This
awareness of our primary task of prayer for all must make us universally
responsible for the faith we have, and the liturgical prayer with which the
Church entrusts us. In this moment in which it is imposed upon the greater part
of the faithful to renounce the communal Eucharist that gathers them into
churches, how much should we feel responsible for the Masses that we can
continue to celebrate in our monasteries, and for the prayer of the Divine
Office that continues to gather us in choir! We certainly do not have this
privilege because we are better than others. Perhaps it is given to us
precisely because we are not, and this makes our begging more humble, poorer,
more effective before the good Father of all. We should be more aware than ever
that none of our prayers and liturgies are to be lived without feeling ourselves
united to the whole Body of Christ that is the Church, the community of all the
baptized reaching out to embrace all of mankind.
Each
evening, in all Cistercian monasteries in the world, we enter the night by
singing the Salve Regina. We must do this also with a thought toward the
darkness that often shrouds mankind, filling it with the fear of being lost in
it. In the Salve Regina we ask that, over the whole “valley of tears” of the
world, and over all the “exiled children of Eve,” there shine the sweet and
consoling light of the “merciful eyes” of the Queen and Mother of Mercy, so
that, in every circumstance, in every night and peril, the gaze of Mary will show us
Jesus, show us that Jesus is present, that he comforts us, that he heals us and
saves us.
Photograph by Brother Brian. Excerpts
from a recent letter of Fr. Mauro-Giuseppe Lepori, O.Cist.
