Following the retirement of Dom Brendan Freeman, who has served as abbot since 1984, the monks of New Melleray Abbey will elect a new abbot on August 3.
Following the retirement of Dom Brendan Freeman, who has served as abbot since 1984, the monks of New Melleray Abbey will elect a new abbot on August 3.
The junior directors, those monks and nuns who oversee the continuing formation of those who have made simple profession, met at Gethsemani Abbey from June 10 thorug June 17. Eleven communities were represented.
They shared ideas about their work by reflecting together on a recent book by Michael Casey, OCSO.
The Cistercian Order of the Strict Observance has its origin in that monastic tradition of evangelical life that found expression in the Rule for Monasteries of Saint Benedict of Nursia. The founders of Cîteaux gave this tradition a particular form and the monasteries of the Strict Observance strongly defended certain of its principles. In 1892 the three congregations of the Strict Observance combined to form a single order, now called the Cistercian Order of the Strict Observance.
This Order is a monastic institute wholly ordered to contemplation. The nuns / monks dedicate themselves to the worship of God in a hidden life within the monastery under the Rule of St Benedict
Maggie Ross has this on her blog Voice in the Wilderness:
Like the Cistercian contemplative life, theology is a discipline of learning how to see, how to read, how to recognize the presence of God amidst our own brokenness and weakness as the region not only of wound but of wisdom, a wisdom that is to become in us a balm for the wounds of the world. At the conclusion of Lauds on my last morning at Santa Rita, the Prioress brought us into the Our Father with these words: "Father of peace, increase in us your peace so that we might be peace in the world for which we live." Words to live by even as we give testimony to unsaying with the one and only life we have to live. — Michael Downey
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