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A Portal and a Pilgrimage

2024-08-29T12:33:49-05:00October 13th, 2020|Letters to the Friends|

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

We crossed a threshold—literally—on September 27th, when the portal, the great doorway of our abbey church under construction, was revealed during a ceremony after our conventual Mass. When the white veil that was covering the entrance fell (in fact the Oklahoma wind blew it down ahead of schedule…), our eyes beheld a spectacle not of this world. On two capitals surrounding the door we saw depicted the life and mystery of the Blessed Virgin. A little higher, on what is called the “lintel,” the twelve Apostles commanded our respectful attention— they were most dignified, but with that living expression on their faces that speaks of our Christian joy in the one […]

One day with the Lord is as a thousand years. — A Score of Years: 2000-2020

2020-09-13T15:30:14-05:00September 13th, 2020|News|

By the grace of God, the monastic adventure of Our Lady of the Annunciation of Clear Creek has now endured and prospered for twenty years. From the initial group of 13 monks we have grown to 57, with several young men set to enter before you receive this letter. The original log cabin and horse barn have been replaced by a large church (still under construction), a spacious residential building, and a Gatehouse, where people come to have Holy Mass said for special intentions, to arrange to stay with us as guests, to ask questions, and to purchase monastic gifts.

Building Something Beautiful for God to Last a Thousand Years

Through many prayers and […]

Requiem Mass – For the Right Reverend Antoine Forgeot

2020-08-26T11:00:45-05:00August 26th, 2020|Homilies of Father Abbot|

Laudemus viros gloriosos, et parentes nostros in generatione sua. Let us now praise men of renown, writes the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes, and our fathers in their generation. (Eccles. 44:1)

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
My very Dear Sons,

Today it is our duty—sad and solemn, but also joyful and full of hope in the Lord—to celebrate this Requiem Mass in honor of a great monk and priest, the abbot and then emeritus abbot of Our Lady of Fontgombault Abbey in France, the man who led the original founders of this monastery of Clear Creek over from France, almost twenty-one years ago. It would be impossible to describe in detail all we owe Father Abbot Antoine Forgeot, but, as we pray for his soul, we shall do our best to honor […]

Assumption 2020

2020-08-15T11:00:12-05:00August 15th, 2020|Homilies of Father Abbot|

Pulchra es et decora…Thou art beautiful and comely, daughter of Jerusalem, terrible as an army in battle array. (5th Antiphon of Laudes. Song of Songs 6:4)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
My very dear sons,

Later this year, on the eighth day of December we will celebrate the feast of the Immaculate Conception, which celebrates the mysterious initial stage, the starting point of that incomparable beauty we find in the Blessed Virgin Mary. Today, on the feast of the Assumption, we contemplate that same beauty lifted up to Heaven, consummated, Mary’s loveliness at its zenith. But why is this important?

“Beauty will save the world.” This shining phrase, cast like a gem into the rather muddy pond of a novel by an early modern Russian author, has caught the attention of many a Catholic […]

St. Benedict 2020

2020-07-11T15:53:53-05:00July 11th, 2020|Homilies of Father Abbot|

At that time: Peter said to Jesus: Behold we have left all things, and have followed thee: what therefore shall we have? (Matthew 19:27)

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
My Very Dear Sons,

The Holy Rule, written by Saint Benedict whose feast we are celebrating, has sometimes been called “the Bible of monks.” Some may think this a hyperbole, a mere pious exaggeration, but, like the Bible from which it is inspired, the Rule for monks is something of a universe of its own, an imposing spiritual landscape, where one encounters that fullness of truth, love, and being, which is the hallmark of the Catholic faith. Despite the austerity of its language in many passages, this thin but great book forms our souls in multiple ways, including its teaching of a sentiment that […]

St. Peter and Paul 2020

2020-06-29T15:59:56-05:00June 29th, 2020|Homilies of Father Abbot|

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
My very Dear Sons,

The color for today’s solemnity, as we are all well aware, is deep red, symbolizing the blood of martyrs. It is no secret that the Holy Apostles died the death of martyrs, excepting Saint John, who, according to a tradition reported by Saint Jerome, underwent a trial of death at the Latin gate of Rome under the order of the Emperor Domitian, but miraculously escaped from the cauldron of boiling oil into which he had been thrown. He lived many years afterward in God’s Providence in order to care for the Blessed Virgin Mary, confided to his keeping at the Cross. From his home at Ephesus, he led the churches of Asia Minor and completed his Gospel, no doubt, and the book of Revelation, the […]

Considerations on the State of Things In the Streets of Heaven and on the Streets of Earth

2024-08-31T15:49:31-05:00June 19th, 2020|Letters to the Friends|

All that dedicated City,
Dearly lov’d by God on high,
In exultant jubilation
Pours perpetual melody;
God the One, and God the Trinal,
Singing everlastingly.
(Hymn for the Dedication of a Church)

As cries of anger echo these days through the streets of many a city in our world beneath the stars (especially in places where you cannot see them for the glare of artificial lights), the Angels of God serenely pursue their song of praise in honor of the Three Divine Persons, including the One, who, on the Tree of Life, that is to say the Cross, won the definitive victory over every form of sin—even human brutality and the plague of racism. It is not that those heavenly beings, in their joy, have no care for the injustices that continue to sadden and afflict the citizens of this […]

Expanding the Hive

2024-08-31T15:51:49-05:00June 13th, 2020|Letters to the Friends|

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

Amid the social upheavals that have afflicted American society and much of the world over the past months—from the rapid spread of a novel coronavirus that reached pandemic proportions to the tragic death of an unarmed man at the hands of police officers—the monks of Clear Creek continue to serve God and our fellow human beings, however poorly but to the best of our ability, in liturgical praise and hard work: ora et labora. This is what we do. This is how monks have lived for fifteen centuries and longer. This is a source of stability. It is like bees tending their hive.

While the egregious act of police brutality mentioned above has understandably led to peaceful protests in many cities, in too many cases other activists […]

Corpus Christi 2020

2020-06-11T16:05:07-05:00June 11th, 2020|Homilies of Father Abbot|

Ecce panis Angelorum…Lo, upon the altar lies, / Hidden deep from human eyes, / Bread of Angels from the skies, / Made the Bread of moral man. (Lauda Sion, Sequence of the Mass, composed by Saint Thomas Aquinas.)

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, My very dear sons,

Throughout some two thousand years of history—much of it marked by major or even spectacular events—Our Holy Mother Church has seen and suffered much. Many a Caesar has tested Her holy resolve with outright or hidden persecution; not a few heretics have worked to pervert the true Faith in multiple manners, all to no avail (in the end), thanks to the grace of God. But never before our own time has there been, on such a large scale it seems, a general deprivation of the […]

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