ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

  One of our monks recounts the following story: One day when I was a four or five, I went with my mom to visit my godmother. While the two of them sat in the den chatting, I went into the backyard to play, and while I was running around, I noticed, of all things, scraps of chocolate cake on the lawn. My godmother’s upstairs neighbor Rose had thrown bits of cake onto the grass for the birds to eat. Without thinking twice, I picked up some of it and started munching. Bad move. My mom happened to be looking out the window to check on me. She roared out the window. “Stop that. What will the neighbors think! When you’re hungry, you just ask your mom, and she’ll give you something to eat.” I was hungry the cake looked good, but it was really dry and stale. Like my mom Jesus wants us to go to him for everything we need. He desperately wants to fill us with himself, Jesus longs to give himself away to us, to be one with us. He wants to give us the everything that he is, the...

From self-knowledge flows the stream of humility, which never seizes on mere report, nor takes offense at anything, but bears every insult, every loss of consolation, and every sorrow, from whatever direction they may come, patiently, with joy.   When it seems that God shows us the faults of others, keep on the safer side - it may be that your judgment is false…On your lips let silence abide. And any vice that you may ascribe to others, ascribe at once to them and yourself, in true humility. If that vice really exists in a person, he will correct himself better, seeing himself so gently understood, and will say of his own accord the thing that you would have said to him.  

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”    John 6 What am I am hungry for? Better put, who do I long for? Jesus desires to be desired. A simple nod, a quiet request, the opening of our hearts allows him to feed us and fill us. As one of the senior monks likes to say, "The Lord has really big shoes, like Mickey Mouse. All He needs is for the door of our heart to be slightly ajar, and He'll nudge the door open with His foot and barge right in!"   Photograph by Father Emmanuel.  

Saint Rafael Arnáiz Barón is a recently canonized saint of our Order. Though he had only a very brief experience as a Trappist monk, he was an ardent lover of Christ and so embodied the Cistercian ideal despite all the complexities and contradictions of his personal vocational journey. Forced to interrupt his novitiate because of severe illness, he finally was allowed to return to his monastery of San Isidro as an oblate living in the infirmary. Rafael's life was one of great simplicity and humility. Often described as "crazed by the love of God," Saint Rafael was only 27 years old when he died in the Abbey's infirmary on 26 April, 1938. Christ guided Rafael through a series of bewildering contradictions- illness, war, the impossibility of ever pronouncing vows, difficult community relations. Humiliations were constant, but Rafael learned to surrender himself in peace and joy. Things often do not turn out as we had hoped or planned. And we soon learn that ...

It seems our lives involve a continuous repetition of that trek to Emmaus. Disappointed, our best hopes dashed, we very often plod glumly along. So self-absorbed, we often forget that Jesus is right beside us. He notices our sadness and inquires, “What are you going over in your heads? What’s the matter?” We are astonished. Doesn’t Jesus see? Everything’s falling apart. Our best hopes for success, accomplishment, happiness, health, holiness are all over. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Then he explains. But h ow hard it is for us to understand that the Cross always precedes the Resurrection. We must normalize the cross for one another, not as sad resignation but faith-filled acknowledgement of the reality of suffering as graced gateway to intimacy with the resurrected Lord Jesus. And so, he reminds us again, “How slow you are to understand. It’s supposed to be hard. The cross happens, but it's no longer a dead end." This was, after all, always the goal of his Inca...

Almighty and eternal God, our refuge in every danger, to whom we turn in our distress; in faith we pray look with compassion on the afflicted, grant eternal rest to the dead, comfort to mourners, healing to the sick, peace to the dying, strength to healthcare workers, wisdom to our leaders and the courage to reach out to all in love, so that together we may give glory to your holy name. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Photograph by Brother Brian. Text from Mass in Time of Pandemic.

He who pities them leads them  and guides them beside springs of water.  Sing out, O heavens, and rejoice, O earth,  break forth into song, you mountains.  For the Lord comforts his people  and shows mercy to his afflicted.  But Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me;  my Lord has forgotten me.”  Can a mother forget her infant,  be without tenderness for the child of her womb?  Even should she forget,  I will never forget you.            Isaiah 49.8-15. The Prophet Isaiah reminds us of God’s tenderness and loving pursuit. This is the real truth of Jesus' passion, death and resurrection. God enfleshed in Jesus has been wounded out of love for us. And so the invitation is to honestly even joyfully take ownership of our lostness, our very real need for mercy, our desperate need to be found and "pitied" by Jesus. For our sinfulness, apartness from God can never estrange us from him. But instead,...

We continue to be edified by the   selfless dedication  of countless healthcare workers, doctors, nurses and essential business personnel who  help keep us safe and supported in these days of pandemic. And we hold all who serve and sacrifice in our prayers. In their generous service we witness the presence of the risen Savior in our midst.   For  Christ plays in ten thousand places , Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his. To the Father through the features of men's faces.  Gerard Manley Hopkins

This is the Day the Lord has made. Alleluia! Let us rejoice and be glad. Alleluia! The Lord Jesus, our Hope is risen. Because of the rising of Christ Jesus our Lord from the dead, death and even our smaller daily  dyings  no longer have any power over us. God's love has power. Our lives, our very existence, have been irrevocably transformed for good, forever. A new Day has dawned upon the earth. Photograph by Charles O'Connor

The community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they had everything in common. These words from the Acts of the Apostles have added meaning in these days when we can see how profound is our need for one another, our dependence on one another. Whether with a virus attacking or not, our connectedness as human family can never be underestimated or forgotten. We are not private selves coming together for our convenience, but one family who belong to one another. Photograph by Brother Brian.

He is light, incomprehensible sweetness, incomparable, immeasurable perfection, an ocean of goodness, boundless wisdom, and power, who alone is worthy of Himself to excite admiration, to be worshipped, glorified, and desired… We must thank God for all created things, and show Him perpetual worship, as from Him and through Him all creation takes its being and subsists.    John Damascene,  O n the Divine Images. Jesus is always coming toward us to fill us with an infinity of compassion and mercy.  And his way of seeing things is very different than our own. We see measurement: “How many times?” God sees seventy-times-seven –  immeasurability . Love and compassion and forgiveness increase unbelievably when they are shared. You never run out. It is simply foolish to be stingy and not to love and forgive as has been done to us by God.  We are invited to imitate God’s immeasurable goodness. Photograph by Father Emmanuel....

A whole Sunday is set aside by the Church to celebrate the abundance and constant availability of Jesus' mercy. As we see Thomas put his hand into Jesus' open side, we pray with our Cistercian Father, Blessed William of Saint Thierry: Those unsearchable riches of your glory, Lord, were hidden in your secret place in heaven until the soldier's spear opened the side of your Son our Lord and Savior on the cross, and from it flowed the mysteries of our redemption. Now we may not only thrust our finger or our hand into his side like Thomas, but through that open door may enter whole, O Jesus, into your heart, the sure seat of your mercy, even into your holy soul that is filled with the fullness of God, full of grace and truth, full of our salvation and our consolation. Open, O Lord, the ark door of your side, that all your own who shall be saved may enter in, before this flood that overwhelms the earth. Open to us your body's side, that those who long to see the s...

The Lord is risen from the dead. We rejoice in hope, as we celebrate the great fifty days of Eastertide. During this holy season, we will chant over and over at the Offices and at Mass, "Alleluia," which means literally "Praise God!" In the chant repertoire there are myriad variations. Some alleluias convey a quiet joy, a sense of joyful repose after a long ordeal. Others are more exuberant; so many ways to express the almost inexpressible. With our Alleluias we   give voice to our joy and thanksgiving for all that the Father has given us in Christ Jesus our Lord, now risen from the dead. Photographs of the Abbey hillsides by Brother Casimir.

A good friend of the Abbey wrote us recently asking for advice during these days of isolation. She asked: "I’m wondering how you all make peaceful use of the time in silence. It seems it can torture or nurture.   How do you direct that sail?   Is there way of praying that diffuses that anxiety?   I hope you don’t mind me asking you this.   Without all of the distractions I put in place, I’m realizing, there is a lot of existential energy looking for a home…"  She put  it so succinctly - so much existential energy seeking a home. One of our older monks replied as follows: "The key, I think, is a foolhardy confidence, insistently clung to, that you are the well-beloved one of Christ Jesus, that nothing whatever can change that truth; that he is with us, on our side, understands us, longs to console us, always. This our only solid place of confidence, rest and peace. Our monk continued: "Recently as I began to pray, I realized that I didn't even kno...

This is the secret of Jesus’ unyielding silence before Pilate: he cannot pause his work of Redemption, he cannot cease momentarily being Redeemer, in order to defend himself of these myriad charges. That would be tantamount to his allowing himself to flow along with the self-interested logic of the world.  Either in eternity or in time God has no leisure to be interested in himself, to take time out for himself, to defend himself. God has no “privacy”! God cannot take a break from being God, which by definition means being-for-others. God is too busy being love and performing the works of love to retreat into the safe sanctuary of his omnipotence, to use his sovereignty as a shelter from sorrow and suffering. To be falsely accused and to suffer the dire consequences of such accusations is, for Jesus, part and parcel of the Father’s plan for the salvation of the world through his Son. The world’s capacity for hatred first has to be spent, with Jesus as target-victim. For th...

We are struck by the serenity and deep quiet of this fresco by Piero della Francesca. The atmosphere seems clear, crisp; and the landscape communicates the transformation that Jesus' rising has accomplished- to his left all is barren, at his right all the trees are in full leaf.  The guards doze oblivious, as a majestic young Christ steps confidently out of his marble sepulchre. His voluminous mantle is rosy pink - the color of dawn's first brightening, the color of spring blossoms, the color of healthy young flesh. His hair swept back, blood trickling from his wounded side, Jesus is depicted by Piero as an athletic, victorious warrior just back from his battle with all the powers of sin and death. His divinity and humanity are perfectly merged. Jesus carries a furling banderole of victory and pauses to gaze at us.  "It is really I; do not be afraid. Sin and death no longer have any power over you." ...

I was a stricken deer, that left the herd Long since; with many an arrow deep infixt My panting side was charg'd, when I withdrew To seek a tranquil death in distant shades. There was I found by One who had Himself Been hurt by th'archers. In His side He bore, And in His hands and feet, the cruel scars. With gentle force soliciting the darts, He drew them forth, and heal'd and bade me live. The wounded Lord Jesus rises to heal us, trampling down death by death. He has forever duped the power of  death and pain and sorrow by his own death, for death was powerless over Him who is the God of Everlasting Life. Photograph by Brother Brian. Poem by William Cowper

We opened Holy Week last Sunday with the blessing of palms in the cloister followed by a procession. I couldn’t help sensing a certain reverberating echo of how we liturgically closed our Christmas Season on the Feast of the Presentation in the Temple over two months ago. We were in the same cloister blessing candles, followed by a procession. This connecting echo got me reflecting. Christmas is perhaps easier to celebrate than Easter. The images of Christmas - a star, shepherds watching their flocks, a baby lovingly swaddled by his mother - are vivid and vibrantly clear. You can almost grasp them, touch the baby, hear the angels singing. Now look at the images of Easter: grieving women, and earthquake, angels pushing stones around, and Jesus suddenly appearing and just as suddenly disappearing. And yet, Easter is the foundational Christian reality; the gospel accounts of the birth of the Savior came much later than the passion and resurrection accounts. Even so, Easter challe...

This joyful Eastertide, away with care and sorrow! My Love, the Crucified, hath sprung to life this morrow. Had Christ, that once was slain, not burst his three-day prison, our faith had been in vain; but now is Christ arisen, arisen, arisen, arisen. Fresco by Piero della Francesca. Excerpts from Abbey lauds hymn by George R. Woodward, 1894

Something strange is happening - there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh... In the stillness of Holy Saturday we await all that Christ's Resurrection will bring. Photograph by Father Emmanuel.  Lines   from an ancient homily for Holy Saturday.

The Cross, as we all know, was a vile, degrading instrument of torture. No one went willingly into this state of being so unprotectedly exposed. The place that Karl Barth named Das Nichtige ; and Walter Bruggemann described as “the crushing irresistible force of disorder as yet untamed and on the loose in our world.” No one willingly goes into this place. But Jesus did. And John’s Passion narrative makes it abundantly clear that this was a deliberate choice on Jesus’ part. “And bowing his head, he handed over the spirit.” Why? In order to make unmistakably visible, God’s love! God’s astounding desire to be ‘with us.’ And in so doing to transform this hideous instrument of torture into something desperately beautiful.  I will end by leaving you with this excerpt from our Fr. Simeon’s final volume on Matthew’s Gospel. “The Passion will crush Jesus in every possible way; indeed it will destroy him insofar as human eyes can tell.  And yet his obliteration will be like the c...

Perhaps now more than ever, in the midst of this virus, our hearts are numb, desensitized, inured to the pain and fear. And so  we must go to him, our wounded Lord, bring each other, bring the world in its suffering and despondency and seeming hopelessness, longing for the intrusion of his grace. Impeded, our tongues thick, not knowing how to speak our need and longing, and perhaps deafened by too much tragedy. Christ  Jesus assures us that he hears, he understands; that he is with us, he himself praying, articulating our desire in words beyond words. This is what our prayer is best of all: our desire groaned by Jesus for us, within us. It is this very groaning of God in Christ that brings healing and fluency to our world. We must bring one another to Jesus. We never go to him alone. He who is for us our Lord and Bridegroom and most kind Physician begs us to open ourselves to him. He longs to meet us here in our ordinariness, in its precariousness, its pain, its beauty...

Day after day we gather around this altar table to do what Jesus asked us to do. And what was that? Well, our second reading is clear about what he asked us to do: to share a meal in memory of him. And this “Remember me” of Jesus is surely the most poignant request in all of Sacred Scripture. We are blessed as a community to be able to do this, to respond to Jesus’ request this evening. Many of our brothers and sisters around the world are unable to do this today. So, as we remember what Jesus did on this night, let us remember in a special way all those who can’t physically be with us. Why do we do this? Why do we gather around this altar table? Why do we continue to share a meal in memory of Jesus? Simply put, we do this because we believe that Jesus is here. We believe that whenever we gather together like this, the living risen body of Christ is among us. And why do we believe this? Because Jesus says so! As St. Paul says: “On the night before he died, Jesus took bread and...

Then Jesus said to them, “You will all stumble and fall because of me this night; for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’” Mt 26:31 By “this night” Jesus refers to much more than the few hours of chronological darkness he and his disciples are about to live through.  In John’s Gospel, just after Judas leaves the seder room to go and hand Jesus over to his enemies, the text comments with stark symbolism: “And it was night” Jn 13:30b.   The present night will fully expose the depth of Jesus’ human weakness and vulnerability, and at the same time the depth of his freedom and persevering love.  Jesus uses his divine freedom to embrace human weakness, to abide in it as in his own home, so as transform it from within.  It is the paradox of immortal love shining through dark weakness that causes the disciples to stumble and fall.  An all-powerful God, they are convinced along with most of the human race, shou...

Now the one-handing-him-over had given them a sign, saying, ‘The one I shall kiss is the man; seize him’ A kiss the sign of betrayal! Why, Judas, why? Is it just one more ruse, aimed at catching your prey wholly unawares until the very last second when, lightning-like, the cobra strikes? When one considers what Jesus has meant to you until recently, and you to him, your tone of ruthless self-determination fairly chills the blood. Now, finally, it is you running the show, running him in fact, literally shaping his earthly destiny. You have become wholly depersonalized, rather like a meticulously poised, infinitely accurate nuclear missile hurtling unstoppably toward its target. And yet your language and gestures retain all the outward symbols of reverence and friendship. In advance, and with clever premeditation, you have instructed those who hate your Master: The one I shall kiss is the man; seize him. But why do you approach him this time surrounded by a mob? Never before were ...

Blessed is he who allowed his hands and feet and side to be pierced and opened himself to me wholly that I might enter 'the place of his wonderful tent' and be protected. Indeed it is a safe dwelling place to linger in the wounds of Christ the Lord. The protection this tent affords surpasses all the glory of the world. It is a shade from the heat by day, a refuge and a shelter from the rain so that by day the sun will not scorch you, nor the storm move you. As we accompany Jesus during this Holy Week, we wonder at his goodness and self-effacing love. He will make his Body, God's Body, a safe haven for us Lines from  The Fourth Sermon for Palm Sunday of Blessed Guerric of Igny.

Jesus tells us in the Gospel that he has come to serve not to be served. Part of our work as disciples is always to allow Christ Jesus near enough to care for us, heal us, forgive us and console us. With this in mind, it seems, our Cistercian Father Blessed Guerric of Igny puts the following words on Jesus' lips: I will serve you," his Creator says to man. "You sit down, I will minister, I will wash your feet. You rest; I will bear your weariness, your infirmities. Use me you as you like in all your needs, not only as your servant but also as your beast of burden and as your property. If you are tired or burdened I will carry both you and your burden..." Detail of  The Descent from the Cross  by Rogier Van der Weyden, c. 1435.  Text from  The First Sermon for Palm Sunday , Blessed Guerric of Igny.