Seeking Jesus because you need him and seeking Jesus because you love him can be complementary aspects of our relationship to Christ. However, seeking Jesus (as did the crowds in today’s gospel) only because you need him and require his help is indicative of a still one-sided and immature relationship that lacks the mutuality of […]
Saturday Memorial of Our Lady
Saturday of the 21st Week of the Year: Some notions of humility would find this virtue exemplified in the third servant with the one talent who humbly admitted his failure to trade with that single talent. In contrast, the servant who received five talents and made five more seems proud and even boastful. And yet […]
DEPARTURE
After nearly two years of patient discernment and prayer our Brother Mark Amaral has come to the realization that he is not called to cloistered Cistercian life. His initial plans are to move to Massachusetts in order to be nearer his family. We are grateful for Mark’s time with us and trust that his stay […]
Solemnity of Saint Bernard
Greatness and littleness seem to be mutually exclusive. Any yet in the spiritual realm, as we know, littleness paradoxically opens us to greatness. Once greatness is achieved, however, littleness must be preserved if true greatness is not to be lost. Bernard, often mistakenly (but understandably) thought to be the founder of our Order, is someone […]
Abbot Joseph’s Homily for the 19th Sunday of the Year
Saints are spiritual heroes we look up to and yet while they offer encouragement and inspiration they can also be intimidating in their radical commitment to Christ. And so we may find ourselves more inclined to admire rather than emulate them. This is because some of the saints seem to have been fearless, resolute, unwavering, […]
Tuesday of the 19th Week of the Year
The paradox of a scroll tasting sweet to Ezekiel despite being inscribed with lamentation and woe, suggests that it wasn’t the lamentations and woe, per se, that made it sweet, but rather that these were calling God’s rebellious people back to fidelity and friendship. In this sense, all suffering that serves to draw us back […]
Saturday of the 18th Week of the Year
Matthew 17:14-20 A man came up to Jesus, knelt down before him, and said, “Lord, have pity on my son, who is a lunatic and suffers severely; often he falls into fire, and often into water. I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him.” Jesus said in reply, “O faithless and […]
Tuesday of the 18th Week of the Year
The fear of failure can be a very inhibiting state of mind that can constrict our lives and interfere with our full human development—both spiritually and psychologically. Peter can serve as a powerful antidote to this fear. Despite several major failures in his life he doesn’t allow fear of further failure deter him. And so […]
Friday of the 17th Week of the Year
Although the formal period of prophecy is said to have ended with John the Baptist, God’s claim to Jeremiah that he constantly sends his servants the prophets still holds true in our own time. Our problem is that we don’t recognize the voices of prophecy sounding in the course of every day calling us to […]
Tuesday of the 17th Week of the Year
Jeremiah was clearly a humble man: After having repeatedly warned his fellow Israelites of their impending doom, he makes no effort to smugly remind them of this when disaster falls. On the contrary, he identifies himself completely with their sinfulness, intercedes on their behalf and, as we know, quietly suffers with them in the tragic […]