ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

You may remember the story of the Johnstown flood; we read the book by David McCullough in the refectory some years ago. It had been raining for days in Johnstown, Pennsylvania in the spring of 1889. A poorly constructed damn has broken above the town; and water is rising rapidly, higher and higher, in the town below. All is pandemonium, utter chaos. But one well-to-do family residing on the hillside in a lovely Victorian home is trying to let life go on as usual. (Denial, I think is what we’d call it today.) Their lawn and garden are submerged, and water is moving up their front steps, as they calmly finish their formal luncheon, seemingly oblivious. The maid clears the dessert dishes. And finally, the father of the family puts down his napkin, rises, and declares that they must all leave the house immediately and walk up the hill outside their home to higher ground. Everyone departs. The father has his little daughter’s hand. After a few steps his wife, walking arm in arm with her si...

  A spring morning some years ago, I am lost in thought, puttering in the garden at the Cottage. Fr. Simon drives by in his motorized wheelchair, he is off to work in the treasury office, even though he is at this point bent and twisted and practically crippled with the Lou Gehrig’s disease that will eventually take him. He cranes his head toward me and pauses to say hello. “Oh Simon,” I say, “I’m so sorry.” “Sorry,” he says without missing a beat. “What’s to be sorry about? I have this wonderful chair.” And motioning to the hills, “And look at this beautiful place, our beautiful monastery. Nothing to be sorry about.” Was the man simpleminded, overly pious, his sensibilities dulled after too many years in this place? I don’t think so; no, it was simply Fr. Simon’s natural self-forgetfulness. He could see far beyond his present situation and, trusting in the Lord, he shifted his focus to love, appreciation, and gratitude. My brothers and sisters, mindfulness of the gift received is ...

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will, All I have and call my own. You have given all to me. To you, Lord, I return it. Everything is yours; do with it what you will. Give me only your love and your grace, that is enough for me. These words of Saint Ignatius' prayer  The Suscipe , sum up most poignantly the self-offering of the Mexican martyr, Blessed Miguel Augustin Pro. As a young man ,  Miguel renounced everything and entered the Society of Jesus. After his ordination, he carried on  his priestly ministry  in spite of the grave religious persecution of the Church in Mexico in the early 20th century. O ften in disguise and continually foiling the best efforts of the Mexican secret police to arrest him, Miguel was eventually captured. On 23  November 1927, after forgiving his executioners, he extended his arms like his crucified Lord and was  shot by a firing squad as he proclaimed " Viva Cristo Re!" Jesus'...

  Today we celebrate the tradition that Mary was dedicated to the Lord  even from her childhood . She is presented in the Temple, but she herself will become the temple of God Most High. Mary is the perfect medium for God’s self-expression- because most of all she is the unlikeliest, so small, among the most powerless. This is the brilliance of God’s unprecedented breakthrough in Mary - her of all people. She is young in a society that values age and wisdom; female in a world where men run everything; poor at a time when poverty implies divine disfavor; unmarried in a society in which a husband and children would grant her status, protection and validate her existence. *  She has nothing and is nothing at all; a nobody, but she is just right for God. God is smitten. Mary is the perfect match for a God who is always captivated by what is little, humble and small; God who always prefers the lowest place, who always notices what is seemingly incongruous, upside-down, th...

        On Thursday of this past week, we celebrated the feast of St. Elizabeth of Hungary.  I like to think of her feast as a prelude to today's Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the King of the Universe. She was born in 1207, the daughter of King Andrew II of Hungary and Queen Gertrude who was the sister of our beloved Cistercian oblate, St. Hedwig.  At the age of 4, she was sent to Germany to be educated and prepared for her arranged marriage (which took place 14 years later) to the princely lord, Ludwig the Landgrave of Thuringia.  Despite her exalted station in life—or perhaps because of her Christian insight into what true rulership is---she devoted much of her time and eventually all of her own wealth to personally feeding and clothing the poor and to nursing the sick poor in the hospitals she founded. When her beloved husband Ludwig died she was unceremoniously thrown out of the castle with her newborn baby in her arms by Ludwig's stuck-up a...

  With her husband not far behind, annoyed at her constant almsgiving, the young Saint Elizabeth of Hungary was saved when the bread she had been carrying became a fragrant bundle of roses. "Keep your deeds of mercy secret," recommends Our Lord. And in His providence, He accomplishes for Elizabeth, what His love has requested. Illustration by  Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale.  

  O Sacred Heart of Jesus, Fountain of eternal life, your Heart is a glowing furnace of love. You are my refuge and my sanctuary.  O my adorable and loving Savior, consume my heart with the burning fire with which yours is inflamed. Pour down upon my soul those graces which flow from your love. Let my heart be united with yours. Let my will be conformed to yours in all things. May your will be the rule of all my desires and actions. These are words of Saint Gertrude the Great, a  Benedictine  nun of the  thirteenth century, whom we remember today . Her ardor inspires us to follow Christ more fervently. One of her visions finds her resting at the open wound in Christ's side and listening to the beating of his Heart. Let us go with Gertrude to Christ's side and rest there. O God, you are my God. My body pines for you like a dry, weary land without water.  Psalm 62 Andrea del Verrocchio,  Christ and Saint Thomas,  bronze, 1483, Orsanmichele, Florence...