Munkeby Founders

Munkeby Mariakloster.

A letter from Brother Joel

Feast of our Holy Founding Fathers Robert, Alberic and Stephen at Munkeby.

It is a new experience for us to celebrate the feast of our Founding Fathers so far from Citeaux. Over the years, while we were living in the place of the original foundation, we were able to evoke their memory and sometimes even sense their palpable presence. At Munkeby we sometimes feel exiled, far from our holy fonders and far from Citeaux, the name that resonates in a special way among those who feel themselves Cistercian.

But looking at it more closely we have a particular affinity with our Founding Fathers. In the beginning, before the name of Citeaux was in common use, one spoke about the New Monastery. And, small as we are � we are only a pre-foundation � we are also a new monastery. Although our present living quarters are going to be the guesthouse later, we pray in the oratory there, meditate on the Word in our scriptorium, and work in our cheese factory, just like in a monastery. Another affinity is that we also are founders, although on a small scale, and that the work of God, which is in its early beginning here, is blessed, just as the work of our Founding Fathers was blessed.

But these are external factors: how do we relive the experience of our Founding Fathers in a particular way? We are in a period of gestation, that strange time when the future is unknown; we believe in the future and the promise, but do not yet know how things will be: we are in the desert. That period was long and difficult for our Fathers in Citeaux, until the explosion-expansion period that followed the arrival of Saint Bernard and his friends. That rough period meant abandonment, detachment and poverty. We know how much our Fathers sought poverty, and how they were able to connect the poverty of their history with that of Christ. Of course, we do not live in material insecurity, but still, at certain moments, since there are only four of us here, we feel that we must tackle a lot of different situations, find good solutions, make sure that we do not go astray. That is when the Rule (of Saint Benedict) becomes a guide for us, as it was for our Fathers who wanted to restore it in its integrity; there is need of a leap of confidence and trust in God, just as it was for the Israelites in the desert. And it is true that quite often answers are found, help is given, and it leaves us amazed.

May we be able to walk in the footsteps of Robert, Alberic and Stephen, since we have been called to revive something of their appeal