Homilies of Father Abbot

Post haec vidi turbam magnam…After this I saw a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and tribes, and peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne, and in sight of the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands (Apoc. 7:9).

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

Where are the Saints?

The holy liturgy on this first day of November, feast of All Saints, likes to place before the eyes of our soul the vision of Saint John, in the Book of Revelation or the Apocalypse, where the Saints, the Blessed, from each of the tribes of Israel are numbered: twelve thousand. Next to these Saints taken from the chosen people of Israel, Saint John speaks of a numberless crowd of blessed souls […]

Assumpta est Maria in caelum…Mary has been taken up into heaven: the Angels rejoice; in hymns of praise they bless the Lord. (First Antiphon of Lauds)

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

On this day we celebrate the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven. According to an authoritative teaching of the Church, though the matter has not been strictly defined, Mary did, in fact, at the end of her on earth, undergo death—and this in order better to imitate her Son—but it was a death so gentle and peaceful that it resembled very much a falling asleep, a “dormition” as the Greek Orthodox tradition calls it, though they seem to hold that she only fell asleep in this way and did not die. As astonishing as this may […]

At that time: Peter said to Jesus: Behold we have left all things, and have followed thee: what therefore shall we have? (Matthew 19:2)

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

As we know from the words of the Gospel just quoted, the promises made to Peter were not trifling. “Amen I say to you, that you who have followed me,…And every one that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father or mother, or wife or children, or lands for my name’s sake shall receive an hundred fold, and shall possess life everlasting.” (Matthew 19:28-29) Sometimes we find in Holy Scripture the literal and obvious fulfillment of a prophetic promise; other times we believe God’s word but cannot discern the exact meaning of what is predicted, being therefore unable […]

Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not; and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren. (Luke 22:31-3)

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

The great Apostles Saints Peter and Paul: these are brothers in a true sense, a transcendent sense, sharing traits of a common spiritual heredity. They both lived an unconditional commitment to the truth of the Gospel in persevering unto death in and for the Faith, even though their paths took them in very different directions. Both traversed dark places in order to belong in a definitive way to the light of God, while following Our Lord with their entire being. Both labored greatly to establish the Church […]

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

The Most Holy Eucharist, celebrated and consummated in the Sacrifice of Mass, is all about thanksgiving, a unique prayer of thanksgiving that embraces Heaven and Earth, past and present, and future, touching the very threshold of eternity. The giving of thanks is the very meaning of the Greek word from which “Eucharist” is derived. It is to be feared that we have very much lost this sense of thanksgiving to God under the spell of our godless modern world. Was it not really a lack of thanksgiving in France and in the whole Western World that set Notre-Dame cathedral on fire and brought down the spire that once pointed to the stars? This is a serious matter.

The lack of thanksgiving among human beings […]

Emitte spiritum tuum et creabuntur, et renovabis faciem terrae. Send forth thy spirit, and they shall be created: and thou shalt renew the face of the earth. (Ps. 103:30)

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

A prominent French philosopher writing in the 20th century famously said about the century to come—speaking in a kind of secular prophetic mode—that it, the twenty-first century, “would be spiritual or it would not be at all”. (André Malraux 1901-1976) Thus far, in disproof of that prophecy, we see our new century embedded in materialism, a technological materialism especially, that claims each day more our allegiance against the no less depressing general cultural background of the new paganism, and this very un-spiritual quality of it all seems quite likely to go on. It is true: […]

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

The mystery of the Ascension of the Lord represents the consummation of a series of displacements, of great movements, involving the Word made flesh. Saint Paul, quoting Psalm 67, explains it thus:

Ascending on high he led captivity captive; he gave gifts unto men. Now, that he ascended, what is it, but because he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended above all the heavens, that he might fill all things. (Ephesians 4:8-10, citing Psalm 67:19)

Indeed, the Lord Christ, the Word of the Father, had first to go downward, as it were, in order to accomplish His mission, taking upon Himself our human nature, a nature infinitely beneath […]

I arose, and am still with thee, alleluia: thou hast laid thy hand upon me: thy knowledge is become wonderful, alleluia, alleluia. (Psalm 138:18)

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

In the beginning of the world, as we read in the book of Genesis, God’s first fiat, His first particular creation, was that of light: “And God said: ‘Let there be light (fiat lux).’ And light was made.” (Gensis 1:3) The sacred text goes on to state that “God saw the light that it was good,” or as the ancient Greek version would have it, that the light was beautiful, καλόν.

Surely, after the dreadful darkness of Good Friday, with its specter of Judas’ treason and the fearful shadows that came upon the natural world at the moment of […]

Before the festival day of the pasch, Jesus knowing that his hour was come, that he should pass out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them unto the end. (John 13:1)

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

How do we grasp something of the mystery, seemingly impenetrable, of Maundy Thursday, of this night so unlike all others, when troubling things are coming to a head, to a climax that the Apostles and Disciples themselves do not fathom? There is light here, no doubt, for example in the institution of the Most Holy Eucharist–the reason why the liturgical vestments are white–and in the sublime words the Savior pronounces during His great Discourse of farewell in Saint John. There is spiritual brightness […]

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

Today we celebrate the transitus of Our Blessed Father Saint Benedict, which is to say his passage from this earthly life to Heaven, his departure out of our mortal existence, in a word, his death. Although death is ever a sad event in a human life, the reminder of the sin of Adam and of its dark empire over the sons of Adam; nevertheless, in the case of the Saints, death appears more as a kind of triumph, something like what the ancients called the apotheosis, the culmination of a whole life. Such is eminently the case for the great Patriarch of the monks of the West we honor today.

Like Saint Francis, Saint Dominic and many other Saints, whose stories of the […]