Monastic Wisdom Series – serie

Cassian and the Fathers is the initial volume in the series of Novitiate Conferences of Thomas Merton, the classes he presented to young men beginning their monastic life at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. They contain Merton's insights on important Patristic and monastic figures preceding the time of St. Benedict, above all John Cassian, the most significant bridge between the early desert fathers and the development of monastic life in the West, and they reveal the continuing relevance of their teachings for contemporary monastics and other Christians. Much of the value and interest of Cassian and the Fathers, as of the novitiate conferences in general, lies in the light it casts on Merton himself as teacher, novice master and monk. These notes provide a privileged standpoint for observing Merton functioning as an integral and important member of his monastic community. The 'public' Merton has long been visible in his works written for publication, and has more recently been complemented by the 'interpersonal' Merton disclosed in his correspondence and the 'intimate' Merton revealed in his complete journals.While the novitiate conferences may not equal in significance these other sources, they do allow access to yet another stratum of Merton's wide-ranging and immensely productive engagement with his world from the distinctive standpoint he had chosen within a tradition dating back more than sixteen centuries. While these lectures need to be used critically and carefully in evaluating Merton's own perspectives and commitments, nevertheless they do need to be used.The dialectical relationship between Merton's private and more public statements, including those made to his novice classes, makes possible a more complex and thus a richer picture of his monastic identity and so of his personal identity. In learning about Cassian and the Fathers from Merton, one learns as well about Merton as monk, as heir to the great monastic teachers, and as teacher of a new generation of monks, an easily overlooked and undervalued, yet integral, even central component of his vocation for more than half his monastic life. Thus the publication of the novitiate conferences will fill a significant lacuna in Merton studies and contribute to a balanced, holistic comprehension and appreciation of Thomas Merton's life and work.This edition includes an extensive introduction situating these conferences and Merton's years as novice master in the context of his broader life as monk and writer, an extensively annotated edition of the text of the conferences based on Merton's own typescript, and helpful appendices indicating changes Merton made to his text, correlating the written text with taped versions of the actual classes, and providing suggestions for further reading both in Merton's other works and in more recent studies of the figures he discusses here.

Those seeking to deepen their spiritual life are increasingly being drawn to monasteries and the monastic round of prayer and reflection. Yet rarely do temporary visitors have enough time to absorb as much as they would like about the spiritual life. In this book an experience spiritual master, a monk of Sept-Fons abbey in France, provides an intensive directed retreat which relies heavily on the rich Cistercian Spiritual tradition. Readers are at liberty to read and digest at their own pace, while savoring the author's contagious enthusiasm for the values and attitudes he learned from the monastic way and the Cistercian Fathers he studied throughout his long life.Extensive quotations from early Cistercian writers also make the book an excellent introduction to the thought of these medieval monks and the tradition they created and bequeathed to generation of monks and nuns. Quotations are grouped by topic, making it easy to compare the thoughts of various Fathers on a single subject, and an index of citations is provided.  Robert Thomas, OCSO, (1911-2002), was born in Paris and entered the monastery of Sept-Fons in 1928. He studied at the Gregorian University in Rome and was ordained priest in 1937. In addition to serving as prior of his monastery, professor of theology and of Sacred Scripture, and chaplain to Cistercian nuns, he was instrumental in publishing translations, into French, of the early Cistercian Fathers in the pioneering series, Pain de Citeaux. The author of numerous books, Fr. Robert Thomas died in 2002 at the age of ninety-one, a student of the Cistercian tradition to the end.

The psalms are at the very heart of monastic prayer. Recited seven times a day in the liturgy and reflected upon in the mind through the day during work and lectio divina, they provide those who recite them regularly with a privileged way into continual mindfulness of God. allowing Christians to pray as Christ prayed, the psalms form Christians in Christ, and become a vital part of the formation process, both in monastic life and in Christian living.After teaching Scripture to women in monastic formation at Mount Saint Mary's Abbey in Wrentham, Massachusetts, for many years, Sister Maureen McCabe shares her insights into these biblical songs with those outside the cloister. In reflecting on the psalms in an integral and sapiential way, she strives to meet novices in a way that respects both the unifying elements of the life as well as the heart's search for a wisdom and meaning. Always in the background there is solid exegesis, but exegesis is at the service of persons who are discerning a commitment to alive wholly ordered to contemplation.

Like Bernard of Clairvaux, whose last act was to leave his cloister to mediate 'successfully 'between two nobles and prevent bloodshed, Thomas Merton found in the monastic life of prayer a source of strength, empathy, and understanding. To understand Merton, one must first know him as a Prophet of Monastic renewal.John Eudes Bamberger entered Gethsemani Abbey in 1950, having earned an MD from the University of Cincinnati the previous year and done his internship at Georgetown University Hospital. A student of Thomas Merton from 1952-1955, he worked with Merton, after his ordination in 1956, in screening applicants to the abbey. He served as abbot of the Abbey of the Genesee, in New York state, from 1971 until 2001. Since returning from a term as superior in the Philippines, he lives in a hermitage at Genesee.

Andre Louf's probing essay on the nature of humility revisions this fundamental Christian virtue away from the misunderstandings of both the scholastic tradition and its modern counterparts to locate humility in the ancient sources of the monastic tradition. His incisive study prefaces a collection of primary texts which range from the early desert fathers to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. The translator has added further information about the author and his other writings as well as a bibliography for further reading. Andre Louf served as abbot Cistercian Abbey of Mont des Cats in northern France until his retirement in 1997 and now lives as a solitary. Previous books in English include Teach Us To Pray, Tuning into Grace, Grace Can Do More: Spiritual Accompaniment, and Mercy in Weakness: Meditations on the Word. Lawrence S. Cunningham is Professor of Theology at Notre Dame and book notes columnist for Commonweal.

Set amid the tumult of the Spanish Civil War, this spiritual biography recounts the efforts of a fervent young Spanish aristocrat to come to grips with his artistic talent, his intense personality and, above all, his unquenchable passion for God. Trained in art and architecture, Rafael longed to be a Trappist, but was obliged repeatedly by war and illness to withdraw, and then try again. His intensively personal reflections form the basis of this biography of a man intent on giving his life to God despite all obstacles.

For almost half a century Trappist monk Matthew Kelty has delivered homilies to monks and retreatants in his unique style. Visitors at his monastery have been inspired, and challenged by his talks, given after Compline each evening, and monks have come to love and appreciate his preaching skills at Mass and in Chapter. In this collection of his homilies we read his reflections on life and death, the mysteries of faith, the monastic life from the inside, and his love of the Mass. Those who have heard Father Matthew speak will welcome this new volume, and those who have not will be introduced to a speaker and writer of exceptional talent.

Come and See is look inside the mind of a monk. The Vision of monastic life proposed here is not new; it is a Vision going back to the Desert Fathers of the fourth century. And yet, it is new because it is rooted in a place in the soul that never grows old. Come and see where I live, Jesus said to the disciples who were following him. He could just as well have said, come and see where you live; where your real life is being lived. Monastic spirituality is not some esoteric or Gnostic way of perceiving reality or understanding life. It is a treasure hidden in the field of your own heart; it is a universal spirituality that is the common inheritance of every human being; it is a search for God. From the atheist to the saint there is in the heart of all creatures a desire for ultimate meaning, a desire for God. In this sense everyone has the heart of a monk.As you read this book you will meet some of the great themes of monastic life: silence, solitude, community life, prayer. You will also be helped to find your most authentic self, the self Thomas Merton spoke of when he said at the center of our being is a point of nothingness, a point of pure truth. Nothingness, emptiness, absence are important aspects of our spiritual journey.There is a subtheme running through ancient monasticism that conceives of the monastery as a hospital 'a place for healing the soul, the spirit, the heart. The place of the heart is highlighted in these conferences and homilies as an ancient theme so relevant to the modern person.

As novice master of the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky, Thomas Merton presented weekly conferences to familiarize his charges with the meaning and purpose of the vows they aspired to undertake. In this setting, he offered a thorough exposition of the theological, canonical, and above all spiritual dimensions of the vows.Merton set the vows firmly in the context of the anthropological, moral, soteriological, and ecclesial dimensions of human, Christian, and monastic life. He addressed such classical themes of Christian morality as the nature of the human person and his acts; the importance of justice in relation to the Passion of Christ, to friendship and to love; and self-surrender as the key to grace, prayer and the vowed life. Merton's words on these topics clearly spring from a committed heart and often flow with the soaring intensity of style that we have come to expect in his more enthusiastic prose.The texts of these conferences represent the longest and most systematically organized of any of numerous series of conferences that Merton presented during the decade of his mastership. They may be the most directly pastoral work Merton ever wrote.

“How should we live in this house of God? We know that the way a building is shaped also helps in determining the way those within it live and relate. We are indeed formed by what we form. Qualities such as integrity, hospitality, humanity and beauty in a place will enable its dwellers to live lives in which such qualities are evident. The way we understand who we are and how we live will be reflected in our places and vice versa. Our places become bearers of meaning and memory.” —From Chapter 1In Living in the House of God, Margaret Malone draws on her study of and research on the Rule of Saint Benedict to show the ways in which this ancient rule can illuminate modern life. The broad gamut of topics this book examines—from Benedictine life as sacrament to Augustine’s influence on Benedict to obedience and the art of listening, among others—is itself a witness to the generous flexibility of the Rule, as Benedict proposes a way of life that truly corresponds to the deepest needs of the whole of human nature.

Cristiana Piccardo was the long-time abbess of an unusual Cistercian community in Italy. “We have always believed,” she writes, “that the monastic charism can be a precious ‘talent’ offered to our contemporary world, and there are moments in history when what normally remains hidden should come into the light.” These words accurately describe both the force behind the story of the Vitorchiano monastic family and the account of it given in Living Wisdom, her reflection on the meaning of that story.  Over the course of four decades, the Abbey of Vitorchiano would found no fewer than six new monasteries around the world, from Argentina to Indonesia, and today this vibrant oasis of prayer and Christian living still has some eighty sisters of its own.  What is the secret of such success?  In a nutshell, we could say that, in the Vitorchiano perspective, the monastery is nothing other than a microcosm of the church and of human society. The book, translated from the Italian, initiates us in a most concrete way into a wisdom that seeks the kingdom of God ardently yet realistically, without ever bypassing the essential human foundations that the life in Christ transforms and elevates but never supplants: hard work, communal striving, friendship, honesty in communication, a sense of humor, and, above all, love—the willingness both to ask for forgiveness and to give it with joy.

In his chapter on the procedure for the reception of new brothers, Saint Benedict makes provision for entrusting them to the care of "a senior who is skilled in winning souls who will diligently pay attention to them in everything" (58.6). In The Art of Winning Souls: Pastoral Care of Novices, Michael Casey, OCSO, reflects on what this means today, based on his own experience and observation of the fruitful ministry of others.Here Casey focuses on the pastoral care given in the name of a monastic community to those who enter it, from initial contact up to the point where their vocation has recognizably stabilized. His reflections are not intended to be prescriptive. They are, rather, descriptive of what he considers to be best practice, as he has encountered this in his experience of many different expressions of the monastic and Benedictine charism. This book promises to serve as an indispensable resource for vocation directors, novice directors, and junior directors for years to come.

Light in the Shoe Shop offers readers a unique and intimate glance into the day-to-day experience of living the cloistered life in feminine mode. In her “cobbler’s contemplations”—no metaphor here: the author did indeed make and mend her sisters’ shoes for many years—Mother Agnes reveals the very simple secret of monastic life, a secret she shows to be an inseparable combination of mindfulness and fidelity. It is continual mindfulness of God’s transformative presence and action and, in response, equally continual fidelity to each of the minutely detailed ways in which that loving divine presence woos the contemplative’s heart. Even those who strive for a more contemplative life outside of literal cloisters will find her reflections to be a great gift and inspiration. “This book is decidedly not just one more item in the picturesque genre of the ‘nun’s story.’ Rather, for all its slenderness, the volume bears a strong witness to the fact that a human life that stakes its all on loving will gradually become transfused with light.” From the foreword by Simeon Leiva, OCSO

Christophe Lebreton, aged forty-six, was the youngest of the seven Trappist monks assassinated in Algeria by terrorists in 1996.  He was also the poet of the group.  Anyone who was enthralled by the recent film Of Gods and Men should find in Brother Christophe’s Journal ample and deeply moving material for meditation on both the light and the darkness inherent in the human condition.The Journal begins in 1993, four months before the terrorists’ first visit to the monastery at Tibhirine, and it ends on March 19, 1996, just seven days before the monks’ abduction. Entry after entry touches readers both by its vivid sincerity and by the fresh and inventive quality of its poetic expression. Through these pages readers become privy to the daily events in the soul of a generous searcher after God under very trying conditions. His style is highly personal, playful, ardent, full of color and whimsy.

Saint Bernard’s famous work, The Steps of Humility and Pride (in Latin, De gradibus humilitatis et superbiae), is a short book consisting of a mere fifty-seven paragraphs. In it, the Abbot of Clairvaux unpacks the doctrine of the very crucial chapter 7 of Saint Benedict’s sixth-century Rule for Monks, which explores the dynamic “steps” or “degrees” of both humility and pride. This chapter by Benedict could well be considered the spiritual basis of all Benedictine existence.In Saint Bernard’s Three-Course Banquet, Dom Bernard Bonowitz makes the teaching of both Bernard and Benedict accessible to modern readers in a set of conferences originally conceived for and delivered to a group of Cistercian “juniors,” that is, monks and nuns who had completed their novitiate but had not yet made their solemn vows. With Dom Bernard as a guide, many more readers can be sure of drinking at the purest sources of the monastic tradition, which at that depth becomes one with the Gospel itself.A convert from Judaism with a degree in Classics from Columbia University, Bernard Bonowitz was a Jesuit for nine years before entering St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts. Immediately upon professing vows, his abbot named him master of novices, a position he held for ten years and that gave him ample opportunity to share considerable gifts of mind and heart while initiating newcomers into monastic life, at the levels of both classroom teaching and spiritual direction. In 1996 he was elected superior of the monastery of Novo Mundo in Brazil, which he soon shepherded into a true monastic springtime. In 2008, he became abbot of Novo Mundo, now a community attracting an impressive number of young men anxious to follow the way of Cistercian discipleship.

As master of novices for ten years (1955–1965) at the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky, Thomas Merton was responsible for the spiritual formation of young men preparing for monastic profession. In this volume, three related sets of Merton’s conferences on ancient and contemporary documents governing the lives of the monks are published for the first time: • on the Carta Caritatis, or Charter of Charity, the foundational document of the Order of Cîteaux• on the Consuetudines, the twelfth-century collection of customs and regulations of the Order• on the twentieth-century Constitutions of the Order, the basic rules by which Merton and his students actually lived at the timeThese conferences form an essential part of the overall picture of Cistercian monastic life that Merton provided as part of his project of “initiation into the monastic tradition” that is evident in the broad variety of courses that he put together and taught over the period of his mastership.As Abbot John Eudes Bamberger, ocso, himself a former student of Merton, notes in his preface to this volume, “The texts presented in this present book eventually gave rise to the Cistercian way of spiritual living that continues to contribute to the Church’s witness in this new millennium. This publication is a witness to the process of transformation that ensures the continuity of the Catholic monastic tradition that witnesses to the God who, as Saint Augustine observed is ‘ever old and ever new.’”

These conferences, presented by Thomas Merton to the novices at the Abbey of Gethsemani in 1963–1964, focus mainly on the life and writings of his great Cistercian predecessor, St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153). Guiding his students through Bernard’s Marian sermons, his treatise On the Love of God, his controversy with Peter Abelard, and above all his great series of sermons on the Song of Songs, Merton reveals why Bernard was the major religious and cultural figure in Europe during the first half of the twelfth century and why he has remained one of the most influential spiritual theologians of Western Christianity from his own day until the present. As James Finley writes in his preface to this volume, “Merton is teaching us in these notes how to be grateful and amazed that the ancient wisdom that shimmers and shines in the eloquent and beautiful things that mystics say is now flowing in our sincere desire to learn from God how to find our way to God.”

Thomas Merton’s deep roots in his own Cistercian tradition are on display in the two sets of conferences on the early days of the Order included in the present volume. The first surveys the relevant monastic background that led up to the foundation of the Abbey of Cîteaux in 1098 and goes on to consider the contributions of each of the first three abbots of the “New Monastery” that would become the epicenter of the most dynamic religious movement of the early twelfth century. The second set investigates the arc of medieval Cistercian history in the two centuries following the death of Saint Bernard, in which the Order moves from being ahead of its time, in its formative stages, to being representative of its time in its most powerful and influential phase, to becoming regressive with the rise of new religious currents that begin to flow in the thirteenth century. Merton stresses the need to respect the complexity of the actual lived reality of Cistercian life during this period, to “beware of easy generalizations” and instead consider the full range of factual data. The result is a richly nuanced picture of the development of early Cistercian life and thought that serves as a fitting concluding volume to the series of Merton’s novitiate conferences providing a thorough “Initiation into the Monastic Tradition.”

For three decades, Monastic Practices has been a valued resource for English-speaking aspirants to monastic life. In this revised edition, updated and expanded, Charles Cummings, OCSO, explores the common practices of the monastic life in order to rediscover them as viable means of leading persons to a deeper encounter with God. How do monks and nuns occupy themselves throughout the day? Have they modernized their lifestyle or is it still cluttered with medieval customs? Could any of the monastic practices be of use to those outside the monastery? A certain wisdom is necessary to know how to use such practices and how to give oneself to them until they lead one to God.After long monastic experience, Cummings shows us how the ordinary things we do constitute our path to God. In the art of living life, he argues, we are always beginners, searching for God through our concrete circumstances and actions.

Father Matthew Kelty was an especially beloved monk at the historic Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. Perhaps best known as Thomas Merton's colleague and confessor in the year prior to Merton's death, Father Matthew was also an enormously gifted spiritual writer in his own right, one whose homilies at Gethsemani attracted a wide following. This is the first book-length study of Matthew Kelty's life in relation to his spiritual writings and his profound reflections on the virtues of the monastic life in the modern age.

This is a rich collection of memories and reflections from the long-time abbot of La Trappe, Dom Marie-Gérard Dubois, OCSO. Starting with his entry into monastic life, he walks the reader through the dramatic changes in the Strict Observance of the Cistercian Order, including its liturgical reform and developments in the role of lay brothers. Dom Dubois also shares stories about the diverse group of men who entered the Order at that time, including WWII veterans, Holocaust survivors, and members of the French literary elite, and why they decided to become monks. His stories offer a fascinating inside view into twentieth-century Cistercian life.

At the heart of Clothed in Language lies a journal, but the writing, while personal, has been given a thematic structure. Seeing language as a vital medium through which the divine is made present to us, scholar and poet Pauline Matarasso explores the ways in which this God-given language, with its overcoat of metaphor and undertow of rhythm, serves to reflect the truth and, on occasion, mask it. This book also includes an essay that looks at certain features common to myth, fairy tale, lore, and Scripture.

The Song That I Am: On the Mystery of Music is a short but full-to-the-brim essay on the decisive role that great music (whether Bach, Tavener, or Gregorian chant) ought to play in the spiritual life. With admirable restraint Élisabeth-Paule Labat  shares her interior experience of music and thus continually opens up fresh vistas through worlds of sound and spirit.  With her uncanny gift of language, Labat precisely describes soundings and yearnings of the soul that many of us glimpse fleetingly. Because "only the lover sings" (St. Augustine), her final illumination is that the experience of profound music ought to transform us into the beauty that we hear.

Saint Rafael Arnaiz was born in Burgos, Spain, on April 9, 1911. When he was twenty-one years old, he left behind the comforts of his wealthy family and an unfinished degree in architecture to join the Trappist-Cistercian abbey of San Isidro de Dueñas. A sudden onset of diabetes and the beginning of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) turned his monastic journey into an unusual one. In these unfavorable circumstances and despite the shortness of his life (he died soon after his twenty-seventh birthday), Rafael developed a solid spirituality, which in its simplicity is a straight path to holiness. He has been compared to mystics like Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross, whose writings inspired him, and his theology of the cross, born from his prayer, places him in continuity with the best of the monastic tradition. In his letters and journals, compiled in this volume, his heart speaks of the joys and struggles of striving to live for God alone.

In the gospel of Saint Matthew, Jesus is “Emmanuel,” God-with-us, or, as Jesus himself puts it, he is “I-Desire,” “Coming-I-Will-Heal,” and “I-Am-with-You-Always.”  The brief commentaries collected here, initially presented by Cistercian abbot Mark A. Scott in a series of chapter talks to his monastic community, will welcome the reader into an intimate encounter with the love of Jesus, as the evangelist Matthew presents him in chapters four through nine of his gospel. These reflections also weave insights from the Rule of Benedict along with reflections on monastic life offering to all ecclesial communities and individual Christians rich nourishment for their loving Jesus in return.

After sixty years of living in a Cistercian community, Michael Casey combines his down-to-earth observations about the joys and challenges of living in community with an appreciation of the deeper meanings of cenobitic life, taking into account the changes in both theory and practice that have occurred in his lifetime. He invites his readers, especially monks and nuns, to reflect on their own experiences of community as a means of seeing a path forward into the future.Many of the key components of monastic community have kept the same names for more than a millennium. In an age of paradigm shift, Michael Casey invites readers to examine these essential practices of community life and to ask how they might be envisioned in a way that speaks to our contemporaries.

"Hidden in every human heart is a monk." For men and women in the cloister and in the world, Augustine Roberts explores the inner meaning of the conversatio morum, conversion of life, that underlies Benedictine life. The first, Spanish, edition of this book drew heavily on novitiate notes by Thomas Merton; in this third, completely revised edition, the author takes into account two new factors 'Vita Consecrata, Pope John Paul II's 1996 Apostolic Exhortation, and the postmodern secularization which has deeply affected Christians. By clarifying various aspects of monastic living, Augustine Roberts explains how the signs of monastic living and commitments of monastic profession relate to the "evangelical counsels," Jesus's invitation to leave all things and follow him.

2022 Catholic Media Association second place award in mysticismFrom its origins in the fourth and fifth centuries, first in monastic circles and then in wider Christian communities, the story of Mary of Egypt was wildly popular. From early Christianity through the medieval periods, from Egypt to Scandinavia, verse lives in Greek, Latin, and vernacular languages portray her as the model of repentance. Continuously venerated in the liturgy and icons of the Orthodox Churches, she is now seldom known in the West. This modern verse life and the accompanying essay reintroduces St. Mary’s extraordinary life, its theological and spiritual implications, and its remarkable depiction of gender complementarity.

Dom André Louf (+2010) was abbot of the Trappist-Cistercian monastery of Mont-des-Cats in northern France from 1963 to 1997. This book brings together talks given to a variety of audiences in which he shared his spiritual experience from both his life of prayer and his life in community.Each chapter offers inspiring insights on the spiritual experience, the priority of love, and other areas of our Christian life: community life, obedience, prayer, psalms, the liturgy, and more.In this book we enter "a school of contemplation" wherein the monastic experience enlightens our lives and service to the world and the Church.