Cistercian HOLY FOUNDERS

HOLY FOUNDERS
Sts Robert, Alberic & Stephen.
(26 January)

The churches and cloisters of abbeys like Fontenay and Thoronet, their mellow stones glowing in a setting of quiet woods, still speak eloquently of the graceful mysticism of twelfth-century Citeaux. It was for the abbot of Fontenay that St Bernard wrote his tract, Degrees of Humility, with its wonderful twelfth chapter on mystical prayer. Fontenay itself represents the direct influence of St Bernard and is the precise application of his principles on architecture. In such settings as these, the purified liturgy of the Cistercians became a thing of tremendous effect. But their contemplative life implies penance as well as prayer, because in contemplation there are always two aspects: the positive one, by which we are united to God in love, and the negative one, by which we are detached and separated from everything that is not God. Without both these elements there is no real contemplation. The penance of the Cistercians is essentially the common penance of the whole human race: to "eat your bread in the sweat of your brow" and to "bear one another's burdens."

Thomas Merton The Waters of Siloe, New York 1949, pp.15-20.

The appeal of this Night Office Reading was somewhat blunted when the 'junior' Merton goes on in rebartitive strains on the Cistercian versus Cluniac theme. Fr. Hugh recalled for me the occasion when we had a French Benedictine Abbot as Guest. Listening to this reading, the visitor became quite agitated. He remarked afterwards, "That man has no sense of history.

Chronicle.

Fr. Luke celebrated his 49th anniversary of Ordination
on 25 Jan, Conversion of St. Paul. Fr. Luke, (Charles McNally), hails from Dundee. Not 84, he is the last survivor of a very large family.

OCSO News

Our Lady of Victoria Abbey (Kenya)
Prayers for the Community of Victoria in Kenya

01/26/08 - Today, the feast of our Founders, at mid day a group of young men approached the monastery intending to attack. The rather large police force that is consigned to the area discouraged the young men from proceeding. There were no violent acts against any person or the property.

Message from Sujong Community
We Inform You of the Urgent And Serious
Situation of Sujong Monastery And Ask for Your Prayers : in this lonely fight we are looking for true life and true Love in the Lord...
The City of Masan and a shipbuilding company (the STX Taedong) have plans to build a huge shipbuilding yard in Sujong where our Trappist Monastery is located. In the town there are also 380 families, a primary and middle school, a kindergarten, a public health center, the country offices, and a church. At first they said that there would only be a small block-building facility which is only one part of the shipbuilding complex.

Oldest continuously active Cistercian monastery
in the world

VISIT TO HEILIGENKREUZ ABBEY

ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI

Sunday, 9 September 2007

On my pilgrimage to the Magna Mater Austriae, I am pleased to visit this Abbey of Heiligenkreuz, which is not only an important stop on the Via Sacra leading to Mariazell, but the oldest continuously active Cistercian monastery in the world. I wished to come to this place so rich in history in order to draw attention to the fundamental directive of Saint Benedict, according to whose Rule Cistercians also live. Quite simply, Benedict insisted that “nothing be put before the divine Office”. Regula Benedicti 43,3.

For this reason, in a monastery of Benedictine spirit, the praise of God, which the monks sing as a solemn choral prayer, always has priority. Monks are certainly – thank God! – not the only people who pray; others also pray: children, the young and the old, men and women, the married and the single – all Christians pray, or at least, they should!

The core of monasticism is worship – living like the angels. But since monks are people of flesh and blood on this earth, Saint Benedict added to the central command: “pray”, a second command: “work”. In the mind of Saint Benedict, and Saint Bernard as well, part of monastic life, along with prayer, is work: the cultivation of the land in accordance with the Creator’s will. Thus in every age monks, setting out from their gaze upon God, have made the earth live-giving and lovely. Their protection and renewal of creation derived precisely from their looking to God. In the rhythm of the ora et labora, the community of consecrated persons bears witness to the God who, in Jesus Christ, looks upon us, while human beings and the world, as God looks upon them, become good.

The father of the Cistercian Order, Saint Bernard, in his own day fought against the detachment of an objectivizing rationality from the main current of ecclesial spirituality. Our situation today, while different, nonetheless has notable similarities. In its desire to be recognized as a rigorously scientific discipline in the modern sense, theology can lose the life-breath given by faith. But just as a liturgy which no longer looks to God is already in its death throes, so too a theology which no longer draws its life-breath from faith ceases to be theology; it ends up as a array of more or less loosely connected disciplines. But where theology is practised “on bent knee”, as Hans Urs von Balthasar urged, it will prove fruitful for the Church in Austria and beyond. HANS URS VON BALTHASAR, Theologie und Heiligkeit, an essay written in 1948, in Verbum Caro

Saint Leopold of Austria – as we heard earlier - on the advice of his son, Blessed Otto of Freising, who was my predecessor in the episcopal see of Freising (his feast is celebrated today in Freising), founded your abbey in 1133, and called it Unsere Liebe Frau zum Heiligen Kreuz – Our Lady of Holy Cross. This monastery is dedicated to Our Lady not simply by tradition – like every Cistercian monastery –, but among you there burns the Marian flame of a Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. Bernard, who entered the monastery along with thirty of his companions, is a kind of patron saint of vocations. Perhaps it was because of his particular devotion to Our Lady that he exercised such a compelling and infectious influence on his many young contemporaries called by God. Where Mary is, there is the archetype of total self-giving and Christian discipleship. Where Mary is, there is the pentecostal breath of the Holy Spirit; there is new beginning and authentic renewal.

From this Marian sanctuary on the Via Sacra, I pray that all Austria’s shrines will experience fruitfulness and further growth. Here, as at Mariazell, I would like, before leaving, to ask the Mother of God once more to intercede for all of Austria. In the words of Saint Bernard, I invite everyone to become a trusting child before Mary, even as the Son of God did. Saint Bernard says, and we say with him: “Look to the star of the sea, call upon Mary … in danger, in distress, in doubt, think of Mary, call upon Mary. May her name never be far from your lips, or far from your heart … If you follow her, you will not stray; if you pray to her, you will not despair; if you turn your thoughts to her, you will not err. If she holds you, you will not fall; if she protects you, you need not fear; if she is your guide, you will not tire; if she is gracious to you, you will surelyreach your destination”. BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX, In laudibus Virginis Matris, Homilia 2.