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R.I.P. Father Peter Schmidt, OCSO

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SPENCER – Father Peter was born on November 25, 1942 to ethnic German parents, Karl and Elisabeth Schmidt, in the Moravian town of Mährisch-Trübau, now part of the Czech Republic. As the Russian army approached the area in 1945 after World War II ended, the entire family, including the five children, fled to Braunschweig, West Germany. As a schoolboy there, Peter often passed the 12 th century Cistercian Abbey of Riddagshausen, now a parish church, and it was those walks to the imposing structure that kindled in him a monastic vocation. In college he studied pedagogics, German literature and history. Post-graduate work continued with philosophy and theology classes in Salzburg, Austria. After completing his master’s degree in 1970, he went to the Trappist Cistercian Abbey of Mariawald in Heimbach, Germany, for a prolonged period of discernment. He entered the monastery that same year, taking the monastic name Gotthard. After professing temporary vows, he was sent to the University of...
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Growing Up in the Word

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‘Could not God make people perfect right at the beginning?’ someone may ask. Take the example of a very small child. The mother can give her baby grown-up food, but the baby is still unable to take adult nourishment. Similarly, God could have given humanity perfection right at the beginning, but humanity could not have received it because it was only a child. For that reason Our Lord, who sums up all things in himself, when he came on earth in these last days, came not in the full glory which he could have done, but in a form we could see. Certainly, he could have come in his imperishable glory, but we should not have been able to bear the greatness of his majesty. Therefore, like giving milk to infants, the perfect bread of the Father revealed himself to us on earth in human form, so that we might be nourished by his word like babes at the breast and so by degrees become strong enough to digest the whole word of God. IRENAEUS Against Heresies, 4,62
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Perfect Confidence in God’s Activities

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My dear souls, you are seeking for secret ways of belonging to God, but there is only one: making use of whatever he offers you. Everything leads you to this union with him. Everything guides you to perfection except what is sinful or not a duty. Accept everything and let him act. All things conduct you and support you. Your way is lined with banners as you advance along it in your carriage. All is in the hand of God. His action is vaster and more pervasive than all the elements of earth, air and water. It enters you through every one of your senses so long as you use them only as he directs, for you must never employ them against his will. God's action penetrates every atom of your body, into the very marrow of your bones. The blood flowing through your veins moves only by his will. The state of your health, whether you are weak or strong, lively or languid, your life and death, all spring from his will, and all your bodily conditions are the workings of grace. Every feeling and e...
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Our Alarming Ability to Ruin Everything

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Some things are intrinsically good, some are intrinsically bad, and some are in between. Things good in themselves are wisdom, justice, temperance, courage. Things intrinsically evil are the lack of these virtues. In the middle are wealth and poverty, fame and obscurity, health and illness, knowledge and ignorance and so on. They are said to be in the middle because in themselves they are neither good nor bad: it depends on their use whether they are called good or bad. For instance, wealth is good when given to charity, but bad when spent on pleasure. Similarly poverty is good in teaching us patience and unshakable gratitude to God, but bad if it produces blasphemy and servility with lack of endurance. Fame and notoriety are good if they teach us to be humble and to strive for future glory, but bad when they induce a spirit of dependence, adopting ‘what people may think’ as the criterion of our actions. In conclusion, we must not condemn things. Nothing that God has made is bad. It be...
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You Would Have to be a Half-Wit…

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God is the cause of the universe, a cause which does not depend on any other cause. This is the teaching of our eyes when we look at the ordering of nature. Our eyes observe visible objects and note how they are perfectly stationary and at the same time on the move, if it were possible to call immobility mobile. Through visible objects is made apparent the ordering of nature whereby reason is able to deduce the Author of the universe. How indeed could the universe have begun to exist, and how could it be still in existence, if God had not given it existence and were not sustaining it day by day now? When we see a musical instrument that is well-made and well-tuned, or when we hear the sounds it gives out, we think at once of the person who made it or of the person who is playing it. We do not perhaps know him personally, but we think of him. That is how it is with the Being who has made the world, who gives it motion and sustains it. His existence is indisputably clear to us. We do not...
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Tha Land of the Free

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    With the United States marking 250 years since its founding in the issuing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, enduring questions about how to best foster the freedom we so value remain vital. In the popular imagination, freedom and fighting are often linked, with many books, films, and video games built around a violent struggle to establish or protect liberty. Even significant portions of the Old Testament read this way, with the destruction of encroaching enemies closely associated with avoiding idolatry, oppression,or enslavement, while ensuring entrance into the richer life of the Promised Land. Yet as the narrative moves steadily in the direction of the Incarnation, there is a subtle and slowly growing awareness of the incompatibility between the goodness of the Creator-God, the source and securer of all human freedom, and the ruin wrought by our warfare. In contrast to various other cultures and religions of the region, which tended to personify and deify wa...
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Strange Yoke Fellows

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What is prayer? It is the mind detached from earthly things and the whole heart pointed to that in which it hopes. We need to have both of these qualities evenly matched. Otherwise, we are imitating a farmer who yokes together to pull the plow not two oxen or two asses, but an ox an ass. In order that prayer should not be disturbed by distractions it is essential for the mind to be constantly directed towards God. Through this continual recollection God dwells in us, provided that there is in us a loving search for his will. Then our soul under the action of the Holy Spirit is truly purified. Through this, prayer becomes the symbol of our future state. Prayer raises human nature above all the excitements that are stirred up in the heart by the thought of earthly things. The gift of the Holy Spirit makes us capable of practicing prayer continually. When the Holy Spirit has established his temple in a person, that person cannot but pray without ceasing. Whether waking or sleeping, prayer...
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