for English speaking monasteries in North and South America and En...

At Tepeyac the Virgin Mary depicts herself as a pregnant, olive-skinned Indian maiden. Like the Son she carries in her womb, she identifies herself with the little ones. She imagines herself as one of them. On an icy cold day in December of 1531,   she promises Juan Diego that he will find many flowers blossoming on the hilltop where he first met her. He does as she says and gathers roses, lilies, carnations, iris, fragrant jasmine blossoms, yellow gorse and tiny violets. The Virgin arranges them all in the fold of Juan’s coarse cactus fiber   tilma . When they fall to the floor before the dumbfounded bishop in Mexico City, he sees Our Blessed Lady’s lovely handiwork. She has painted her self-portrait with spring blossoms in winter. Jesus and his dear Mother long to be with us; and even now they are doing everything, anything to get our attention. Very often perhaps we have ignored His mercy-laden advances; or perhaps forgotten her promise and de...

Since we live by the work of our hands,  we were grateful to learn that our new monastic product, Spencer Trappist Ale, was just named one of the best 25 beers of the year by Draft Magazine.  Here is the link:  http://draftmag.com/the-25-best-beers-of-2014/ . Photo by Brother Daniel.

You have heard, O Virgin,  that you will conceive and bear a son; you have heard that it will not be by man but by the Holy Spirit. The angel awaits an answer; it is time for him to return to God who sent him. We too are waiting, O Lady, for your word of compassion; the sentence of condemnation weighs heavily upon us.    The price of our salvation is offered to you. We shall be set free at once if you consent. In the eternal Word of God we all came to be, and behold, we die. In your brief response we are to be remade in order to be recalled to life.    Tearful Adam with his sorrowing family begs this of you, O loving Virgin, in their exile from Paradise. Abraham begs it, David begs it. All the other holy patriarchs, your ancestors, ask it of you, as they dwell in the country of the shadow of death. This is what the whole earth waits for, prostrate at your feet. It is right in doing so, for on your word depends comfort for the wretched, ransom for the cap...

Probably most of us were baptized when we were infants, and we were not aware of what was being done for us. But God sees into our hearts. And it is up to each of us now to make a real investment in our own baptism, to internalize it and to give it a value for ourselves. Then it will become for us, in the words of today's Gospel, "a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins." And it is through this forgiveness of sins that each of us will be prepared for the Birthday of the Messiah, Jesus Christ our Lord. Excerpts from Father Aquinas' homily. Photographs by Father Emmanuel.

        Witness and communion, are well described in St. Paul’s words to the Corinthians:  In Christ Jesus … you were enriched in every way [by the Father], with all discourse and knowledge, as the testimony to Christ was confirmed among you, so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift.   This means that the fullness of charisms has been poured out upon us by the Holy Spirit, and that there is nothing God could have done for us that he has not done by giving us Christ and by rooting our lives in Christ’s own life.  Both the Father and the world should look at the faithful monk and see nothing but Christ: this is what it means to bear living witness.  The unimaginable fidelity and goodness of God have taken the form of his bringing us into deepest communion with the beloved Son, truest koinonia , that is, intimate sharing of the divine life and mystery, as if it were by nature our own!  Such intimacy in love may indeed be said to con...

With all his being the monk must try not to wander away from God through infidelity, and fall back into the condition of hardness of heart out of which God’s grace had brought him.   He must take very seriously his new identity as servant of God, put in charge of a particular work within Christ’s household.   His humble, obedient service out of love must embody the selfless goodness of the physically absent Master, who could return at any moment.   The practice of vigilance is, therefore, essential to a person who is not living for himself or by his own tastes and criteria, but whose joy and fulfillment in life consist in being faithful to the will of the One who has done so much for him, the Lord who has trusted him to care for what is most precious to God’s Heart.   The monk owes such service and vigilance not only to the Lord himself, but to the Lord’s Bride, the Church.   The monk keeps vigil both figuratively and literally, says John Paul II, because fo...