Grateful to Saint Jude

Saint Jude Thaddeus

COMMENT:

And I Will Manifest Myself to Him

By

Dom Mark

 on May 7, 2007 9:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Fifth Monday of Paschaltide
Acts 14:5–18
Psalm 113B:1–2, 3–4, 15–16 (R.1ab)
John 14:21–26
Grateful to Saint Jude
We are grateful to the Apostle Saint Jude for the marvelous dialogue recounted in today’s Gospel. Our Lord reveals what it means to love Him and to be loved by Him. He declares that anyone who loves Him will be loved by the Father. He promises to love the one who loves him and to manifest Himself to him. “He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him” (Jn 14:21).
The Way of Love
Saint Jude doesn’t immediately grasp what Our Lord is saying. He cannot conceive of a way of knowing Christ apart from the obvious way given to all. Jude seems to think that it is enough to observe Jesus: something that everyone can do. That there should be a higher way of knowing, a more intimate way, the way of love, completely eludes him. “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?” (Jn 14:22).
The Divine Indwelling
Our Lord explains that the manifestation of Himself to His disciples will be inseparable from His Father’s love for them. He promises a mysterious indwelling: “We will come to him and make our home with him” (Jn 14:23). He declares that anyone who loves Him will hold fast to His words. Those who let go of his words, those who fail to store them up in their hearts, will not enjoy the manifestation reserved to His friends. They will remain strangers to the joy of the indwelling of the Father and the Son.
Friends of the Sacred Heart
How can we not relate this Gospel to the tender love Our Lord revealed in manifesting Himself to the friends of His Sacred Heart over the centuries. To each one of them He said in a unique way, “Behold, I love you and manifest Myself to you, even as I promised.”
I am thinking above all of the Virgin Mother beneath whose own Pure Heart His Sacred Heart of flesh first began to beat. I am thinking of Saint John the Beloved Disciple who, inflamed by his experience of the Heart of Jesus, was compelled to write: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— the life was made manifest, and we saw it, and testify to it” (1 Jn1:1–2).
I am thinking of Saint Bernard, Saint Gertrude, Saint Mechthilde, Saint Lutgarde, and Saint Bonaventure. I am thinking of Saint Margaret Mary and of Saint Claude la Colombière, of Mother Marie Adèle Garnier of Tyburn, Mother Clelia Merloni, and Blessed Marie de Jésus Deluil–Martiny; of Blessed Charles de Foucauld, and of Blessed Marie–Joseph Cassant. For each one of these men and women Our Lord fulfilled the promise he makes in today’s Gospel: “He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him” (Jn 14:21).
A Gift Without Price
Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, before being a gift of ours offered to Christ is a gift that He offers us. “If you but knew the gift of God!” (Jn 4:10). This is the clear teaching of Pope Pius XII in Haurietis Aquas: “We are perfectly justified in seeing in this same devotion . . . a gift without price which our divine Saviour . . . imparted to the Church, His mystical Spouse in recent centuries when she had to endure such trials and surmount so many difficulties” (HA, art. 2).
The Holy Spirit, First Gift of the Heart of Christ
For Pope Pius XII, the Holy Spirit is the first Gift from the Heart of the risen Christ. This too is announced in today’s Gospel: “The Counselor, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (Jn 14:26). The work of the Holy Spirit is threefold. (1) The Holy Spirit is our Advocate with the Father, “interceding for us with sighs too deeps for words” because “we do not know how to pray as we ought” (Rom 8:26). (2) The Holy Spirit is sent to teach us all things, that is, to make clear for us “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Eph 3:8). (3) The Holy Spirit is sent to quicken the memory of the Church, to bring to remembrance all that Christ said, lest any word of His be neglected or forgotten.
Advocate, Teacher, and Prompter
The Holy Spirit is our Advocate, our Teacher, and our Prompter. As Advocate, the Holy Spirit aligns us with the prayer of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to the Father; “the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Rom 8:27), that is, according to the Heart of Christ. As Teacher, the Holy Spirit gives us “the power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge” (Eph 3:18); in a word, the Holy Spirit teaches us the Heart of Christ. As Prompter, the Holy Spirit calls to mind the words by which Christ communicates to us all “the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col 2:3) hidden in His Sacred Heart.

Thank you, Dom M
http://vultus.stblogs.org/sacred-heart-of-jesus/2007/05/

St. Jude statue

St. Jude, also called Thaddeus, was the Apostle who asked at the Lord at the Last Supper why he had manifested himself only if his disciples and not the whole world (Jn. 14:22)

A Saint of the day:    St. Jude (October 28)

Monday, 28 October 2013

Saint Simon and Saint Jude, apostles - Feast

The Last Supper, Leonardo da Vinci

Tradition has it that Jude the Apostle, patron saint of lost causes, preached in Judea and Samaria and later Syria, Iraq and Libya, before being martyred in Beirut. According to legend King Abgar of the small Aramaic kingdom of Edessa wrote to Christ during-His lifetime offering Him sanctuary, to which Jesus replied with an image of himself, and after His death St Thomas sent Jude to the king, who was cured of his ailment (historically Edessa did have a Christian presence in the first century).

Leonardo da Vinci,  Last Supper positions

As a result, Jude is traditionally shown holding an image of Jesus by his heart. Alternatively, he is shown with a flame over his head, signifying his presence at Pentecost as one of the 70 who received the Holy Spirit. For obvious reasons his life story is somewhat patchy - as is his very identity.  ude the Apostle is sometime identified as Thaddeus, and is twice called Jude of James in the New Testament, and he may be the same as the "Jude , brother of Jesus", the traditional author of the Epistle of Jude.

One biography, although stemming from the 14th century and so of questionable veracity, states that Jude was born into a Jewish family in Galilee and was

the bridegroom at the wedding of Cana, and that his wife was a cousin of the Virgin Mary. (This is possible: it's likely that among Jesus's closest followers would have been relatives).

Jude, along with Bartholomew, is traditionally seen as bringing Christi­anity to Armenia, the first nation to adopt Christianity as a state religion. St Thaddeus Monastery in what is now northern Iran still stands today, on the grounds of a church that dates back to AD68, and Dominicans visitors to Armenia in the 13th century found a substantial devotion to

the saint.

He was martyred in AD65 along with Simon the Zealot. Sometime later his body was brought to Rome and placed in St Peter's Basilica, and he remains there with Simon. Along with many of the early relics, traditions abound about where they have remained down the years, including a lake in Kyrgyzstan.

Before that, though, it is said that pilgrims went to his grave and that he acquired the title "the Saint for the Hopeless and the Despaired". He is also, due to the influence of the Dominicans and Claretians in the American Midwest, the patron saint of the Chicago Police Department.

 

St. Jude storm 28 Oct 2013

St. Mary's Light House, Whitley Bay

 See commentary: 

  http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2006/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20061011_en.html

BENEDICT XVI

GENERAL AUDIENCE

Saint Peter's Square
Wednesday, 11 October 2006

Simon and Jude

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Today, let us examine two of the Twelve Apostles: Simon the Cananaean and Jude Thaddaeus (not to be confused with Judas Iscariot). Let us look at them together, not only because they are always placed next to each other in the lists of the Twelve (cf. Mt 10: 3, 4; Mk 3: 18; Lk 6: 15; Acts 1: 13), but also because there is very little information about them, apart from the fact that the New Testament Canon preserves one Letter attributed to Jude Thaddaeus.    

COMMENT: Madre Antonia - Mexican Prison

Anne Marie Milwain

To Fr Donald

What a wonderful story.  I will share that.
Anne Marie
Sent from my iPad

On 27 Oct 2013, at 09:21, Fr Donald ... wrote.

+ + +

The Prison Angel: Mother Antonia's Journey from Beverly Hills to a Life of Service in a Mexican Jail

Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com ^(beta)

Amazon.com: 4.8 out of 5 stars  40 reviews  

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Can't put this book down! 9 May 2005

By Jennifer Bender - Published on Amazon.com

Format:Hardcover

Mother Antonia is the essence of love, and yet she makes you laugh, makes you feel cherished, and makes you feel like a better person. She is so spunky and exudes life, and despite her small and short frame, she has stories that are so intense that it scares you, yet amazes you at how someone can love the unlovable so sincerely. This book captures her spirit and her overflowing love so well, and it also shows the other side of her, which is so courageous that she even stands up to some of Mexico's most notorious druglords. I wish that everyone could meet her, and that is why I am so excited that this book exists, so that everyone can have a chance to get to know what she is like. I read this book in a day because I could not put it down. There are so many on-the-edge-of-your-seat stories that it captures you. It made me think, laugh, cry, made me want to make more of my life, made me want to give, and helped me to love more. Mother Antonia is a gift and a blessing to everyone that meets her or reads her story.

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Prison Angel 19 May 2005

By Edward A. Gargan - Published on Amazon.com

Format:Hardcover

Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan have written a rare and intimate book, one that traces the densely complex life of an american housewife from the glades of beverly hills to the cold and violent cells of a mexican prison; rare because journalists seldom plumb inner lives, and intimate because they lived with mother antonia in the prison where she works. this volume is rare as well because as much as it chronicles a life of consumate goodness, it does so within the harsh and often deadly atmosphere of mexican criminal life, the drug wars, vendettas, vengeance and betrayals. i read this book in one sitting; it cannot be put down.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary book about forgiveness, altruism and compassion 31 Jan 2006

By Vianey Garcia - Published on Amazon.com

Format:Hardcover

First of all, I knew who Madre Antonia was because I live in Tijuana and almost everybody here knows her or has heard of her. So when I heard there was a book about her I got really excited and tried to get a hold of a copy.

This book is very inspirational. Mother Antonia is my friend's godmother and when M. Jordan talked to her about writing a book about her life, Mother Antonia went to talk to my friend's dad (who had been the prison director before)and asked him what he thought about the idea of having a book about her work, she thought it wasn't right to tell everybody "Oh look all the things I've done", she just didn't want to feel like she was bragging about her actions, but my friend's dad told her that she didn't need to see it that way, she could see it as an inspiration for others to follow her steps. And I think it is exactly what this book is.

Mother Antonia gave up alot of things and decided to move into "La Peny" how people from Tijuana refer to La Mesa Prison. And like she said it's not self-sacrifice because what she does she does it with love and she enjoys it. This American nun is very sweet, she is always smiling, when you talk to her she always smiles. She bring help and warmth to prisioners, poor people and just anyone who looks for her and finds her.

This book definetely makes us think about how selfish we can be, sometimes we just live in our world thinking we have it all and don't even think about help the ones the have nothing. I'm going to be honest and say that this book made me feel really selfish. In fact, I already chose some stuff I'm going to take to Madre Antonia, you can just give her things and she will find people that need it. I felt bad because I told her I was going to bring her some things about a year ago and I didn't (being 10 minutes away from her ~_~) so now I'm definetely going to do it.

There were a lot of sentences that caught my attention, but right now I'm going to share only one:
"Look up into the sky and see a billion planets, and you'll see what power is. It doesn't come from a wallet or a weapon" Madre Antonia p.179

I recommended this book so so so much. It's tough to put down. The authors did an excellent job. You'll see that it will make you think about ways to help others. It's an incredible story. I promise you'll find yourself smiling at the fact that people like Madre Antonia still exists on this world.

Psalm 118 by Saint Ambrose

Monastic Office of Vigils.   

THIRTIETH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME  SUNDAY

First Reading

Jeremiah 23:9-17.21-29

Responsory   Lam 2:14; Jer 23:21

The visions your prophets saw for you were false and deceptive.

+They did not expose your sin, so as to reverse your fortunes.

V. I did not send these prophets; I did not speak to them. +They did not ...

Second Reading

From a commentary on Psalm 118 by Saint Ambrose
Expositio in Psalmum 118, 19, 36-39: CSEL 62, 440-442

You are near, Lord, and all your commandments are true. The Lord is near to all of us, because he is everywhere. We cannot escape him if we offend him, nor deceive him if we sin, nor lose him if we worship him. God watches everything, he sees every­thing. He is close to each one of us; as he says: I am a God who is close at hand. How can God fail to be everywhere, when you read of the Spirit of God that the Spirit of the Lord has filled the whole world? For where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is the Lord God. I fill heaven and earth, says the Lord. Where then can he fail to be who fills everything? Or how can we all share in his fullness unless he is near all of us?

So, knowing that God is everywhere, and fills the sky, the earth, and the sea, David says: Where can I escape from your Spirit, where flee from your face? If I go up to heaven you are there; if I go down to Sheol you are there; if I take flight before dawn to dwell at the sea's furthest end, even there your hand will lead me and your right hand hold me fast. In what few words he has shown that God is everywhere, and that wherever the Spirit of God is, there is God, and where God is there is his Spirit! The union of the indivisible Trinity is portrayed here, since it is the Son of God who pro­nounced these words through the mouth of the prophet. He spoke in his human nature, for he descended to earth in the incarnation, ascended to heaven in the resurrection, and through his bodily death went down to the underworld to free the prisoners. Or if you prefer to ascribe these words to the

prophet, you notice it is clearly shown that wherever God the Father and God's Holy Spirit are, Christ is near as the hand, and the right hand of God.

Since we know that the sun shines everywhere, can we doubt that the splendor of God's glory and the image of his being shines everywhere? What could the Word of God, the eternal splendor, not penetrate, when he illuminates even the hidden mind, which the sun itself cannot penetrate?

He penetrates the soul, then, and illuminates it as with the brightness of eternal light. But although his virtue is poured out among all and into all and over all, since he was born of the Virgin for the sake of all, both good and bad, just as he com­mands his sun to rise over good and bad, nevertheless he warms only those who come near to him. For just as people shut out the sun's brightness when they close the windows of their houses and choose to live in darkness, so those who turn their backs on the Sun of Righteousness cannot see its splendor. They walk in darkness, and it is plain to everyone that they them­selves are the cause of their blindness. Open your windows, then, so that your whole house shines with the brightness of the true Sun; open your eyes so that you can see the Sun of Righteousness rising for you.

Responsory   Jer 23:23-24; Ps 139:7

Am I a God when near at hand, and not a God when far away? Can anyone hide in a dark corner without my seeing him? + Do I not fill heaven and earth?

V. Where can I escape from your Spirit? Where flee from your face? + Do I not fill ...

Mother Antonia Brenner, born December 1 1926, died October 17 2013

 'Madre Antonia' in the chapel at the La Mesa prison in Tijuana

COMMMENT:
A friend passed on this cutting from The Daily Telegraph. The story will go far with blessing.

Mother Antonia Brenner

Mother Antonia Brenner was a twice-divorced socialite who renounced Hollywood glitz to live as a nun in a Mexican prison

6:30PM BST 23 Oct 2013

Mother Antonia Brenner, who has died aged 86, was a twice-divorced former Hollywood socialite and mother of seven who, in 1977, gave away most of her possessions, put on a homemade nun’s habit and went to live in a Mexican prison.

At first the Roman Catholic Church declined to give her its support; indeed for many years, as a divorcée she had been unable to take Holy Communion. Nothing daunted, she left her home in Ventura, California, packed in her job, made her vows in private and moved into a bunk in the women’s wing of La Mesa Tijuana, a prison housing 7,500 male and 500 female prisoners, later moving to her own 10-by-10-ft concrete cell.

La Mesa was a notorious hellhole where rich drug lords ruled the roost while hundreds of their poorer brethren lived in the cold and squalor amid rats and raw sewage, with no beds, food or even lavatory paper unless their relatives brought supplies. Brutalised prison guards contributed to the misery, mistreating the mentally ill and administering cruel interrogations.

Over the next 30 years “Madre Antonia”, as she came to be known, transformed the atmosphere. Armed with a Bible, a Spanish dictionary and her own unassailable moral authority, she waded into riots and gun battles; shamed prison authorities into improving conditions and brought human rights violations to the attention of newspapers.

'Madre Antonia' with a statue of St Paul outside the La Mesa prison chapel (AP)

She persuaded doctors and dentists to hold free clinics, got local bakers to donate bread to supplement the meagre prison rations, rescued lavatories from junk yards and insisted on their being installed, prayed with prisoners and guards and got to know their families. She taught offenders to acknowledge they had done wrong, and many would later testify that her example had persuaded them to mend their ways.

She also took on the Mexican legal system, raising money to pay fines to keep petty offenders out of prison and accompanying inmates to court in order to force judges to justify the wildly different sentences they handed out to rich and poor. One Tijuana judge acknowledged that she had convinced him that class should not be a factor in the administration of justice.
After a year her service came to the attention of the ecclesiastical authorities, and 18 months into her ministry the Bishop of Tijuana, Juan Jesus Posadas, made her an auxiliary Mercedarian, an order which works among prisoners. Subsequently her work came to the attention of Pope John Paul II who gave her his blessing. In 1991 Mother Teresa visited Tijuana to see her work.
In 1997 Antonia began the process of forming the Eudist Servants of the Eleventh Hour, a religious community of women who serve the poor and downtrodden. She bought a house near the prison to serve as a refuge for women leaving the prison, for women and children visiting family members, and women and children in Tijuana for cancer treatment. In 2003 the community, many of them older women who had been turned away by other religious communities because of their age, was formally accepted by the Bishop of Tijuana.
The second of three children, she was born Mary Clarke on December 1 1926 in Los Angeles, to Irish immigrant parents. Her mother died when she was pregnant with her fourth child, leaving her 24-year-old husband to raise his children on his own.
During the Depression he struggled to keep food on the table, but in Mary’s teenage years he became a successful businessman, supplying carbon paper and other office items, and moved his family to a luxurious new home in Beverly Hills, where neighbours included Hedy Lamarr, John Barrymore and Dinah Shore. Weekends were spent at a beach house overlooking the Pacific and, as she moved into the Hollywood social scene, Mary Clarke’s wardrobe filled with mink coats and ball gowns.
Yet her father never allowed his children to forget their duty to the less fortunate and with her father’s encouragement she became involved in projects to send medical supplies to people in need in Africa, India, Korea, the Philippines and South America.
A vivacious and attractive blonde, Mary had no shortage of male admirers, and at the age of 19 she married a former serviceman. They had three children (one of whom predeceased her), but her husband’s addiction to gambling left the family in debt. Five years later she divorced him and went to work to support her children. In 1950 she married Carl Brenner, with whom she had five more children. When her father died in 1956, she took over his business. All the time she continued to do charity work.
In 1965 she accompanied a priest on a mission to deliver medicine and other supplies to Tijuana, Mexico, where they ended up at La Mesa prison. She was so haunted by the plight of the inmates, she could not stop thinking about them. “When it was cold, I wondered if the men were warm; when it was raining, if they had shelter,” she recalled in an interview in 1982. She began visiting the prison on a regular basis, bringing in carloads of medicine, food and clothes, and attending to the material and spiritual needs of both inmates and guards.
From early on in her second marriage Mary Brenner realised that she and her husband had little in common, and as time went by they lived almost completely separate lives. By 1966 she had come to believe that her prison work was her true vocation, inspired by a dream in which she was a prisoner awaiting execution and Christ came to take her place. In 1970 she closed her father’s business and two years later divorced her husband.
In 2005 Mother Antonia was the subject of a book, The Prison Angel, by Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan.
She remained in regular contact with her seven children, who survive her.

Mother Antonia Brenner, born December 1 1926, died October 17 2013

Scotland: St Ninian's Institute

Archbishop Mennini, Bishop Logan and VIP guests at inauguration - image: Paul McSherry

Scotland: St Ninian's Institute inaugurated by Papal Nuncio

By: Harry Schnitker

Posted: Friday, October 25, 2013

Scotland’s first Catholic higher education institute in modern times, was inaugurated yesterday. The Papal Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Archbishop Antonio Mennini, presided at the official opening of the new Saint Ninian’s Institute in Dundee yesterday (Thursday 25 October). His Excellency also was chief celebrant at Mass in the Institute’s chapel afterwards. The new institute has been named after Scotland’s first saint, and was inaugurated by Bishop-Emeritus Vincent Logan of Dunkeld to commemorate the visit of Emeritus-Pope Benedict XVI to Scotland on St Ninian’s Day 2010. It is based at St Joseph’s, Lawside, Dundee. St Ninian's will offer long-distance learning modules in Catholic theology and culture, and provide opportunities for ecumenical initiatives. Personal learning will be augmented by residential weekends and lectures. The first annual lecture series, marking the Year of Faith, has set the standard, with national and international academic contributors. There will be a strong emphasis on the arts, with courses in sacred music, history and art, which will appeal to a Catholic and non-Catholic audience alike. In conjunction with the Maryvale Ecclesiastical Institute, Birmingham, research PhDs may be undertaken at St Ninian’s.

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Tags: Archbishop Antonio Mennini, Bishop-Emeritus Vincent Logan of Dunkeld, Dundee,Saint Ninian’s Institute, Scotland’s first Catholic higher education institute

Monastic life at Nunraw Abbey 2 - Abbot Mark

FRIDAY OCTOBER 4 2013

SCOTTISH CATHOLIC OBSERVER

REFLECTION

Roots are the firm foundation for our lives,
and for our Faith.

ABBOT MARK CAIRA of NUNRAW writes
in this week’s SCO spirituality section.

The New Abbey, construction 1952-1970

Roots

It’s common enough nowadays to want to go back to our family roots, to see where we came from.  We need to feel that we belong to someone or we like to become identified with something.   We want to get to the truth of our history.  So much of what we believe about ourselves and our past may have become oversimplified and maybe distorted.  The truth can often be more interesting than what we first believed.  It would be surprising if some of our personal history or anything that we are associated with did not have a degree of fiction about it.  However, we are told that the truth will set us free.  To be someone we don’t have to be larger than life, like some of the mega stars in today’s world.

Beginnings

Like all religious Orders, Cistercians have been looking at their early history.  Contrary to a popular belief, St Bernard was not their founder.  That popular assumption may have arisen because Bernard wrote so much about the life and times of the Order, or perhaps from the influence he undoubtedly had in his own lifetime.  Before he appeared on the scene, it was a small group of monks who founded the monastery of Cîteaux in 1098 in northern France. This was the seed that grew into the Cistercian Order.

This little band of monks was led by Sts Robert, Alberic and Stephen Harding, an Englishman.  Each one of them no doubt had their own strengths and weaknesses of personality.  But together they put down their roots in the wooded area of Cîteaux.  There they set about creating a suitable environment in which they could continue their search for God.  There are different reasons given as to why they left their monastery to make this new foundation.  The one that lies nearest the truth is that they wanted to live the Rule of St Benedict more strictly according to what they believed St Benedict intended when he wrote his rule for monks in the sixth century.

It used to be claimed that these first Cistercians were reacting against a decadent monasticism.  That is far from the truth.  The eleventh and twelfth centuries were periods of enormous change in Church and society.  People were being challenged with new ideas and ways of doing things.  There were obvious risks involved but peoples’ lives did become more meaningful.

In the Church itself at this time, men and women were being drawn by charismatic and holy figures who were setting up new forms of community life.  What they were offering was different from what went before. This upsurge of interest threw up new forms of monastic life some of which still exist today.  Perhaps the best known of these are the Carthusians under the inspiration of St Bruno.

The Benedictine monks of this period were themselves far from decadent.  One accusation against them was that they were lax or had lost their vision.  But it wasn’t entirely a case of White Monks (Cistercians) rejecting the loose living of Black Monks (Benedictines).  Around this time, for example, there were the Benedictine monks of Cluny who lived edifying lives.   These were headed by a number of very holy abbots over a period of 200 years.  The feast day of these Holy Abbots of Cluny is kept on 11 May.

Then and Now

Robert, Alberic and Stephen and their companions left their original monastery because they sought to live more simply and strictly than their monastery allowed.  They didn’t leave to follow some charismatic figure.  With St Robert and his companions it was a matter of doing things together.  When Robert was asked to return to his previous monastery, Alberic was elected Cîteaux’s next abbot and when he died Stephen was chosen to replace him.

It was only later that the first monks of Cîteaux began to develop and organise their lifestyle so that their first spirit would be protected for the future.  They adapted to the times.  Because of that they became the most influential and popular of the new monastic groups of the twelfth century.

These early Cistercians were responding to changed times in which uncertainty and experiment were part of the spirit of the time.  God was still calling people to leave their ordinary ways of life but the manner was different.  The characteristics of the Cistercian way were the call to simplicity and authenticity, without giving up beauty in their liturgy or pleasing forms to their buildings. 

Religious communities today are facing reduced numbers.  This does not necessarily mean that the days of religious communities are over.  But we do need to be more alert in today’s world to what God is asking of us.  People are still searching for God, seeking how to tune into his wavelength.  It is the vocation of everyone to make time and space in their lives to receive the message God is sending out.  Not all of us are good at this but we can all pray that those who do have this gift from God may help us become more attuned to it.

The men and women of the eleventh and twelfth centuries were called to serve God in the new ways that their society both offered and needed.  God didn’t stop calling them to give themselves to the needs of the Church and society then.  It’s not likely that he has stopped doing that now. 

Through the ages every religious order has had to take stock of itself.  Everyone in fact needs to do that.  Those who do this well will find peace in their lives.  Those who do not are likely to wither.  It is the old call of the Gospel for renewal and transformation.  When we let God into our lives we get to know what the love of God is.  If we don’t make an effort to do this or simply ignore God, it doesn’t mean that he will leave us alone – just that it will take God a little longer to show us what is best for us.

 

South Cloister, sunset window reflections