ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

Silence is a participation in the world to come,  a participation in  eternity, in God’s simplicity, a great Mystery beyond words. Love seeking me is the reason for silence. The monk's wonder-filled response to God’s seeking is the silence of love and the longing to be absorbed in wordless, quiet rest in the presence of the One who loves him. Those in love need not say anything. They want simply"to be with," to be agendaless , resting in each other's presence. God longs for our openness, a great empty space within us, an emptiness that is not nothing but is availability. In silence I can notice God noticing me. In practicing silence, allowing silence, allowing the empty space, I make an open space for God.  Ancient statue of Saint Benedict brought from the monastery of Our Lady of the Valley in Rhode Island at the time of Spencer's founding. Photograph by Brother Daniel.

We once heard this story of a monk who dies and finds himself before the judgment seat in heaven. Angels solemnly carry out the tapestry of his life. He looks in horror at the faded, threadbare tapestry. There for all to see is the tattered reality of his sinfulness- the broken silences, harsh words spoken, petty jealousies, regrettable secret sins all right there. He lowers his head in remorse and embarrassment and calls out for Our Lady’s help, “O Mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness, our Hope.” Mary quickly comes to the monk’s rescue. She steps forward and whispers instructions to the angels. They reverse the worn-out tapestry and turn it upside down. Then with her finger Mary traces the outlines of her Son’s wounded face in the tatters. You know at the beginning of a new year The New York Times and other magazines often publish the Year in Pictures , a collection of telling images from the past twelve months. Probably each of us has our own collection, our own interior ...

Today we celebrate the three founders of the Cistercian Order, Saints Robert, Alberic and Stephen. Their ideal was a more authentic monastic simplicity and evangelical poverty. On 21 March in 1098, Robert, abbot of the Benedictine abbey of Molesme, France set out with twenty-one of his monks to the wilderness of Cîteaux to begin a new reformed monastery. By 1100 Robert had been called back to Molesme and Alberic was made abbot. We are told that Alberic had a tender devotion to Our Lady and received the Cistercians’ characteristic white cowl from her. Stephen Harding, an Englishman, succeeded Alberic as abbot and composed the Carta Caritatis , a kind of constitution which binds all the monasteries of our Order to a common observance of rules and customs. These early monks of our Order wanted to be “poor with the poor Christ” and are said to have been “lovers of the brethren and the place.” We pray that we may be true to their example and beg their prayerful intercession as we str...

We share excerpts from Father Dominic's homily for last Sunday. The result of the miracle at Cana is the first manifestation of Jesus’ glory and the consequent budding faith of his disciples. Today’s story, then, is above all about transformation : namely, the different dimension of reality that comes into being when Jesus is present, and when, as Mary tells the servants, people do whatever Jesus tells them. The transformation from water to wine is meant by John to signify the effect that Jesus can have on people’s lives, and can still have today. He came that we might have life, life in all its fullness. Mary’s words are addressed to us: “Do whatever he tells you.” We all experience at one time or another that “the wine” in our life has run out. Life falls apart on us, in ways big and little. It is always a bitter moment to realize that it is beyond us to recover it, to replenish it. It is then that the mother of Jesus tells us simply: “Do whatever he tells you.” B...

We are told that Pierre Teilhard de Chardin once  said that, “j oy is the infallible sign of the presence of God.”  Joy is the fruit of real confidence in God's ineffable mercy .  This is our joy as monks- we see over and over again our fumbling and our sinfulness, our very real tendencies toward sin, but we learn to rejoice because Christ's mercy is always available and because, as Saint Catherine of Siena once remarked, God "has fallen in love with what He created." This is true joy.

Yesterday we celebrated Saint Antony, Father of Monks. He is our example, for beleaguered by numerous temptations- demons of all sorts, which artists through the ages have often depicted quite dramatically- Antony holds fast to Christ Jesus, realizing they are powerless in their attacks because of the Lord's constant care and kind regard. The Temptation of Saint Anthony Annibale Carracci,   1597.

A new storm, and we never tire of the beauty.

At his Baptism Christ Jesus enfleshes both our sinful fragility and our restored innocence in his nakedness and vulnerability as he stands dripping wet in the Jordan River . With us in our sinful flesh, he will restore us to God through his passion, death and resurrection. Today's scene is a  kind of prelude to the dereliction of the cross. There Jesus will be somehow "liquefied"- blood streaming from his wounded body, blood and water flowing from his open side, a fountain of rejuvenation for us.   The heavens are opened, the Father’s voice is heard, “This is my beloved Son.” Jesus our Savior, the Beloved Son of the Father, has come to cleanse and heal us and draw us into God's Fatherly love and tenderness- our belovedness. The Baptism of Christ   Piero della Francesca, c. 1448-1450,  Tempera on panel, 66 x 46", National Gallery, London.

Today as Cistercians we celebrate the life and teaching of our own Saint Aelred of Rievaulx, a 12th-century monk of Great Britain. In his well-known treatise, Spiritual Friendship , Saint Aelred declares rather boldly that "God is friendship." This is his own gloss on Saint John's words, "God is love." And clearly it expresses Aelred's own experience of God's intimacy. If God can indeed be named "friendship," as Saint Aelred proposes, we can imagine the awesome implications. We could say then that God is spontaneous, gentle, available, most understanding, etc. Could God be at least as good as our best friend?

Jean Vanier, the founder of L'Arche an international alliance of group homes for people with developmental disabilities and those who assist them, says that "community is the place where our limitations, our fears  are revealed to us," the place where we "discover our poverty and our weaknesses." While this may seem a rather grim view of life in community, what Vanier is saying is that by living closely with others we come to see how needy, vulnerable and broken we are. He points out particularly that those who may have joined a L’Arche community to be helpers come to realize that they too need help, perhaps in a different way but just as much as the so called disabled members of the group. Living closely with others, we realize that while we have many gifts to share, we also have many gifts to receive from them as well. Living, praying and working closely with our brothers, we come to see clearly that we need each other and most of all that we despera...

The Christmas story is meant to reflect, shed light and bring us more deeply into the narrative of our lives and of our own journeys, with all their ups and downs, joys and sorrows. The Magi follow the star, find the newborn king, and upon seeing him, place their gifts at his feet. Historically we do not know much at all about them. They apparently came from somewhere in the East. They were guided by a star, which may have been a super nova or a confluence of planets. The story mentions three gifts, so it was assumed there were three people. It is highly likely that there were a lot more than three. People who traveled distances in those days did so in sizable caravans with lots of attendants for safety reasons. Whatever the number, Matthew brings them into the story as representatives of those outside the Jewish religious tradition who come to the knowledge of the birth of this Child initially through nature and the stars. What happened to the Magi afterwards? We ...

During these days of Christmastide we often sing a hymn with these opening words: Jesus, the Heart of all desire, born of the Father's splendid light; You are the Sun of morning bright, coming to us in darkest night. With our focus on the Lord, we believe that all of our lesser desires find their fulfillment in Him alone, Jesus alone is at the heart of all our desiring. He alone is our refuge and consolation, our One Desire, though in our lostness we may lose sight of Him hidden and waiting beneath all else.  

Luke tells us that Mary “kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.” It must be a heart of some amplitude and capacity. She notices the poor shepherds with messages from angels. She is well aware that she, a poor, young virgin from an undistinguished family has received an angel’s message and become pregnant with God . And she may be wondering (after all we are more than 2000 years later) why, if God has so favored her, would he allow this fulfillment of his plan to take place in a cattle stall, where she must place the Son of the Most High to sleep in an animal’s feeding trough. It makes no sense. In her heart she puts together all these incongruities. She holds them all together and wonders and reflects.   T he word in Greek is sumballousa ; it means literally to throw things together.   We get the English word symbol from this same Greek expression. And it is what we spend our lives doing as persons of faith, trying to notice God’s ways, trying to put it...