ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

 "The monastic style of life that evolved in the West after the Desert Fathers and St. Benedict is supported by a triple base. Sacred reading, manual work, and liturgical prayer constitute the threefold footing of our daily life. The personal stability of each monk or nun in the monastic vocation depends in part on this triadic foundation." Sacred Reading as Encounter "Sacred reading is a process of assimilating the word of God and letting its meaning spread through my blood into every part of my being, a process of impregnation, interiorization, personalization of the word of God. Yet the process is a gentle one. The Lord does not come in an earthquake but in a soft, whispering sound (1K 19:22). In the course of my sacred reading I meet the Lord in living faith, hope and love. The encounter takes place without drama, as I quietly savor and relish the mystery of God's caring presence. The encounter is real without being extraordinary or spectacular." "Repea...

Saint Joseph’s Abbey was constructed between the years 1950-1953 on the site of the former Alta Crest Dairy Farm. The monastery began to take shape by adapting the existing farm buildings for monastic purposes, and on December 23, 1950 eighty monks took possession of the abbey. Ground was broken for the abbey church and quadrangle on March 19, 1952. Many of the monks were apprenticed to the building trades and were integral to the Abbey’s construction.

Encyclical Letter LUMEN FIDEI   OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF   FRANCIS   TO THE BISHOPS PRIESTS AND DEACONS   CONSECRATED PERSONS   AND THE LAY FAITHFUL ON FAITH     1. The light of Faith: this is how the Church’s tradition speaks of the great gift brought by Jesus. In John’s Gospel, Christ says of himself: "I have come as light into the world, that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness" ( Jn   12:46). Saint Paul uses the same image: "God who said ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts" ( 2 Cor   4:6). The pagan world, which hungered for light, had seen the growth of the cult of the sun god,   Sol Invictus , invoked each day at sunrise. Yet though the sun was born anew each morning, it was clearly incapable of casting its light on all of human existence. The sun does not illumine all reality; its rays cannot penetrate to the shadow of death, the place where men’s eyes are closed to its light. "No one — Saint Jus...

  “It is natural for a man to desire what he reckons better than that which he has already, and be satisfied with nothing which lacks that special quality which he misses. Thus, if it is for her beauty that he loves his wife, he will cast longing eyes after a fairer woman. If he is clad in a rich garment, he will covet a costlier one; and no matter how rich he may be he will envy a man richer than himself. Do we not see people every day, endowed with vast estates, who keep on joining field to field, dreaming of wider boundaries for their lands? Those who dwell in palaces are ever adding house to house, continually building up and tearing down, remodeling and changing. Men in high places are driven by insatiable ambition to clutch at still greater prizes. And nowhere is there any final satisfaction, because nothing there can be defined as absolutely the best or highest. But it is natural that nothing should content a man's desires but the very best, as he reckons it. Is it not, then...

We know that in the Palestine of Jesus’ day, sowing involved broadcast ing handfuls of seed which were later plowed under. In the exaggerated scene Jesus depicts for us this morning, it seems the sower is a bit too generous, scattering the seeds rather haphazardly. They’re going everywhere - over brambles, rocks, well-trodden pathways and hungry birds are constantly swooping overhead. The parable gives us an image of the dynamic outward movement of God, as in the beginning of creation, always moving beyond the sphere of his own self-sufficient Being into the void of nothingness. God is constantly pouring himself in abundance into what is not-God.”* It is this outpouring of Godself that takes flesh in Christ Jesus Our Lord. Jesus himself is the divine Sower who gives himself away to us completely, scattering his word, his very self upon us constantly. He is that Grain of Wheat falling to the earth, dying and rising for us, and bearing abundant fruit in us if we will allow him. In t...

Saint Kateri Tekakwitha was born in 1656 in the Mohawk village of Ossernenon, in northern New York. When she was about four years old, her parents and younger brother died in a smallpox outbreak. Kateri survived the illness but remained sickly and was left with facial scars and damaged eyesight. So she was nicknamed Tekakwitha - “she who bumps into things.” Kateri became fascinated by the work and message of the Jesuit missionaries, and she was baptized at the age of twenty.  And just as Jesus predicts this morning, she  endured ridicule from neighbors in her village; Kateri was undaunted. It seems, my sisters and brothers, that Kateri Tekakwitha, “she who bumps into things” had bumped into Jesus and was completely taken with Him, with his Beauty and Truth. Very soon, perhaps with more ardor than good sense, Kateri became attracted to extreme asceticism; nothing was too difficult for her to endure for the One she loved. This undermined her already poor health, and at the ...

What exactly is it that we celebrate on today’s solemnity of Our Holy Father Benedict? It seems to me that, in honoring the Patriarch of Western monasticism liturgically, we are not memorializing the existence of monastic life as such, or even the Holy Rule that came from his pen. Rather, I’d say we’re celebrating the source of the Rule and of the way of life it teaches. This source can be nothing other than St Benedict’s personal holiness— that is, the heroic struggles and perseverance in love that mark his life through his fidelity to grace. Without such holiness, offered by God and embraced by St Benedict, the Rule by which we Cistercian monks have vowed to live could never have come into existence.   In today’s gospel, the Lord Jesus assures us: You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide. For us who are consecrated to live monastic life in this abbey, our response to the call of Jesus is inseparab...