Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,
One need not be a prophet to read the “writing on the wall”—especially when the font is of bold type. In our day this ominous writing stands out ever more clearly against a background of cultural chaos and social angst. Some speak of an approaching “storm.” That may, indeed, be a fitting metaphor for the forces of destruction that are lashing out already in many directions.
It has been said that the Church is “an anvil that has worn out many hammers.” In the current context this comparison is especially reassuring. It means that however violently the tempest may beat down upon her, our Mother the Church, the Church of the Holy Apostles and Martyrs, will survive the crisis and live to see a new day, again and again, until the last day.
Those who know a little about Church history will remember that Rome, in the days of Pope Saint Gregory the Great for example, was something like large sections of our modern day Detroit: a hodgepodge of vacant lots and ruins. Nevertheless, this Pope truly earned the title of “great” through his untiring apostolic action at the heart of the Christian world, and the Church under his firm governance entered a new era of spiritual fruitfulness and greatness.
Therefore, once we have uttered our due measure of jeremiads (to which we are surely entitled), the thing to do is to start somewhere—anywhere, really—the business of rebuilding our society, village by village, neighborhood by neighborhood. One way to do this is to put a monastery in the middle. Even if the monks are not all saints (it is hoped they will be), such a solution has many advantages, as men saw in the so-called “Dark Ages,” after the fall of Rome.
At Our Lady of Clear Creek Abbey, we are doing our small part. We continue to welcome many young men as postulants, to give them a solid spiritual formation, and thus to prepare them to be the next generation of Saints. This is much harder than it may seem. Not only is there the spiritual warfare involved, but we must, like the Israelites of the time of Nehemias, carry on the work of physical construction with one hand, while we bear the spiritual sword in the other. We are currently engaged in building the eastern portion of our abbatial church, a sizeable undertaking.
Perhaps the image of the anvil is not such a good one. The Church is really Mother and Virgin, the very Spouse and Mystical Body of Christ, a great mystery of communion. Although she has the resilience of an anvil, she is something infinitely more beautiful and useful. A far better image would be found in the Blessed Virgin Mary and her Immaculate Heart. An anvil is a dead object, without spiritual qualities. A heart, in biblical language, is the image of all that is most human and sublime, a vessel of wisdom and love. It is certainly no matter of chance that Divine Providence chose, almost one hundred years ago at Fatima, devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Our Lady as the remedy for the perils of the modern era and as the spiritual inspiration for our time. This Heart is stronger than any steel, but tenderer than any other heart save that of Our Lord Himself.
Please continue to help us build a citadel of monastic life, “Something Beautiful for God” and for Our Lady. In the period of ongoing construction work, we need your prayers and material support in a special way. You may be sure that you will be in our prayers every day and truly a part of this labor of reconstruction that will, by God’s grace, overcome any hammer or any storm.
+ br. Philip Anderson, abbot
