Cistercian Life Vocation

Regular Wednesday Community Talk
Fr. Raymond 19 November 2014

Cistercian Life - Vocation

Fr. Raymond Talk on Cistercian Vocation

None of our three Holy Founders has the personal individual fame of their great protégée St Bernard, nor do we have nearly so much biographical information about them.  That is a great pity, and yet there is something very fitting and relevant about their anonymity and the silence and the obscurity of their lives.  They were destined, after all, to found an Order whose members were, by profession, to live lives of anonymity and obscurity.  St Bernard’s life, however, was hardly obscure and anonymous.  It is true that he was a great monk but he was hardly a typical monk. Certainly not in the way that Robert and Alberic and Stephen were.

However, our debt to them and our devotion to them do make us eager to learn as much about them as we can.  Knowledge and love are two inseparable concepts.  If we love anyone, we want to know as much as possible about them.   

This seems to leave is in a bit of dilemma.  If we know so little about them how can we in any way get close to them?  How can we gain any inspiration from them?  How can we be drawn to imitate them?  How can we really respect and love them?

On consideration, however, this lack of knowledge of the external details of their lives is no great obstacle to our coming to know and love and appreciate them.  How much, for instance, we know about the details of the lives of the great figures of ancient human history: the Pharoahs, The Gengis Khans, the Napoleons, the Stalins, the Hitlers, the Churchills, and countless others, and yet how little do we really know them as persons.

The  case is very different however, with our Holy Founders.  We have a knowledge of them which is, in a way, very deep and intimate.  It is the knowledge that comes from the fact that we share in the deepest and most intimate aspirations of their minds and hearts.  We share in their ideals of poverty; of leaving behind all the goods of this world.  We share in their desire to commit themselves to God’s will in a life of obedience to a rule and an abbot.  We share in their love for God alone in a life of consecrated chastity.

 

Moreover, although the condition of human life has changed almost beyond recognition since those mediaeval times, yet the basic round of monastic life: The Divine Office, Lectio, Work, remains basically still the same for us as it was for them.

Indeed then we can know and love our Holy Founders and indeed we can know them for precisely who and what they were.

 

In the matter of our own personal relationship with our founders we can find great encouragement in a passage from Therese of Lisieux’s  autobiography.

She tells us “I dreamt that I was standing in a sort of gallery where several other people were present but our Mother (Celine) was the only one near me.  Suddenly, without seeing how they got there, I was conscious of the presence of three Carmelite sisters..........  What was borne in upon me with certainty was that they came from heaven.  I found myself crying out .......in the silence of my heart: “Oh how I would love to see the face of one of these Carmelites!”  Upon which, as if granting my request, the tallest of the three Saintly figures moved towards me, and, as I sank to my knees, lifted her veil right up and threw it over me.   I recognised her without the slightest difficulty;  the face was that of our Venerable Mother Anne of Jesus, who brought the reformed Carmelite order into France.  There was a kind of ethereal beauty about her features, which were transfused with a light that seemed to come from her.

I can’t describe what elation filled my heart; an experience like that can’t be put down on paper.  Months have passed now since then but the memory of it is as fresh as ever, as delightful as ever.  I can still see the look on Mother Anne’s face, her loving smile;  I Can still feel the touch of the kisses she gave me...........

What gave more strength to this impression was the fact that, up till then, Mother Anne of Jesus had meant nothing to me.  I’d never asked for her prayers, or even thought about her, except on the rare occasions when her name came up in conversation.

   

Calendar  

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Sts Robert, Alberic and Stephen, 26 JanuaryJANUARY. 10 St. Gregory of Nyssa, Bishop. St. William of Bourges, Bishop O.N.. 12 St. Aelred, Abbot O.N., ...