ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

Reading serves the purpose of the intention with which it is done. If the reader truly seeks God in his reading, everything that he reads tends to promote that end, making the mind surrender in the course of the reading and bring all that is understood into Christ’s service. GILBERT OF HOYLAND Sermon 7.2

We must not be surprised at the difficulties we encounter before we find peace. Difficulties are necessary and precious. They are the exercises by which our nature gets its training, and our powers develop. A soul that did not meet with them on its path would be greatly to be pitied. It would remain forever in its state of powerlessness. We do not always realize that sufficiently. We want to reach the goal without having run the course. The ‘running’ is the effort, the exercise the constant training, which brings into play our latent powers and develops them through use. We must find peace in these exercises, and love them as God loves them; that is, as a means to an end, and as remedies, at times bitter to the taste—even as surgical operations! A CARTHUSIAN They Speak By Silences  

We celebrate the Solemnity of our monastic Father, St. Benedict of Nursia, who, in the sixth century, gave us the Christ-centered Rule by which thousands of monks and nuns have lived through the centuries and by which we live here at St. Joseph’s Abbey. People might be tempted to ask what relevance a sixth century rule could have for the 21 st century. Pope Leo XIV seems convinced of its relevance not only to monks but to all people. In the recent (May 2026) encyclical On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence, Pope Leo writes, (quote)“Since the emergence of her Social Doctrine, the Church has emphasized the protection of workers and the need to combat all forms of exploitation. Above all, the Magisterium has recognized in work ‘the essential key’ to understanding the entire social question, since it is through work that individuals develop many dimensions of their existence. In view of this, we can understand the great intuition of Saint Benedict of Nurs...

Our reward lies with God who was the source of the gift of our being. He is beginning and end to us: the beginning to whom we come at last, the end that holds the primacy of importance; perfect beginning because of the end, infinite end because ever beginning. ISAAC OF STELLA Sermon 25.8

There is nothing in human life better than mutual love nor anything sweeter than holy fellowship. To love and be loved is a sweet exchange, the joy of one's whole life, the recompense of blessedness. What can be lacking in the sweetness of this good and pleasant dwelling, this place where God dwells and where he rests? 'God is in his holy place, God, who makes those of one mind to dwell in a house'. BALDWIN OF FORDE 

There are three stages of the soul's growth in love, of its advance toward perfection. First comes the forgiveness of sins, then the grace that follows on good deeds, and finally that contemplative gift by which a kind and beneficent Lord shows himself to the soul with as much clarity as bodily frailty can endure. The heartfelt desire to admit one's guilt brings a person down in lowliness before God, as it were to his feet; the heartfelt devotion of a worshiper finds in God renewal and refreshment, the touch, as it were, of his hand; and the delights of contemplation lead onto that ecstatic repose that is the fruit of the kiss of his mouth. ST. BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX