ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

I have ascended to the highest in me, and look! The Lord is towering above that. In my curiosity I have descended to explore my lowest depths, yet I found him even deeper. If I looked outside myself, I saw him stretching beyond the furthest I could see; and if I looked within, he was yet further within. Then I knew the truth of what I had read, “In him we live and move and have our being”. ST. BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX

Let those, then who are singularly active, who think they can win the world with their preaching and exterior works, observe here that they would profit the Church and please God much more, not to mention the good example they would give, were they to spend at least half of this time with God in prayer… Without prayer, they would do a great deal of hammering but accomplish little, and sometimes nothing, and even at times cause harm. God forbid that the salt should begin to lose its savor (Mt 5:13), for however much they may appear to achieve externally, they will in substance be accomplishing nothing; it is beyond doubt that good works can be performed only by the power of God. ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS The Spiritual Canticle 29.3  

Speaking of Our Lady’s assumption into heaven, Saint Bernard says, “This is a precious gift that our earth today has presented to heaven: thus, by this exchange, human realities are united to divine realities, the earthly to the heavenly, those from below to those on high, in a happy pact of friendship.” (St. Bernard, First Sermon on the Assumption.) In this exchange, the earth has offered its most sublime fruit and then from there descend upon us the most perfect gifts, “come down from the Father of lights.” Today, we celebrate the Feast of the Assumption along with the rest of Church, but in a manner that is particularly special for us because, because for us Cistercians it is the patronal feast of our Order. Today’s feast, therefore, says something very important about who we are, about our place in the Church, and about our relationship with the Church and the world we live in.   There are various ways to approach the meaning of this feast both for the early Cistercians of the ...

Love makes us free if it is selfless, and it is selfless if it is ready to sacrifice pleasure, advantage and independence for the sake of the beloved. And since no earthly love is initially perfect, it must go through these purifications. Moments and times must come when love is tested through sacrifice, when it becomes clear whether the enthusiasm of the first encounter was love at all, when the naïve first love—if it really was love—is refined and deepened in the fire of renunciation. HANS URS VON BALTHASAR Prayer, 128

Continue to pray as you feel drawn, but do not worry about it, for worry comes from self-love. You must abandon yourself to the leading of God with no other intention than that of pleasing him, and when you know that you have this intention deep in your heart, you must not waste time in reflecting about yourself and about the degree of virtue you have obtained; occupy yourself with him whom you love and bother very little about yourself. ST. CLAUDE DE LA COLOMBIÈRE Letter #135, London, 1677

Once you have had the experience of God's benevolence, you need no longer feel abashed in aspiring to a holier intimacy. Growth in grace brings expansion of confidence. You will love with greater ardor, and knock on the door with greater assurance, in order to gain what you perceive to be still wanting to you. The one who knocks will always have the door opened to him. It is my belief that to a person so disposed, God will not refuse that most intimate kiss of all, a mystery of supreme generosity and ineffable sweetness. ST. BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX

We cannot avoid this law of the spiritual life: that in order to come to the point where we can finally abandon ourselves totally to God, we must first feel what appears to be utter abandonment by God. ERASMO LEIVA-MERIKAKIS, Fire of Mercy

How shall a man attain to the perfection of Charity if he does not keep himself perpetually in the presence of God, and has not the attention of his whole soul fixed on him and primarily on Jesus crucified in such a way as to “pass through the wounds of his Humanity into the intimacy of the divinity”? JOHN OF CASTEL (in Maritain , Prayer and Intelligence)

For many of our contemporaries, religion has been reduced to an experience, one among others, occasionally powerful, but not sufficiently so to draw the rest of their existence into its orbit. LOUIS DUPRÉ Religious Mystery

This world is, and always will be, a place of exile and pilgrimage; a desert to be crossed, where for a moment we pitch our tent, soon to strike it again and continue our journey. AUGUSTÍN GUILLERAND

Thought cannot comprehend God. And so, I prefer to abandon all I can know, choosing rather to love Him whom I cannot know. Though we cannot know Him, we can love Him. By love He may be touched and embraced, never by thought. ANONYMOUS The Cloud of Unknowing

Faith and love are like the blind man's guides. They will lead you along a path unknown to you, to the place where God is hidden. In order to draw nearer the divine ray, the intellect must advance by unknowing rather by the desire to know, and by blinding itself and remaining in darkness rather than by opening its eyes. ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS

Fr. Timothy Scott  was elected  as the seventh abbot of Spencer for a six-year term on Thursday, July 23.  Dom Timothy was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1960. He entered Spencer in 1988 and made his solemn profession in 1994. At the time of his election he was novice master in the community. Congratulations Dom Timothy!

When you are weary of praying, and do not receive, consider how often you have heard a poor man calling, and have not listened to him. ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM

However much we love mercy and practice loyalty, we are like the heavenly Father. However much we endure poverty, humiliation, rejection, and pain here on earth, we are like the true Son of God. However much we love others and live expensive lives—flowing outward with the abundance of our hearts—and to the extent we give our possessions to the poor and spend our lives serving the sick and the shut-ins, we are like the Holy Spirit. However much we are honest and love peace, and however much we live modest, holy, simple lives, we are like the Holy Trinity. MECHTHILD OF MAGDEBURG The Flowing Light of the Godhead

God says, “I want to be merciful to the world. Mercy is what I do. In my unlimited mercy and love for everyone, I sent the Word, my only-begotten Son. To make this amazing good news clear to you, I showed Him to you in the image of a bridge stretching from heaven to earth. This bridge is the union of my divine nature with your human one. I, the Eternal Father, supreme and everlasting truth, am telling you that by following the Word, my only-begotten Son, you have life.” ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA Dialogue

"The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a man who sowed good seed in his field…” Today we continue with the series of parables to the crowds that Jesus began last week with the Parable of the Sower. Jesus had gone out of the house where he was staying and sat down by the sea. The crowds were so great that he got into a boat and sat down while the whole crowd stood along the shore. God, the sower, scatters the seed widely, across all kinds of surfaces, whether they are suitable for receiving it or not, as if unconcerned aboutwhere it falls. But only the seed that falls on rich soil bears fruit. This is the one, Jesus explains, who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields a hundred or sixty of thirtyfold.   We must always strive to become the rich soil. In all of his parables, Jesus always demands that the seed that is scattered, the talents that are given, must bear fruit. The kingdom is for those who bear fruit.   This initial parable sets up the c...

Perhaps we don't know what love is. It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that this is true, sad but true. Love doesn't exist—as we like to think—in the degree to which we are happy. No, love exists in the strength of our determination to try to please God in everything that we do, each and every day. The important thing is not to think much but to love much. ST. TERESA OF JESUS Interior Castle

Reading serves the purpose of the intention with which it is done. If the reader truly seeks God in his reading, everything that he reads tends to promote that end, making the mind surrender in the course of the reading and bring all that is understood into Christ’s service. GILBERT OF HOYLAND Sermon 7.2

We must not be surprised at the difficulties we encounter before we find peace. Difficulties are necessary and precious. They are the exercises by which our nature gets its training, and our powers develop. A soul that did not meet with them on its path would be greatly to be pitied. It would remain forever in its state of powerlessness. We do not always realize that sufficiently. We want to reach the goal without having run the course. The ‘running’ is the effort, the exercise the constant training, which brings into play our latent powers and develops them through use. We must find peace in these exercises, and love them as God loves them; that is, as a means to an end, and as remedies, at times bitter to the taste—even as surgical operations! A CARTHUSIAN They Speak By Silences