ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

As a child at the end of the day, I come to you, my Home, my Comfort, my Shelter. I praise you and celebrate you, my Lord and my all. With Thomas, whose anguish you turned into joy, I declare you my Lord and my God, One with the Father and One with the Spirit.  When you come to judge the living and the dead, call me to stand at your right hand and bid me enter your Kingdom. As for now, allow me to open my mouth  and sing to you: Jesus, gentle Heart, give my heart tenderness.  Jesus, Home of the just, shelter me. Jesus, comforting Arms, ease my fears. Photo by Charles O'Connor.  Prayer from the Agathist Hymn to the Name of Jesus by Joseph Raya.

Yesterday we celebrated with joy and typical festivity the three Founders of the Cistercian Order, Saints Robert, Alberic and Stephen. In his homily Father Isaac spoke about obedience as true humility, obedience as love. When as monks, spouses, friends we defer to one another out of love, we are obedient.

What is this awesome mystery that is taking place within me? I can find no words to express it; my poor hand is unable to capture it in describing the praise and the glory that belong to the One who is above all praise, and who transcends every work...My intellect sees what has happened, but cannot explain it. It can see and wishes to explain but can find no word that will suffice; for what it sees is invisible and entirely formless, simple, completely uncompounded, unbounded in its awesome greatness. What I have seen is the totality recapitulated as one, received not in essence but by participation, just as if you lit a flame from a flame, it is the whole flame you receive.       St. Simeon the New Theologian Brother Jonah entered the monastery in late fall of 2004 and made his Solemn Profession in October of 2010. He is currently a key member of the Spencer Brewery project. He assists the Belgian brew engineer and is helping to fine-tune the new bottling operati...

Surely all things are possible to someone who leans upon Him who can do all things. What confidence there is in the cry, 'I can do all things in Him who strengthens me!' Nothing shows more clearly the almighty power of the Word than that He makes all-powerful all those who put their hope in Him. For all things are possible to one who believes. Photograph of frost on the cloister window by Brother Daniel. Excerpt from Sermons on the Song of Songs by Saint Bernard, 85, 5.

Snow is like silence. It helps us see the angles, the harsh contrasts and incongruities within us more clearly, more definitively. Gratefully, Jesus will meet us in this silence, his compassionate silence.

What does it mean to be called by God?  The question is particularly important for those who are still discerning their vocation, as well as for all of us in vows, who are called by the Rule to daily conversion.  The salient points of the catechesis are something like this: God acts with total freedom and in deep mystery when he calls.  He uses surprise means in his own place and time. And he always anticipates us in his mercy. God intervenes with power and majesty within the extreme ordinariness of our lives. The call is always puzzling; it defeats human logic. The call always brings fire into our lives and person: it is at the same time enthralling and painful because such is the nature of transformation.  It makes us better, though it can feel as if it is destroying us. The call stretches our private persons, so that a life previously led only for self and family ...

We monks of Saint Joseph's Abbey have inaugurated a new monastic industry, as dictated by fiscal necessity. We are brewing a blond refectory ale, suitable to accompany a meal.  After thorough communal discussion and discernment Father Abbot trusted that this would be a work consonant with our monastic endeavor. For a s our Constitutions tell us,  Work, especially manual work, has always enjoyed special esteem in the Cistercian tradition since it gives the monks the opportunity of sharing in the divine work of creation and restoration, and of following in the footsteps of Jesus Christ. This hard and redeeming work is a means of providing a livelihood for the brothers and for other people, especially the poor. It expresses solidarity with all workers. Moreover work is an occasion for a fruitful asceticism that fosters personal development and maturity. It promotes health of mind and body and contributes greatly to the unity of the whole community.  Th...

So closely does Christ identify with the plight of humanity that our sin has become his sin. And so you see, bearing all that sin he must come to be baptized. In identifying with our sin, Christ has paved the way for us to share the righteousness that characterizes God himself. For he is reconciling the world to himself, "not counting our transgressions against us, since for our sakes God has made Him who did not know sin, to be sin, so that in him we might become the very holiness of God.”  Jesus goes down into the cool waters of conversion to mark God’s irrevocable marriage bond with us. And so fittingly the heavens are opened, the reality of this wedding of heaven and earth in Christ is proclaimed. The Father’s voice and the Spirit’s hovering declare who Jesus’ is: the Beloved Son who always does what the Father wants. The Father presents his Son to us, to be our beloved. And the waters of our earth open to receive him. United with him, we are beloved in him. So he...

Recently a friend sent us these words by Ruth Burrows, OCD . And we were reminded once again that in Jesus we see God's deep desire to be ordinary. We may encounter Him moment by moment in what is commonplace. Divine love meets us in the real world and nowhere else: in this moment; in this circumstance, painful and humiliating though it may be; in this person; in the daily unexciting round of seeming trivialities which afford no measure of self-glorification. Divine love meets us here in our flawed, suffering human condition and nowhere else.

In these last days of the Christmas season, we share photographs of our decorations- the giant tree in the library where we gathered for caroling and the creche from the Abbey church. Photos  by Brother Daniel.

As Father Abbot reminded us in this morning's homily, if we wish to give the Lord the gift of ourselves, our talents, all that we are, we must first realize and celebrate the amazing reality of God's Gift of Godself to us in Christ. God has given us everything in Christ, the Gift beyond our wildest dreams, the Gift of gifts. What good fortune...See, Jesus is offered to you: run to him open-handed, throw out your arms and enfold him in your embrace. Prove your devotion in love and deed: take him to yourself without a qualm, this Son who is given to you; embrace him lovingly and linger with him always pressed to your heart. The Adoration of the Magi, Justus of Ghent (Joos van Wassenhove) (Netherlandish, active by 1460–died ca. 1480) , ca. 1465 , Distemper on canvas , 43 x 63 in. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Used with permission. Lines from the Second Sermon for Christmas of Blessed Guerric of Igny.

We receive the newspapers each day; informative, enlightening enough at least to form our prayer and open our hearts to so much suffering and contradiction beyond the cloister walls. Especially at Christmastime several images pierced our hearts. This image in particular- of Afghan children in the snow outside their shelter in Kabul- haunted us as we pondered the Christmas story. Our hearts are broken open. And we hope and believe that somehow in our prayer and watching we shelter all who are needy and vulnerable in our world- for Christ, with Christ, in Christ. Photo from The Wall Street Journal.

Perhaps the blessings God showers on us too often make us yawn precisely because they are so many and so constant that we are spoiled into indifference. Let us strive to imitate Our Lady, model and patroness of contemplatives, who always responded with a full and grateful heart to every approach and proposal of God’s transforming Word. Let us follow her guidance as we slowly and joyfully climb the mount that is Christ, her beloved Son. Even before arriving at the pinnacle we are already found in him, from the beginning of the journey. This ought to give us cause for continual conversion and thanksgiving.  The whole way to Christ is Christ! Detail of Madonna, probably 18th century, French, in Abbey Library, photograph by Virginia Raguin. Reflection by Father Simeon.