brett

And when the days of the Pentecost were accomplished, they were all together in one place: And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a mighty wind coming, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them parted tongues as it were of fire, and it sat upon every one of them: And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they began to speak with diverse tongues, according as the Holy Ghost gave them to speak. (Acts 2:1-4)

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

“Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice,” wrote an English poet. (Poem of Robert Frost, “Fire and Ice.”) Another mused, “This is the way the world ends / Not with a […]

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

The mystery of the Ascension of the Lord is filled, “charged” as we might say, with theological hope. Everything about the Gospel scene and the gripping narrative of the Acts of the Apostles relating Jesus’ departure from earth stirs up in us the invincible conviction that our life has only begun here below and that a supernatural happiness awaits us. “And I say to you, I will not drink from henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I shall drink it with you new in the kingdom of my Father” (Matthew 26:29). Monks live from this kind of radical hope focusing, not on the fleeting existence of this present world, but on life beyond the horizon of the visible world here […]

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

Easter is the solemnity of solemnities, the culmination of the liturgical year; it is the celebration of the Risen Lord, of the victory of Life over Death, of the ultimate Light over the deepest of darkness. Easter is not about petty matters, though it encompasses even small things. It is a revelation of the definitive meaning of human life, the great Alleluia of the human story in general; but it is also a story about real human beings, of those who were and are caught up in the drama of the God-Man, the One Who was and is the Son of Mary as well as the true Son of God the Father. It is about our living link to the Word Incarnate, to the very […]

My very dear sons,

For twenty years now we monks of this abbey have lived under the protection of Our Lady of the Annunciation and reaped the spiritual fruits of such a happy patronage. What better model could there be for contemplatives than that of the Virgin of Nazareth, hidden in prayer in her modest home, awaiting God? There is the sense that, were we to accomplish nothing else in our lives and this during the whole history of our community, the mere fact of living up as best we can to our official motto—Ecce, Fiat, inspired by the words of the Virgin in response to the great and holy Archangel—would be enough of a program for time and eternity.

Of course, we are men. Our manner of humility and obedience is that […]

My Very Dear Sons,

In a time when many things are falling apart and the very cultural ground that once held up the civilized world seems to be crumbling under our feet—and with it the sense of God—we see more clearly the point of the words of Our Lord, when He asked, “But yet the Son of man, when He cometh, shall He find, think you, faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8). A pillar that has been shaken to the core, one that is linked to the very Christian faith we profess, is that of paternity. Paternity is taken here, not only in its natural sense, but also in its fuller meaning: paternity as understood by Christians. Ours is increasingly a society without fathers. As long as there remains a single Christian, it is true, […]