ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

Mary set out and traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah, the distance is about a four-day journey on foot. Mary is in haste out of joy and wonder. It is a joy and wonder that will issue in praise of the dawn of universal salvation. And when the child in Mary's womb comes near the infant John in Elizabeth's womb, Elizabeth cries out in praise and prophecy, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” Mary has set out and traveled in haste, all because love and joy have put a liveliness in her step.  This phrase describing how Mary visits Elizabeth is the very phrase used by Saint Benedict in chapter 43 of his Rule to explain how a monk on hearing the signal for an hour of the Work of God will go to the church. He will “immediately set aside what he has in hand and go with the utmost haste, yet with gravity and without giving occasion for frivolity.” The love of God must so animate the hearts of Benedict's monks that they move with a...

               Today we have heard two versions of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit: John’s description of Jesus breathing out his Spirit on the disciples after his words of peace and the showing of his wounds; and Luke’s description of a strong driving wind and tongues of flame as the Spirit filled the house and the hearts of those gathered in the upper room with Our Lady. Jesus and the Spirit are inseparable in their desire and mission to bring the Church to birth, and to rebirth when needed. Today we, too, are invited to experience the inseparable missions of the Son and the Spirit. The Paschal candle stands in our midst as a sign of these missions, reminding us of the Morning Star that never sets and the flame still burning. Let us allow ourselves to be drawn by the words and the wounds of our Lord and clothed with the fire of his Spirit.             We should never forget that Jesu...

In his day, Saint Philip Neri captivated the city of Rome with his holiness, gentleness, and joyfulness. And although he was greatly revered as a spiritual advisor and confessor, he loved to do outlandish things to make himself look foolish - putting a pillow on his head as if it were a turban and walking around the city, sporting a heavy fur coat in the heat of a Roman summer, or shaving off half of his beard before an important engagement. And once during confession, when a fashion-conscious Roman lady who wore shoes with very high heels, worried that she was being too vain and asked Philip for his advice, he said simply, “Just be careful that you don’t fall over.” The love of Christ was all that mattered to Saint Philip and he wanted that love to matter to everyone. He often said, “He who wants something other than Christ does not know what he wants.” If joy is the surest sign of our love for Christ, when have I failed? Saint Philip Neri (1515–1595), Carlo Dolci (Italian, Florence ...

We often have many names for those we love, nicknames, and terms of endearment. How fitting then that we use so many titles to address Our Lady in her litany: Mother most amiable, pray for us. Mother most admirable, pray for us. House of gold, pray for us.  Virgin most merciful, pray for us. Virgin most faithful, pray for us. Ark of the Covenant, pray for us. Gate of Heaven, pray for us. Mystical Rose, pray for us. Morning star, pray for us. Refuge of Sinners, pray for us. Photograph by Brother Brian.  

  Come, Creator Spirit, visit the minds of your children, and fill the hearts you have made, with heavenly grace. You are called the Comforter,  the gift of God most high, living spring, and fire, love, and spiritual anointing. You are sevenfold in your gifts, the finger of God’s right hand; you are the Father’s  true promise, endowing our tongues with speech. Enkindle your light in our senses, infuse your life in our hearts; strengthen our bodies’ weakness by your never-failing might.  Drive far away our foe, and grant peace without end, that with you to lead us on, we may escape all harm. Grant us, through you, to know the Father, also the Son; may we ever believe in you,  the Spirit of them both. Amen. In preparation for the great Solemnity of Pentecost, we pray our novena to the Holy Spirit. And each evening at Vespers, we chant this ancient Latin hymn. We share above a translation completed by one of our monks.  Come Holy Spirit, fill us with hope...

  I suggest that this coexistence of faith and doubt in the believer can also indicate that to believe is not a totalitarian act that excludes all other possibilities, but rather an act of freedom. In Hebrews we read: Let us look to Jesus, the founder, and perfecter of our faith, who … is seated at the right hand of the throne of God (Heb 12:2). We are only imperfect vessels of faith; only Jesus is its “founder and perfecter”. Authentic Christian freedom generates a way of life that is not absolutist or fanatical, but rather gentle and dialogical. Faith is not automatically exempt from doubt or further questioning, and such questioning is not necessarily and always negative if it comes from an obedient heart. Christian faith does not impose itself as an irrefutable certainty but offers itself to human choice and free response. I certainly don’t mean that faith lacks the quality of certainty, but the certainty of Christian faith is of another order than the certainty of a purely r...

Jesus has ascended to the right hand of the Father but promises to be with us always. He promises us an absence that is brimming over with divine presence. “It is better for you that I go,” he has said, not to abandon us but to be with us always in the Spirit, not time-bound or Palestine-bound but always, “always, until the end of the age.” We are left to learn how to appreciate an emptiness that makes us available to a greater but truly mysterious divine fullness. We begin the novena of prayer to the Holy Spirit in these days of Ascensiontide preceding Pentecost.

Today we rejoice because Jesus has taken his wounded body, our wounded body, with him to Paradise. He has taken all of it, all that we are, all that we are right now- in its beauty and its sinful shoddiness, our materiality, our very flesh, all our stuff, into heaven with him forever. Thus, even all we see, smell, touch, and use all day long is somehow revealed as sacred. This is what the Ascension celebrates. It is the great feast of intersection and interconnectedness. From the beginning Jesus has embodied this joining of heaven and earth in his very self; this is why he would often speak of his body as Temple. It’s how he understood himself- as the ultimate meeting place of God with his people. He knew it all along. And now what began with his quiet descent into Mary’s womb has come to its perfect fulfillment. Moreover, the Ascension of Jesus in his humanity is a sign of things to come for all of us and for all creation, a great sign of hope, for it reveals the destiny God inten...

The words of the Lord in today’s Gospel may be said to sketch an ongoing dialogue of abiding love, trust, and unity between the Risen One and us believers. Jesus knows that the disciple is the one who wants to love the Lord and who actively seeks to love him, though not always fully succeeding. And Jesus knows as well that our seeking to love God is already a strong response to the God who first loved us. One who loves the Lord really does nothing but enter into dialogue with the Lord, responding to the one who spoke to him first. The fact of having been addressed first by the one we love ought to give us great courage, confidence and joy to persevere in this dialogue of prayer throughout our lives. And the first thing Jesus says to us is: If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth. Please note the order of events here: first, the Lord speaks; then, we accept his word; and, f...

In 1917 as the horrors of the First World War raged on, Our Lady asked three young shepherd children at Fatima for prayer and repentance to bring peace, promising them and all of us that in the end, her Immaculate Heart would triumph. More recently in 2022 amid the tribulation of a cruel and senseless war between Russia and Ukraine, Pope Francis again consecrated the Church and all humanity to her Immaculate Heart. He prayed to Our Lady in these words: “The  fiat  that arose from your heart opened the doors of history to the Prince of Peace. We trust that, through your heart, peace will dawn once more. To you we consecrate the future of the whole human family, the needs and expectations of every people, the anxieties and hopes of the world.” And calling Mary “our living fountain of hope,” he begged her to “water the dryness of our hearts.” Truly our hearts long for the living water that only Christ Jesus, the Virgin Mary’s Son, can give us. 

  So fully does Damien of Moloka'i take on the mind and heart of Christ, so devoted is he to his lepers, that soon, because of his fearless ministry, he will become a leper himself. In Saint Damien’s total self-gift, we have a true icon of Jesus, Jesus who constantly gives himself away to us in love and self-forgetfulness.  It is what he did on the cross, it is what he does each day in the Eucharist. He draws us into the life of God; we are "spliced" into the very life of the Trinity, into the self-forgetfulness that God is. Jesus wants to be our food, for he knows he is indispensable to us. “My Flesh is true food,” he tells us. “And my Blood is true drink. Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood remains in me and I in him.”  Jesus becomes bread and wine so that he can be dissolved in us, and surrender himself to us completely. Life in the monastery is meant to accomplish the very same self-forgetfulness in the monks. Like Jesus in his passion, like Damien in the l...

Queen of Heaven, rejoice, alleluia. For He whom you did merit to bear, alleluia. Has risen, as He said, alleluia. Pray for us to God, alleluia. Small flowers, violets, bluets, and pussycat paws are blooming in the lawns and meadows of the Abbey. These simple, low-growing flowers remind us of Our Blessed Lady and her Son in their humility and lowliness. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins responds: All things rising, all things sizing Mary sees, sympathising With that world of good, Nature's motherhood. Their magnifying of each its kind With delight calls to mind How she did in her stored Magnify the Lord.   The beauty and exuberance of springtime, profusion of blossoms, chanting of birds, all remind  us of Our Lady’s joy as she carried Our Lord in her womb. May is Mary's month.

In today’s Gospel Jesus is preparing to depart and trying to prepare his disciples for his departure. It’s a scene of some frustration, with two levels of discourse. Jesus is trying to “explain some of the encouraging aspects of his death and departure.”  And clearly, the disciples desperately want things to remain as they were. Who can blame them? Who wants to talk about death and departure anyway? I am reminded of a scene certainly less profound but nonetheless touching. A particular family dinner with aunts, uncles, and cousins all gathered at table. My cousin Angela admires my mother’s earrings, and she tells me, “Honey, when I die, give Angela these earrings, and the necklace that goes to Kathy, and you know where my bank books are…” I interrupt her, “Please Ma, could we just have dinner. No one’s going anywhere.” “Well it’s important; I want you to know these things. I am getting older...” “Mother, please just pass me the eggplant.” Call it denial of death, whatever. I don’...

Many of you may wonder why postings have been sparse. We have been busy hosting our region's junior professed, nuns and monks from eight monasteries of our region including our own. They were with us for two weeks of presentations as they continue their preparation for solemn profession.  During the first week, the noted medieval scholar Marsha Dutton spoke about the writings of our Cistercian father Saint Aelred of Rievaulx. In the second week, Father Simeon gave classes on the Christology of the Fathers of the Church. These young Cistercians have found their hearts' desire in following the Lord Jesus intimately. Their joy and ardor filled us with hope. Photographs by Brother Brian.