ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

Jesus invites us to consider what is happening all around us. He pleads for us to notice that the Kingdom of God is near, something essential right under our noses - a new heaven, a renewed earth, a new Jerusalem, as beautiful as a bride on her wedding day. And so, let us pray that we may be continually attentive to the unexpected graces that God is bestowing on us especially during these trying times. Let us be mindful that we have every reason to hope. God is always drawing near, but too often we have been drowsy and distracted. For our inattentiveness, let us beg his mercy. Photograph by Brother Brian.

My Dad dearly loved this nation of ours. A first-generation American, he had served in Europe during the Second World War and had returned home full of pride and enthusiasm for  America ’s ascendancy. As a little kid, I remember sitting at breakfast with him on Sunday mornings, me in my pj’s munching my Cheerios, while he crunched on his toast. Sometimes he’d look up from his newspaper, smile at me, and say proudly, “ America  is the greatest country in the world.” Automobiles, electrical appliances, all modern conveniences, and especially television (We were the first on our block to have the teeniest of new TV’s.) were the perfect proof. My dad was a proud American. Small wonder that years later when an American was about to step foot onto the moon, he was glued to the set. My mum and I joined him to keep vigil by the TV that momentous Sunday evening in July of 1969. I was 16. And as the evening worn on, we waited and watched and waited some more until late into the night. F...

As we pray and feast on this Thanksgiving Day, we choose, despite the darkness in our lives, in our world, to pause and thank God that his lovingkindness is always going before us and filling us with hope; we pause to thank Him because we believe that his mercies are never outdone. And although we often do not understand, we dare to believe that his desire for us and all people is full of grace and mercy and unfathomable kindness. With the poet John O’Donohue, we have faith that “at the deepest level of reality some intimate kindness holds sway. This is the heart of blessing. To believe in blessing is to believe that our being here, our very presence in the world, is itself the…primal blessing."  

As Pope Francis has remarked in his recent encyclical Fratelli Tutti , migration is part of the future of our world. And he reminds us of our responsibility for our brothers and sisters in need. We must defend the centrality of the human person and “protect the rights of its citizens, and assure assistance and acceptance to migrants.” He continues, “I realize that some people are hesitant and fearful with regard to migrants. I consider this part of our natural instinct of self-defense. Yet it is also true that an individual and a people are only fruitful and productive if they are able to develop a creative openness to others. I ask everyone to move beyond those primal reactions because ‘there is a problem when doubts and fears condition our way of thinking and acting to the point of making us intolerant, closed and perhaps even – without realizing it – racist. In this way, fear deprives us of the desire and the ability to encounter the other.’ We pray that we may open our hearts to ...

You have given all to me, now I return it.  These words, at the conclusion of Saint Ignatius' prayer  The Suscipe , sum up beautifully the self-offering of the Mexican martyr, Blessed Miguel Augustin Pro. With an ardent love for  Christ his King ,  Miguel renounced everything and entered the Society of Jesus. After his ordination, Miguel carried on  his priestly ministry  in spite of the grave religious persecution of the Church in Mexico in the early 20th century. O ften in disguise and continually foiling the best efforts of the Mexican secret police to arrest him, Miguel was eventually captured. On  November 23, 1927, after forgiving his executioners, he was  shot by a firing squad as he proclaimed, "Hail, Christ the King!"  F ittingly this year Miguel's memorial falls on this Monday after the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. We recall that after Jesus has fed the five thousand, the gospel writer tells us...

If you were ever the new kid on the block, in the classroom, on the team, and remember how you just wanted to fit in... Or if you ever loved from afar and dreamed of being with a person who seemed too good, too beyond you and your clumsy efforts, and can remember how you just wanted to be close and somehow you just did not know how to do it... Or if ever you were all alone, far from home and had to eat in a restaurant by yourself at a teeny table and longed for family, someone familiar, a friend, the warmth of home and table,  then   perhaps you get a glimpse of what God is trying to do in the Incarnation. It as if for ages God had been trying to get closer, longing for intimacy with each of us, longing to be ordinary and hidden in our midst. Finally in Christ Jesus, God's desire for intimacy with humankind takes flesh. In Jesus God gives Everything, indeed His very Self.  God always makes the first move toward us in love.  “Love consists in this, not that we have lo...

  An ancient tradition holds that Mary was presented in the Temple of Jerusalem as a little girl. And so today the Church celebrates Mary as Ark of the Covenant and House of Gold, the dwelling place of God Most High who chose her chaste body as his nesting place. At this morning's Mass, we heard the Gospel reading in which  a woman from the crowd listening to Jesus is so taken with him that she cries out, "Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed."    Jesus responds,  “Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep  it.” Jesus tells us that we are like his mother when we hold on to the words he speaks to us and ponder them in our hearts. Then like Mary, we can become Christ-bearers. The Child Mary Asleep , Francisco de Zurbaran, 1630-1635, oil on canvas,  Galerie Canesso, Lugano.

Today we remember Saint Mechtilde of Hackeborn, a 13th century Cistercian nun from the convent of Helfta. Even in her lifetime Mechtilde was renowned for her humility, fervor and gentleness. Her prayer was marked by the great familiarity and intensity with which she lived her relationship with Jesus and the Virgin Mary. It was said of Mechtilde that, "the words of the Gospel were a marvelous nourishment for her and in her heart stirred feelings of such sweetness that, because of her enthusiasm, she was often unable to finish reading it.”  In one of her visions, Jesus opened the wound in his heart and said to her, "Consider the immensity of my love: if you want to know it well, nowhere will you find it more clearly expressed than in the Gospel. No one has ever heard expressed stronger or more tender sentiments than these, ‘As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you.’   In another vision Jesus showed Mechtilde his heart and  after receiving such a unique grace in ...

Lord Jesus, please have mercy on the souls of your servants! Once a month during Ordinary Time, we celebrate the Office and Mass of the Dead, praying for our deceased brethren, relatives, friends, and benefactors. And so once again on this very chilly, autumn morning, it was our duty and privilege to pray these prayers.   In his Rule, Saint Benedict admonishes the monks, "keep death daily before your eyes." The Abbey cemetery is located outside the south cloister and provides a fitting  memento mori.  As we pass through this cloister, back and forth all day long, we can look out at the crosses marking our brothers' resting places. They are still with us. Death is not fearsome but part of our monastic rhythm,  a gateway to deeper intimacy with Christ Jesus who died and rose for love of us. Requiem aeternam, Domine, dona eis.

  O Sacred Heart of Jesus, fountain of eternal life, your Heart is a glowing furnace of love. You are my refuge and my sanctuary.  O my adorable and loving Savior, consume my heart with the burning fire with which yours is inflamed. Pour down upon my soul those graces which flow from your love. Let my heart be united with yours. Let my will be conformed to yours in all things. May your will be the rule of all my desires and actions. These are words of Saint Gertrude the Great, a  Cistercian  nun of the  thirteenth century, whom we remember today .  Her ardor inspires us to follow Christ more fervently, even with every fiber of our being. O God, you are my God. My body pines for you like a dry, weary land without water.  Psalm 62 Andrea del Verrocchio,  Christ and Saint Thomas,  bronze, 1483, Orsanmichele, Florence.

The Lord God Most High has lavished blessings upon us. Even given us His very Body and Blood  - this greatest Gift of all. Do I celebrate the love I have received, ready to share this Abundance with all in need? Or have I buried the Gift, hidden the great treasure of God's overflowing mercy and lovingkindness? Photograph by Brother Daniel.

We face adversity as we look ahead to the remaining weeks of 2020. We are so often disheartened by the divisions in our nation and our Church. And we are distressed by ongoing inequities based on race, ethnicity, and national origin.  We have seen the dangerous impact of climate change in floods and fires.  We are concerned about our sisters and brothers who have lost jobs and homes. We are frightened and distressed by the grim statistics of a surging pandemic – so much suffering, so many deaths.  The tensions in the air have impacted us all even in the cloister.  We try to continue in patience and charity.  And we praise and thank God for the self-sacrifice of so many healthcare workers and people of goodwill everywhere.  May we all be attentive to the unexpected graces that God will bestow on us during these trying times. As we look ahead, let us be mindful that with vaccines and therapeutics progressing, there’s every reason to hope. On this Saturday ...

During those nights of faith, the one who prays is never alone. Jesus, in fact, is not only a witness and teacher of prayer; He is more. He welcomes us in His prayer so that we might pray in Him and through Him. This is the work of the Holy Spirit. For this reason, the Gospel invites us to pray to the Father in Jesus’ name. Saint John provides these words of the Lord: “Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” And the Catechism explains that “the certitude that our petitions will be heard is founded on the prayer of Jesus.” It gives the wings that the human person’s prayer has always desired to possess. Without Jesus, our prayer risks being reduced to human effort destined most of the time to failure. But He has taken on Himself every cry, every groan, every jubilation, every supplication, every human prayer.  From an etching by Margaret Walters, (1924 - 1971).  Recent words of Pope Francis on prayer.

In this two-tiered manuscript painting of  The Legend of Saint Martin,  the story begins on the bottom level. There the Roman soldier  Martin   cuts his military cloak in half to share it with a shivering beggar. The upper tier shows Martin asleep, his dream illustrated in a semicircle above him, in which Jesus appears wearing the very cloak that Martin has shared. The Lord thanks Martin for his generosity. Our Lord's message is clear, " Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me."  We want to notice the needy one in our midst;  Christ Jesus assures us that He is the Needy One. Here at the Abbey, we have been enjoying November days of  unseasonable warmth. This is referred to as  Saint Martin's Summer, so named because of the legend, that the Lord made the weather warmer after Martin shared his cloak so that neither he nor the beggar would suffer from the chill.  St. Albans P...

This morning with upturned tables, coins scattered and animals scrambling, Jesus points to the true meaning of the temple: it is never ever a place for business, but his Father’s own house, the sacred meeting place of God and his people. And so, Jesus is anxious to clear out what does not belong there. Above the din, they ask him, “What right have you to do this?” Jesus’ right is the right of Truth. His answer: “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” We can imagine the indignation his interruption of the temple business along with his talk of destruction engendered. Small wonder that this scene in today’s Gospel is viewed by most scholars as  the  act that precipitates the decision of the authorities to kill Jesus. Still, it is important to remember that Jesus does not “condemn the temple cult; he intervenes because he truly understands and loves it”  ( Schneiders ) . It is at this point in the narrative that we hear that most beautifu...

Every culture has its own way of celebrating a wedding. The features of the wedding feast in this morning’s Gospel are basically true to the customs of first-century Palestine, in which the wedding took place in two stages. The betrothal was held at the home of the father of the bride. The bride would then remain in her father’s house for a year or more until the second step of the ceremony was complete, which was the transfer of the bride to the home of her husband. The setting of this morning’s parable is the return of the groom from the house of the bride’s father with his bride. Now, at the bride’s house, the bridegroom had to complete the negotiations of the marriage contract with the bride’s father—a dispute regarding the terms would have been fairly normal, and this could have been the implied cause of his late return home. When all was finally settled, a procession of the wedding party to the house of the groom would signal the commencement of the wedding feast. So, who are t...

As we celebrate Our Lady on this Saturday, we came upon this image of the home at Nazareth. Jesus works with Joseph and Mary is mending their clothes. Our l ife today at Saint Joseph's Abbey as at any Cistercian monastery is essentially the continuation and extension of this life led by Jesus, Mary, and Joseph at Nazareth - a hidden life - contemplative, ordinary, obscure and laborious. Image by Ade Bethune.

Consider a mother caring for her first babe, watching at his cradle, ever mindful of his needs, anxious lest he weep or become ill. The devotion of such a mother cannot match even remotely the constant, minute, tender solicitude of our Lord. If only we had the faith to understand this. Not for one moment does our Lord turn His eyes away from us, nor does His hand cease to guide us; at each instant of our lives His power protects us and His love enfolds us.   Photograph by Brother Bian of a Pax Instrument in the Abbey archives, hand-painted by Brother Amadeus Peck in the 1950's.  The pax was an object used for the Kiss of Peace during Mass. In place of a more direct encounter, each kissed the pax, which was carried around to those present. Text by  Servant of God Luis Maria Martinez.

On Sunday, November 1 during Chapter, Brother Joseph Paez pronounced his Simple Vows. His brothers promise their support and prayer as he advances in his commitment. In the photograph below we see the formation group. From left to right: Brother Mikah, junior professed; Father James, Director of Junior Professed; Brother Guerric, postulant; Thomas, observer; Brother Daniel, Submaster of the Novices; Brother Joseph, junior professed and Father Luke, Director of Novices. Photographs by Brother Brian.

If we find ourselves in a malaise with God we do well to seek the company of a tabernacle. Those who know God more deeply come to know a recurring attraction for him in the Eucharist. They come to know as well their own poverty while praying before the Eucharist. His disguised appearance in the Sacrament lifts the cover of poverty from their own soul. In the presence of his poverty, their own poverty no longer intimidates. They sense intuitively that it draws and even seduces his love. Poverty may first enter our lives only by accepting our insignificance in the setting in which we live. We ought to observe the workings of divine providence in this regard. Any experience of being left alone, disregarded, forgotten – if it does not isolate the soul and make it retreat inwardly – invites a recognition. Our unimportance to others can combine with a fruitful realization. The more we disappear from the attention of others, the more we are watched by God in a different manner. Photograph...

We pray for a peaceful, just   and grace-filled Election Day. We know that  God is ultimately the Lord and Master of history. And Christ Jesus our Lord is always inviting us to make things better for each other, and  especially  to protect those who are most vulnerable. God acts in history, and he will use anything at all to get our attention. He chastises and rescues and intervenes in ways unimaginable when we choose to  cooperate with him.  For the grace of God has appeared, saving all and training us to reject godless ways and worldly desires and to live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age, as we await the blessed hope, the appearance of the glory of the great God and of our savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to deliver us from all lawlessness and to cleanse for himself a people as his own, eager to do what is good.     Titus 2 Recent photographs by Brother Brian. 

The month of November is dedicated to special prayer for the faithful departed. And today on All Souls Day, we processed through the cloisters in the predawn darkness. We paused in the south cloister chanting psalms as the Abbot and his assistants went into the cemetery to sprinkle the graves of our deceased brethren with holy water. For the departed "life is changed, not ended;" they have entered the great mystery of Christ's resurrection. As we beg the Lord in prayer to draw all the faithful departed to himself, we remember our love for them and our connectedness with all those who have gone before us in faith. We are one in Him.

Since He loves us first, out of His great tenderness; we are bound to repay Him with love, and we may cherish exultant hope in Him. 'He richly blesses all who call upon Him.' Yet He has no gift for them better than Himself. He gives Himself as prize and reward: He is the refreshment of the holy soul... 'The Lord is good to those who seek Him.' What will He be then to those who gain His presence? But here is a paradox, that no one can seek the Lord who has not already found Him. It is Your will, O God, to be found that You may be sought, to be sought that You may all the more truly be found. from On Loving God by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux  "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven." Blessed indeed are those who know their need for God. Our desperate need for Mercy is always grace, a very real opportunity to fall backwards into Christ’s compassionate embrace. It is always disconcerting but an exquisite refuge and relief. On this Sol...