It’s important to be realistic about Lenten Reading. If you’re the sort of person who has trouble finishing things, you may want to set modest goals. If your life is usually invaded by the unexpected, you may not want to start a book that’s too demanding. If you live alone and are young enough, even […]
Some Short Books For Busy People
This will be the first list of suggested reading for Lent. If you’re a very busy person, you may only have time for a few sentences a day. That can be VERY nourishing and support a habit of daily reading. From Thomas Merton: Opening the Bible, Liturgical Press, 1970; 84 pages What Is Contemplation? Templegate Publishers, 1981, 77 […]
Lenten Reading
Lent is just a week away. In our monastery–as in monasteries everywhere–we follow the practice of Lenten Reading prescribed by St. Benedict in his Rule. In Chapter 48 he writes: “During this time of Lent each one is to receive a book from the library, and is to read the whole of it straight through. These […]
Silence and community
People still ask Trappists about the “vow of silence”. For example, “Since Vatican II, do you still take a vow of silence?” In fact there never was a vow of silence and maintaining perpetual silence could not constitute approriate matter for a public vow. Silence is a monastic value, not a purely Trappist trimming on the […]
Living Simply
Obviously, monks and nuns do not live in a different world from you. The fact that you can read this blog means I am using a computer, I send and receive email and I have the same instantaneous access to information that you do. If we didn’t, how would we communicate with you or understand […]
Hope
Retreatants at Holy Cross Abbey will recognize Fr. Edmund as the confessor available to them at the Abbey. Here are some of his reflections on the virtue of HOPE from a recent homily. Jospeh Pieper in is book, On Hope, states that, “The virtue of hope is preeminently the virtue of the status viatoris-the pilgrim on […]
Monks And Sustainable Practices
I imagine to some, Sustainability, taking responsiblity for the environment and our limited resources, can seem like a fad. If you think about it, sustainable practices, recycling, renewing certain sources of our energy was how we all once lived. After the agricultural revolution in Europe during the eighteenth century, which improved production and may have […]
Signs and Sacramentals
When I first entered the community, I was drawn by the simplicity of the life and the simplicity of the surroundings: the church where we worship as a community is free of distracting decoration, for example. This spoke to me of a deep spirituality beyond words and symbols, without physical images that can replace the […]
The Next Sixty Years
For over sixty years monks of the Cistercian Order of the Strict Observance, commonly known as Trappists, have been adoring God in the Shenandoah Valley. This photo of our modest church is far from gratuitous: it’s an apt symbol of our vocation. This particular view shows the choir stalls where the community meets to pray […]