(Matthew 25: 14-30) Fear is sometimes contrasted with bravery and thought (by some) to be a sign of weakness or cowardice. However, as we know, there are many instances when fear is not only appropriate, but beneficial and, indeed, even essential to survival. This beneficial fear typically occurs in situations of danger connected with the […]
All Saints of the Benedictine Family
The radical and literal laying down of one’s life for one’s friends is generally an exception in the life of most Christians and monks. However, this does not mean that this noble deed is without relevance in our ordinary daily lives. Every time we resist our selfish inclinations or don’t satisfy our self-centered wishes and […]
Fr. James’ Homily for the 32nd Sunday
Thirty-Second Sunday, Year A, 8 November, 2020: Wisdom 6:12-16; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; Matthew 25:1-13 For the past seven Sundays, the Gospel has come from the final week of Jesus’ life as described by Saint Matthew. This is a crucial, almost desperate, teaching, sometimes addressed to Jesus’ critics or, like today, to his disciples. I […]
Saturday of the 31st Week
For the monk, detachment is another word for inner freedom. One of the paths to this detachment is asceticism. A common pitfall, however, is inadvertently reinforcing our sinful self-will with our ascetic practices. More than one novice has clung to his self-will by resisting the novicemaster’s efforts to curb his overzealous asceticism. A safer and […]
A Word from our Cistercian Fathers
“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord.” I love you, O Lord, my strength; through you every hostile power yields to me, worm that I am, and the guile of the ancient Serpent is laughed to scorn by the angels you send to minister to us, so that his desire to hurt is […]
Friday of the 30th Week
Several authors in our present refectory book have alluded to the idea that human beings are what might be termed destructive intruders into nature’s harmony and that the earth would probably be a whole lot better off without us! Similarly, Christianity (in the view of some) is directly implicated in the misuse and exploitation of […]
Friday of the 29th Week
As more than one wise person has insisted, peace is about more than the absence of war or conflict. True peace is, among other things, inseparable from unity, that fruit of self-forgetting love. Living life detached and separated from one another may obviate conflict and engender a pseudo-peace, but this is usually little more than […]
Fr. James’ Homily for the 29th Sunday
Twenty-ninth Sunday, Year A, 18 October, 2020: Isaiah 45:1, 4-6; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-5b; Matthew 22:15-21 Saint Paul writes to the Romans: Let every person be subordinate to the higher authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been established by God. Paul writes as a Roman citizen, with […]
Friday of the 28th Week
Dualism, that old and recurring heresy that would pit the body against the soul—seeing the former as evil and the latter good—would seem to find support in Jesus insisting that we are not to fear those who kill the body, but after that can do no more. For, this could be made to imply that […]
A Word from our Cistercian Fathers
The day in which man/woman goes out to his/her own proper work symbolizes turning towards God in investigation and imitation, to knowing and loving God, and, not least, to delighting in such knowledge and love. Man/woman has been made in the image and likeness of God for the sake of this knowledge and love; and […]