Showing posts with label Chapter Talk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chapter Talk. Show all posts

Thursday, 3 September 2015

Chapter Talk - 2 September 2015 Br. Philip

Nunraw Abbey sign - roadside Last Supper 
Chapter Talk - 2 September 2015
Br. Philip

The Mass and Monastic Life

At every liturgical function Jesus, Head of the Church, is present with His whole mystical Body, offering praise to the Father and sanctifying the souls of men.

Therefore it is clear that in the Liturgy we find Jesus as our Redeemer and Sanctifier. But it is above all in the mass, which is the very heart of the Liturgy, that we discover Christ Himself and ourselves in Him

The mass, particularly the Conventual m. ass, is the very heart of the monastic life, because in it the monastic community and all the persons who go to make it up, unite with Christ the High Priest in the very Mystery of His great Redemptive act which is made present upon the altar. At every mass, Christ Is present to us as immolated and risen from the dead and the Church is immolated and rises with Him. At every mass, the new life of the Spirit, the life of the sons of God, is renewed in us as we participate in the sacrifice of the Divine High Priest, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

The Mass is the very heart of our monastic sacrifice of ourselves to God. At every mass and Communion we have the very essence of our monastic immolation of ourselves with Christ. At the Consecration we bow down and renew our total surrender to the will of God in and with Jesus Crucified. At mass we enter into the holy of holies, the sanctuary of Heaven with him. At mass, the whole Body of Christ stands before the face of the Heavenly Father and adores His infinite holiness, makes perfect reparation for all sin, thanks Him for all His gifts and above all thanks Him for His great glory. In so doing, the Church also petitions Him for mercy and for grace and for all the temporal blessings that we need in order to live as the children of God. Above all, in Communion we are sacramentally united to the risen and glorified Saviour, the principle of our life "in the Spirit". We are also united to each and other more closely in the "Spirit of Christ" because by our Communion we grow in charity.

It is in the Mass and Liturgy that we are most truly and perfectly monks, because it is there that we most fully live our life in Christ, finding Him whom we have come to seek, submitting in and with Him to the Father's will.

Cf. Thomas Merton, ocso.


Thursday, 18 June 2015

Monastic Life - Wednesday Chapte Br. Philip


 
     


Br. Philip. Wednesday Talk

Monastic Life                                   Chapter Talk – 17 June 2015

The Beginning – the Word

Jesus Christ did not directly found the monastic life, but He did have its origins in His preaching, for this included those elements which later became characteristic of the way of life of monks.  Did Jesus not tell us that “we must leave all to follow Him”?  That we must “sell our possessions and give to the poor” and that we must “renounce marriage” for the sake of the Kingdom”?  Did not Jesus surround Himself with men and women disciples who shared His everyday life and His care for the coming of the Kingdom and especially His mysterious dialogue with the Father?

Jesus appeared to his contemporaries as equal to those great men of the Old Testament who had been suddenly uprooted from their ordinary lives by the power of the word of God, so that they might be more completely dedicated to God’s service.  Men such as Abraham, Moses and the prophets.

From the beginning of sacred history the word of God has never ceased to work in this way.  It calls each one, inviting him in a special way to Him and dedicating him to a particular service.  The word of God recreates a man from the depths of his being – if necessary even changing his name.  In this way, through the call of one individual, the life of a whole people can be profoundly changed and they can be led to God.

At the beginning of every Christian life is the word of the Lord.  It comes in many ways, but it always calls accepted values and standards into question and stirs the soul of the believer to its depths.  St Anthony the Great, the father of monks owed his vocation to a word of the Gospel, heard by chance during a celebration of the Eucharist one day; “If you wish to go the whole way, go sell your possessions and give to the poor, and then you will have riches in Heaven; come follow Me.  Anthony did not know where this would lead him.  But the word of Jesus suddenly coming alive in his heart was call enough.  On the strength of it, he committed his whole life.

Likewise, two centuries later, St Benedict who was to become the Patriarch of the monks of the West, did not know any other way than that of the Gospel.  St Benedict knew that his Rule would not supplant the Gospel.  On the contrary, when he wrote the final chapter he recalled that the Rule is only a sort of humbly beginning, a kind of manual of introduction to what he calls “the heights of perfection, the loftier summits of teaching and virtue” which the disciple will find in every page of the scriptures.  The word of God is the sole rule of life and it alone is more than adequate.  Any religious rule has meaning only to the extent that it can make the demands of the word of God specifically.  It must apply the Gospels to the concrete circumstances of a particular age and culture.  St Benedict knew nothing of the world wide destiny of his Rule.  He was content to prepare his monks to hear the word of the Gospel and to follow Christ.


_____ cf. Andre Louf  

Saturday, 21 February 2015

Wednesday Chapter Talk by Br. Barry

 Chapter Talk  
        
Feb 18 at 12:45 PM
Wednesday Chapter talk attached.
For good stuff on Evagrius, see ldysinger.com (website of Luke Dysinger O.S.B.).
Barry.

INTRODUCTION.
Chapter 67 of the Rule, ‘Brothers Sent On A Journey’, gives some indication of what ‘enclosure’ meant to Saint Benedict:
‘no-one should relate to anyone else what he saw or heard outside the monastery because that causes the greatest harm’ (v. 5).
Why does it cause the greatest harm?  St. Benedict has already provided the answer, in chapter 4 verse 20: ‘your way of acting should be different from the world’s way’.
That verse is expressed in the Constitutions of our Order thus: ‘those who prefer nothing to the love of Christ make themselves strangers to the actions of the world’. That is from the Constitution on ‘Separation From The World’. ‘Separation’ seems to be the preferred Cistercian expression for enclosure.
STRANGERS 1.
‘Strangers to the actions of the world’ – it was to make themselves such strangers that the Holy Founders of the Cistercians ‘headed for the desert place called Citeaux’ as the Exordium Parvum puts it. (The Exordium Parvum being the first account of the origins of Citeaux).
They understood that ‘the more despicable and unapproachable the place was for seculars, the more suited it was for monastic observance’. The description of Citeaux as a ‘desert’ was quite deliberate, a piece of medieval propaganda or spin. The Cistercians are of course only one example, out of many, of the monastic reform movements of the 11th and 12th centuries. Likewise, accounts of starvation diets among pioneer communities took a standard form. St. Stephen Murat, founder of the Grandmontines, more or less contemporary with the first Cistercians and located only about 150 miles from Citeaux, is said to have lived off nothing but nuts, berries and ‘floury dumplings’. As he lived to over 80 years of age, it would be interesting to know what exactly the ingredients of those floury dumplings were.
For the monastic reformers, strict enclosure or separation was a vital element because it represented to them the desert of the Desert Fathers. It was an integral part of their stated desire to return to the origins of monasticism – the inspiration of the Desert Fathers and/or the ‘purity’ of the Rule of Saint Benedict. However, the Cistercian historian Louis Lekai says about this, ‘changes rarely generated universal enthusiasm among monks; therefore those who prepared such moves were compelled to disguise their intentions as attempts to return to certain ancient and hallowed traditions’.
So, concerning the purity of the Rule, as Fr. Hugh pointed out the other week, it was never a question of a literal following of the Rule for the Founders of Citeaux. The Exordium Parvum refers to ‘the monastic observance they had already conceived in their mind’. In other words, their own particular interpretation of the Rule.
The Exordium lists many things which the Founders rejected because they were not found in the Rule; manors, tithes, serfs and so on but in their enthusiasm for introducing laybrothers they conveniently omit to say that St. Benedict makes no mention of laybrothers. Not such a pure interpretation of the Rule after all.
STRANGERS 2.
‘Strangers to the actions of the world’. There are resonances in that phrase with the Proper prayer for the Office of St. Anthony, Father of Monks, which speaks of his ‘strange and wonderful way of life’. It is very insightful of the liturgy to pick out ‘strangeness’ as a defining characteristic of the monastic way of life.
The monk, sad to say, will always be strange to society at large. Although enclosure today is under threat – the Internet, the all-pervasive media, increasing numbers of lay staff – still, the monk has separation thrust upon him whether he likes it or not.
Just by taking up monastic life, entering a monastery, wearing a monastic habit, he becomes a figure of fun or suspicion or even hostility. Let’s face it, he becomes like an alien from outer space to many people.
This can be hard to take, especially in the light of what is perhaps the ultimate purpose of monastic enclosure or separation. This purpose was given its classic expression by the great Desert Father, Evagrius of Pontus. He wrote: ‘the monk is separated from all in order to be united to all’.
In this experience, the monk shares in what happened to the Saviour when ‘he came unto his own and his own received him not’.


COMMENT: Interest of the Melrose interview by Br Barry. 

BBC not currently available.

Our Blogspot illustrations;
28 Apr 2014
Interview at Melrose Abbey. A monk from Nunraw Abbey was invited by historian Rory Stewart, to participate in the production. Br. Barry was warmly welcome by the staff. It can be difficult to open the BBC iPlayer - the pictures ...

Episode 1, Border Country: The Story of Britain's Lost ... - BBC

www.bbc.co.uk › Factual › History
Border Country: The Story of Britain's Lost Middleland Episode 1 of 2. For historian and MP Rory Stewart, the building of Hadrian's Wall was the single most   
historian and MP Rory Stewart
  ...
BBC Border Country The Story of Britains Lost Middleland-Episode 2