ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

Spiritual progress has no other test in the end, nor any better expression, than our ability to love. It has to be unselfish love founded on respect, a service, a disinterested affection that does not ask to be paid in return, a ‘sympathy’, indeed an ‘empathy’ that takes us out of ourselves enabling us to ‘feel with’ the other person and indeed to ‘feel in’ him or her. It gives us the ability to discover in the other person an inward nature as mysterious and deep as our own, but different and willed to be so by God. OLIVIER CLÉMENT The Roots of Christian Mysticism

Br. Kenneth, your solemn profession has brought together a microcosm of the Church with the presence of your dear mother and father, your sister and her family, friends from your youth and even from your days in India, former band members, our sisters from Wrentham, and your own brothers of Spencer. Our heavenly Father must be pleased to see so many of his children gathered to celebrate this solemn moment of your monastic consecration. You have found your treasure, and with it you are opening a window into your heart. For Jesus’ saying applies to you, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Let us look at this treasure which you are embracing today, namely, the Cistercian life in all its fulness.   But I would be remiss on this feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, if I did not mention how much Our Lady is pleased to see you clothed in the cowl of Citeaux. For certainly, our Order is a treasure to Our Lady. Other vocations are, no doubt, of equal value or even mor...

The Christian says: creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for these desires exists. A baby feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim; well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire; well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. C.S. LEWIS Mere Christianity

The mind of Saint Paul is clear. He wants all the Corinthians now in this life to be transformed from “one glory to another into the image” of God himself (2 Cor 3:18). What the apostle has in mind is so unspeakable a transformation in love that no eye has seen, no ear has heard anything comparable, nor can it dawn on our imagination what God has prepared even in this life for those who love as they ought. THOMAS DUBAY, S.M. …And you are Christ’s

Life shines brightly not because we are rich, beautiful or powerful. Instead, it shines when we discovered within ourselves the truth that we are called by God, have a vocation, having a mission, that our lives serve something greater than ourselves. POPE LEO XIV  

In a short while we will process with the Blessed Sacrament around our cloisters, a path we travel many times each day. It reminds me of the rock that St. Paul said followed the Israelites in the desert, the one struck by Moses to bring forth water for the people, and Paul says, “the rock was the Christ.” This is a foreshadowing of what happens to us in our monastic journey. For just as God had directed all the journeying of the Israelites in the desert, testing them to know their intentions, so, Jesus has accompanied us and directed our journey, feeding us with his very body and blood. He is our rock whose body was struck by the soldier’s lance and blood and water flowed out to nourish us in all the stages of our journey. Our procession through the cloister is a remembrance of the intimate presence of Jesus in our midst. The Book of Deuteronomy exhorted the Israelites to remember all the blessings they had received starting with their deliverance from slavery in Egypt, then to the pro...