Abbots Meet at Cistercian General Chapter in Rome

September 2002

Dom Jude and Dom Joseph of Mt St Bernard, taken as they crossed the white line from Italy to Vatican City at the entrance to the Pope’s summer home, Castel Gandolfo in the Alban Hills.

Dom Donald with Dom Damian, Abbot of Gethsemani,

at the entrance to assembly of General Chapter


	Abbot General, Bishop Mununu(formerly Prior of Kasanza) & Dom Ambrose.

AUDIENCE AT THE GENERAL CHAPTER OF THE CISTERCIAN ORDER OF THE STRICT OBSERVANCE (TRAPPISTS)

September 19,2002In the interior court of the apostolic palace of Castel Gandolfo, at the end of the morning, John Paul II received the Abbots and Abbesses of the Cistercian Order of the Strict Observance, as well as the monks and nuns participating in the General Chapter .This is the text of the discourse addressed by the Pope to the Trappists and Trappistines present at the audience:

DISCOURSE OF THE HOLY FATHER

The meeting of the two General Chapters of the venerable Cistercian Order of the Strict Observance offers me the pleasant opportunity of meeting with you, dear Abbots and Abbesses, as well as the representatives of the Trappist monks and nuns.

1. Thank you for this visit by which you want to renew the expression of your fidelity to the successor of Peter. I salute each one of you affectionately. I address a particular and grateful thought to Dom Bemardo Olivera who was the interpreter of our common sentiments and who brought out the end and objectives of your meeting. Through you I salute the Brothers and Sisters of your monasteries spread in all parts of the world. The Pope thanks you because from the silence of your cloisters, an incessant prayer for his ministry and the intentions and necessities of the entire ecclesial community goes up toward heaven.
2. Dear Brothers and Sisters! You are meeting these days to reflect on how the common spiritual patrimony, while preserving intact the spirit of its origins, can respond ever better to the exigencies of the present world. Humanity, especially following recent tragic events whose anniversary was celebrated in these days, appears disoriented and in search of securities: it thirsts for the truth, it longs for peace.
But where to seek a sure refuge, if not in God? Only in the divine mercy, I remembered this in my recent trip to Poland, can the world find peace and humankind, happiness. Of this secret, hidden from the wise and learned, but revealed to little ones (Cf. Mt II :25), your monasteries have been the privileged places for centuries.
Since the beginning, in fact, the Cistercians distinguished themselves by a sort of "mystical passion" in showing how the sincere search for God, through austerity and asceticism, leads to the ineffable joy of the spousal encounter with Him in Christ. This is what St. Bernard teaches when he says that the one who thirsts for the Most High has nothing left of his own and thereafter has everything in common with God. And he adds that in such a situation the soul "asks for neither liberty nor recompense, nor inheritance, nor even doctrine, but the kiss (of God) as a very chaste spouse, ardent with holy love and totally incapable of concealing the .flame from the one who embraces him". (Saint Bernard, Super Cantica Canticorum 7.2).
3. This exalted spirituality conserves all its witness value in the present cultural context which too often stirs up the desire for false goods and artificial paradises. Your vocation, very dear Brothers and Sisters, through a recollected existence at La Trappe, is truly a witness of the high ideal of sanctity which is seen in an unconditional love for God, infinite goodness and reflects a love which mystically embraces all humanity in prayer.
Your life style points out well these two givens in which love consists. You do not live as hermits in community, but as cenobites in a special desert. God manifests himself in your personal solitude, as well as in the solidarity that unites you to the members of the community. Your are alone and separated from the world in order that you can go beyond yourselves on the path of divine intimacy.
At the same time you share this spiritual experience with other brothers and sisters in a constant balance between personal contemplation and union with the liturgy of the Church. Keep intact this charismatic patrimony! It constitutes a richness for the entire Christian people.
4. The expansion of the Order, especially in the Far East, places you today in contact with different religious traditions with which it is necessary to weave a wise and prudent dialogue so that the unique light of Christ shines out everywhere in the plurality of cultures. Jesus is the resplendent sun of which the Church should be the faithful reflection, following the expression "mysterium lunae" especially dear to the contemplation of the Fathers. This duty, as I wrote in the Apostolic Letter "Novo millenio ineunte" makes us tremble if we take into account human fragility, but it becomes possible when we are open to the renewing grace of God (Cf. No.55).
May the sometimes very painful difficulties and trials not discourage you, dear Brothers and Sisters, Regarding this, I think of the seven monks of O.L. of Atlas at Tibhirine in Algeria, savagely assassinated in May of 1996. May their blood poured out be the seeds of holy and numerous vocations for your monasteries in Europe where ageing has increased in your monasteries of monks and nuns, and in other parts of the planet where another need is felt, the grace to assure the formation of numerous aspirants to the Cistercian life. I also hope for a more organic unity among the diverse branches of the Order, which would give in a manner ever more eloquent, the witness of a common charism.
5. "Duc in altum"! (Lk 5:4) I address to you also, very dear Brothers and Sisters, the invitation of Jesus to go out into the deep, invitation which resounded for the entire Christian people at the end of the great Jubilee year 2000. Go forward without fear on the road already begun, animated with the "good zeal" of which St. Benedict speaks in his Rule, preferring absolutely nothing to Christ (Cf. Chapter 72).
May Mary, the Holy Virgin, accompany you with vigilance and may the saints and blessed of the Order protect you. The Pope assures you of his constant remembrance in prayer and with all his heart blesses you who are here and your monastic communities.