I just found out the monk who was the assistant novice master in the monastery I was at, died at the end of March. I wrote to one of my fathers there and he sent back a note that they are all getting very old and haven't had anyone enter for 3 or 4 years. It was a short note, which said very much.
So.
Time is short. Very short.
Song for this post here.
What abbey were you at?
ReplyDeleteThis is the unfortunate state of many if not most reilgious communities. The except seems to be those that follow the old rites SSPX and the like. It hampers the community and taps resources needed to hire out work. I wonder if it will ever change?
ReplyDeleteThis is the state of religious communities that are not faithful to the charism of their founder. In the Benedictines, of which I am most familiar, the communities that abandoned the Office as laid out by Benedict, the holy habit, Lectio Divina, the primacy of the Liturgy, the monastic fast, a life away from the world, etc. are dying. The orders that embrace the fullness of the Rule are thriving - places like Clear Creek, Norcia, Our Lady of Ephesus, Solesmes, La Baroux, etc are bursting at the seams. The dying ones have abandoned a real Benedictine lifestyle. It's very sad.
ReplyDeleteInteresting - I came across this on Rorate Caeli:
ReplyDelete"Nihil Operi Dei praeponatur - "Let nothing be set before the Divine Worship." With these words, Saint Benedict, in his Rule (43,3), established the absolute priority of Divine Worship in relation with any other task of monastic life. This, even in monastic life, was not necessarily obvious, because for monks the work in agriculture and in knowledge was also an essential task.
In agriculture, as also in crafts, and in the work of formation, there could be temporal emergencies that might appear more important than the liturgy. Faced with all this, Benedict, with the priority given to the liturgy, puts in unequivocal relief the priority of God himself in our life. "At the hour for the Divine Office, as soon as the signal is heard, let them abandon whatever they may have in hand and hasten with the greatest speed." (43, 1)
In the conscience of the men of today, the things of God, and with this the liturgy, do not appear urgent in fact. There is urgency for every possible thing. The things of God do not ever seem urgent. Well, it could be affirmed that monastic life is, in any event, something different from the lives of men of the world, and that is undoubtedly fair. Nevertheless, the priority of God which we have forgotten is valid for all. If God is no longer important, the criteria to establish what is important are changed. Man, by setting God aside, submits his own self to constraints that render him a slave to material forces and that are therefore opposed to his dignity.
- See more at: http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2017/04/exclusive-text-by-benedict-xvi-crisis.html#more