ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

But this I will call to mind; therefore I will hope: The L ord ’s acts of mercy are not exhausted, his compassion is not spent; They are renewed each morning— great is your faithfulness! The L ord   is my portion, I tell myself,  therefore  I will hope in him.  Lamentations  3 Brother Jude entered the community in July of 1972. He has served the brethren as community cook for more than twenty years. Brother Jude's kitchen is a place of warmth and hospitality, and the brethren can always pop in for a warm cookie and a kind word. He loves to quote Saint Elizabeth of Hungry, "We must make people happy." Jude treasures the rhythm of the monastic life at our monastery, shaped as it is by the Church's great liturgical cycle. And true to Saint Benedict's dictum, he is content to  "prefer nothing whatever to Christ."  A great lover of this place and of the brethren, he remarks, "If people knew what life was like in a monastery, th...

A friend recently sent us these lines by Fyodor Dostoyevsky:   The bee knows the secret of its beehive, the ant knows the secret of its anthill, but man does not know his own secret - the structure of a human being is a free relationship with the infinite, and therefore, it has not limits.  It bursts through the walls of any place within which one would want to restrain it. God calls to us, beckons us into himself, into his heart, into the limitless possibility of receiving all and giving all. Perhaps this is what Jesus refers to when he tells us to be perfect, as our Father in heaven is perfect. Jesus longs to draw us into a surpassing, loving-kindness that lets us be loved and in turn open our hearts to love as perhaps we thought impossible- to let our love fall "like rain on the just and the unjust." Jesus envisions the real possibility for us of a free intimate relationship with the infinite God for whom all things are possible. Photograph by Charles O...

His mission was completely directed to another – to preparing for the coming of Jesus.  His ministry of baptism was not a goal in itself, but functioned as an introduction to the ministry of Jesus and came to an end at the moment when Jesus’ began.  For John, this is just how things should be, and he explains his feelings on the matter using a wonderful analogy: “It is the bridegroom who has the bride; and yet the bridegroom’s friend, who stands there and listens to him, is filled with joy at the bridegroom’s voice.  This is the joy I fe el, and it is complete.” For Christ to grow in us, we have to be ready to give up, or at least to reconsider, what we think we know about God and ourselves. The work of growing less can require renunciations as radical as John’s leaving for the desert, giving up comfortable clothing for animal skins and home cooking for catching bugs and raiding bee hives. In less colorful terms, opening ourselves to Christ growing g...

Saint Bernard says that above all what has drawn God to Mary is her humility. God finds it absolutely irresistible. Certainly we will come to our humility by a route very different than Our Lady’s, but it can give us the same irresistible quality. We can do it through our sinfulness, acknowledging that we have nothing to boast of before God but our weakness. It is after all the only thing about myself that I am absolutely confident about. Problem is it’s also the one thing I most want to deny. But this reality, this humility lets God be God. Said another way, when things fall apart then God can be God. Through the Virgin Mary God has chosen to be part, an integral part, of our fragmentation. An etching by Margaret Walters, (1924 - 1971).

Once a month during Ordinary Time, we celebrate the Mass and Offices of the day for our deceased brethren and our departed relatives, friends and benefactors. May light eternal, O Lord, shine upon them,  for you are ever merciful! We include   Brother Casimir's  photographs of Father Kizito's funeral last December.

Peonies from the Abbey gardens adorn our Crivelli Madonna at the entrance to church at the the east cloister.  Our Lady is our mother in whom we are all enclosed, and we are born from her in Christ; for she who is mother of our Savior is mother of all who will be saved in our Savior.  Photograph by Brother Anthony Khan.  Lines from Julian of Norwich.

And so the question becomes: will I allow myself to believe that I am the object of Christ’s love? Will I dare to be content more and more, over and over,  to be   the one who is endlessly sought after? Or will I prefer to be stranded on my own planet, circling the Abbey and pretending everything’s really just fine. No, our emptiness and need can be our joy because they grant us ready access and make us, best of all, totally available to Christ. That’s why it would be foolish, so very foolish to pretend I’m not lost, or sinful or empty. What a waste. Why bother?