ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

When considering the feast of Our Lady’s Visitation to Elizabeth, we are apt to be a little too hasty in applying its “meaning” to ourselves. We are likely, that is, to generalize and conclude at once that we are all naturally bearers of a mystery we ought to share with others, the mystery of who we are. True enough… But what exactly is the mystery we bear? Simply the mystery of our own existence, of our own goodness and good will? I wonder whether this is enough to save the world… To view things only in this way appears to me as deflating, because such moralism excludes from the Christian experience the sense of radical wonderment . It forgets God’s unaccountable desire, attested everywhere in Scripture, to dwell with us and use us as instruments of salvation.   We should pay close attention to Elizabeth’s chief sentiment: How does this happen to me, that the Mother of my Lord should come to me?   These simple words contain the whole range of marveling Christian jubilation, t...

We must empty ourselves, not only before God but also before our neighbor. In doing this we will be loving God and our neighbors for their own sake and not for our own sake. Our neighbor is nothing else but the presence of God among us. CHARLES NICOLET, SJ 

As he blessed them, he parted from them and was taken up to heaven. They did him homage and then returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they were continually in the temple praising God.   This great joy that the disciples experienced is ours also. For with today’s Feast Jesus returns definitively to the Father. As Paul explained to the Ephesians he is now seated at the Father’s right hand, far above every principality, authority, power and dominion. All things have been put under his feet. From now on, Jesus reigns with the Father in perfect sovereignty and freedom over the whole of creation. He is not bound by any created thing and gives his love in perfect freedom. What’s more, in Christ our human nature has been lifted up with him, while he waits for us, his body, to join him.   Jesus’ last instruction to the disciples was that they were to return to Jerusalem and to stay there “until you are clothed with power from on high.” Like the disciples we are called to use this ...

The aim of all ascetic effort is to make oneself nothing, after the example of Jesus Christ, described by St. Paul in his letter to the Philippians: "Divine nature was his from the first, but he did not think to snatch at equality with God; but made himself nothing, assuming the nature of a slave" (Ph. 2:6). This nothingness is the closest we can come to God. It is a dying to self so as to be fully open to God. Our selfishness is the obstacle to God's life and the action of his Spirit within us. ANDRÉ LOUF The Cistercian Way

The Trinity: A Burning Peace Today we hear the Lord Jesus assure us yet again: Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you . Such is the untiring promise of the risen Christ. He has to repeat it over and over again to us, his disciples, because we have thick skulls and embattled hearts, and it takes a while for such an enormous promise to penetrate our capacity to believe. The simple fact appears to be that, through his beloved Son, whose love has triumphed over death and therefore over all distress and sadness, God wants to make us partakers of the serene and undefeatable joy in which consists the Blessed Trinity’s eternal life. Let us not forget that the Paschal Mystery is not some far-off, impersonal, vaguely cosmic proposition! Christ became incarnate of the Virgin Mary and entered chaotic human history for us; Christ died on a bloody cross for us; Christ descended into hell and rose from the dead for us. If we pay attention we will see that there is nothing more intimately pers...

The fruit of humility is… naturalness. Being at home with ourselves. Being ourselves. Grace extroverts itself. It begins suddenly in the depths of our spirits but in the course of a lifetime evangelizes all levels of our being until it becomes outward, visible, communicable. It can never reach that point if we are in the habit of hiding behind a façade so that our true self is always concealed. MICHAEL CASEY A Guide to Living in the Truth: St. Benedict’s Teaching on Humility  

Make a particular effort to practice sweetness and submission to the will of God, not only in extraordinary matters, but even in the little things that occur daily. Make these acts not only in the morning, but also during the day and in the evening, with a tranquil and joyful spirit. And if you should fail in this, humble yourself, make a new proposition, get up and continue on your way. PADRE PIO

When God loves, he wishes for nothing more than to be loved in return. He loves for no other purpose than to be loved, knowing that those who love him will be made happy by their very experience of such love. ST. BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX 

Today’s very brief gospel passage from St John concerns the so-called glorification of the Son of Man, and God’s glorification in him. “Glorification” is the event that shows forth dazzlingly, for all to see, the depths of God’s splendor and nature as love. And God’s glorification is an event because it is not like the automatic activity of the sun simply shining on and on in the sky before our eyes. Glorification involves deliberate acts of the will, the deliberate assuming of a stance as witness, regardless of the dangerous consequences. It happens when someone in the world speaks words and performs actions that manifest irrefutably that God’s power to create and to redeem is taking very precise form here and now, and is having the effect of transforming reality into something wholly new, wonderful and unforeseen.   The Lord Jesus clearly, everywhere in the Gospel, is the locus and the agent of God’s glorification in our world. His every word, gesture and action point to the in...

Self-forgetful service of the community is, like prayer, a movement out of myself toward the other, a movement of giving, of love…. When work and prayer are put in the context of love and of adhering to the will of God, then conscious, rational thought processes become secondary. It is enough to be working out of love for God and for my brothers and sisters. CHARLES CUMMINGS, OCSO Monastic Practices

Because God has made every object, because no object is greater than he, all his works are as it were within him, as though contained in him. If you love what he has made, love still more him who has made it all. If the creation is beautiful, God who is reflected in it is infinitely more beautiful. SAINT AUGUSTINE On Psalm 148

It is only right and proper and just that we should give our heart to him if he himself thinks fit to ask for it. And he has thought it fit! “Give me your heart,” he says to us! He who asks you to give him your heart wants to be loved from the heart. God wants our whole heart for himself, that in him, before all else, it may take its pleasure. EDITH SCHOLL, OCSO In The School of Love: An Anthology of Early Cistercian Texts

When our heart prays, it breathes. Prayer makes us joyful, strong, and courageous. Prayer makes our heart beat and provides oxygen for our whole body. Prayer irrigates our being. Perhaps we are here putting our finger on the cause of so much sullenness in the Church and in society: the fact that the practice of prayer has reached a very low level. When that happens, the heart is weighed down by a dead weight. A Church that does not pray is like a batch of dough that has collapsed. No other leaven can raise it from its apathy. The Spirit prays in us. Surrounded by chatter, it whispers "with sighs too deep for words”.   CARDINAL GODFRIED DANIELS The Consoler

You will live sociably if you have a zeal to be loved and to love; to show yourself as pleasant and accessible, to support not only patiently but gladly, the weaknesses of your brothers, their weaknesses both of behavior and of body. SAINT BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX

May 3, 2025 —  200th Anniversary of Spencer's Founding Brothers and sisters, The history of this community made me read Thomas Merton's book again  with its beautiful and meaningful title: 'The Waters of Siloe'. In this book,  published in 1949, Merton shows the reader how much the world needs  contemplative monasteries, particularly Trappist ones. These are like the  Waters of Siloe from the book of the prophet Isaiah. The waters 'that flows in  silence' which flow softly and quietly, bringing peace to a restless world.   'These are the waters which the world does not know, because it prefers the  water of bitterness and contradiction.' One of those streams that gently flows through this world is this community of  St. Joseph's Abbey, which started at Petit Clairvaux, went further to Rhode  Island and now here on this site. Your 200-year history has shown how this  water stream sometimes flows gently forward, but sometimes it was...

But you shall laugh. Thus it is written. And because God's Word also had recourse to human words in order to express what shall one day be when all shall have been—that is why a mystery of eternity also lies deeply hidden, but real, in everyday life; that is why the laughter of daily life announces and shows that one is on good terms with reality, even in advance of that all-powerful and eternal consent in which the saved will one day say their amen to everything that he has done and allowed to happen. Laughter is praise of God because it foretells the eternal praise of God at the end of time, when those who must weep here on earth shall laugh. KARL RAHNER The Great Church Year: The Best of Karl Rahner’s Homilies, Sermons, and Meditations