The Feast of our Founders
January 26th, 2012
1st rdg: Prv get wisdom/keep hold of instruction … she is your life
2nd rdg: Col clothe yourselves with love/word dwell in you richly
Gospel rdg: Mt instruction/service/humility
My brothers in community as much as we celebrate the memorial of the Cistercian founders today, we are celebrating the means they provide us to celebrate what we are living, our vocation, the dynamism of the call God is giving us in the here and now. There is no need to remember the spiritual journey of Robert, Alberic and Stephen – with all its ups and downs – if it does not draw us to reflect on our own spiritual journey.
So we gather up some key words from our scriptures today – wisdom – clothe yourselves in love – let the word of Christ dwell in you richly – instructor – servant – humble – and we consider what message God may be offering us today.
What formed Robert, Alberic and Stephen in the monastic endeavor forms us in the monastic endeavor. Relationship with God, nurtured in solitude and quiet, in personal and communal prayer, in our manual labor, and grounded in our life as a community of faith, all this is at the heart of what we are celebrating. The whole self is being engaged by God, intellect, will, emotions, our corporeality, all leading to the interior commitment from which springs a wholesome spirituality. The author of Proverbs encourages us to “get insight” and this involves just as much the practical / the human as it does the academic. While we do gather ‘Information’, it is only when we acquire meaning from this data that we can live our response to God.
Dom Ambrose Southey, when he was abbot general, commented on “prayer as a self-gift to God.” The monastic life is a life of ceaseless prayer. How does one cultivate one’s faculties so as to pray always? One must train the mind, discipline the emotions, manage one’s will, and order one’s desires. It is necessary to arrange one’s life, patterning one’s living on the way of Jesus. This is not accomplished alone/ all by oneself. The need for adequate mentoring, for words of encouragement and the day-to-day good example of one’s brothers, for inner tranquillity emerging from a love of silence (avoiding unnecessary speech and noise) that then allows a deep recognition of God with and within us, for healthy interdependence and for healthy spiritual friendships, for that which fosters good human and spiritual growth – all these become part of the equation.
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