Letters to the Friends

Dear Friend of Clear Creek,

Christmas is a time for remembering the great things God has done. It is a privileged moment for reflecting upon the fact that He created the world and that He set about restoring it in a poor Manger, where a Child was born unto us and a Son was given. It is furthermore a time for recalling the merc.i es that Divine Providence has showered upon each one of us in the comings and goings of our daily lives.

It seems that this time of year is also the season in which we most feel the weight of sadness that bears down upon the human race in so many ways. We often find ourselves caught in the web of contradictory circumstances, a little like the character in Frank […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek,

The Season of Advent is upon us. Whether we live within the monastery walls or without, it is important to orient our souls right now, so as not to let the hustle and bustle of Christmas preparations steal the spiritual graces that invite us to more spiritual meditations. At this time of year, we must all be contemplatives, at least in spirit.

What better subject could we find for our Advent contemplation — during this Year of the Priest, so proclaimed by the Holy Father — than the relationship between Our Lady and the Priesthood?

The Saints and the Theologians agree that the center and summit of Mary’s existence was to become the Mother of Christ and therefore the Mother of God. The Mother of God… One […]

Dear Friend,

On September 15th, we celebrated the tenth anniversary of the founding of Our Lady of the Annunciation of Clear Creek Monastery. As I reflect on our first ten years here at Clear Creek under the patronage of Our Lady, I must gratefully acknowledge that she has blessed us with a most joyful first decade. No great undertaking is without its sorrows and setbacks, but Our Blessed Mother has truly been with us every step of the way, and along that way she has gathered a vast family of patrons and benefactors to help us build this traditional Benedictine monastery — a monastery to last a thousand years — right here in the heart of America.

The story of Clear Creek has an unlikely beginning. Over thirty years ago, several of us […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek,

As we prepare to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the founding of our Lady of Clear Creek Monastery (the first, small group arrived in Oklahoma on August 19th, 1999) — amid events that have so dramatically affected the life of our community over the past few weeks — a flood of things come to my mind and heart that I would like to share with you.

Not least among these is the sudden and devastating illness of our Father Subprior, Father François de Feydeau, the very one who led the pilot team of “pioneers” to Oklahoma ten years ago. It was on May 20th earlier this year, after the first Vespers of the Ascension that he began to show alarming symptoms. We rushed him to St. Francis Hospital […]

Tower of David, pray for us
Tower of ivory, pray for us
House of gold, pray for us
Ark of the covenant, pray for us
Gate of Heaven, pray for us
Morning Star, pray for us …

Dear Friend of Clear Creek,

It is pure joy to speak about the Blessed Virgin Mary, especially during the month of May, even as our poor words seek in vain to say what cannot be expressed in human language. The prince of Christian poets, Dante, in his vision of Heaven, described her as a “beauty that was gladness in the eyes of all the other saints” (Paradiso, XXXI, 138).

Some have voiced the opinion that in the past the Church has exalted Our Lady in a somewhat misguided way — “heaping up,” as it were, “her privileges […]

Ad coenam Agni providi,
Et stolis albis candidi,
Post transitum Maris Rubri
Christo canamus Principi.

The Lamb’s high banquet we await
In snow-white robes of royal estate:
And now, the Red Sea’s channel past,
To Christ our Prince we sing at last.

Dear Friend of Clear Creek,

Everything at Easter speaks of life. From the budding trees, to the sprouting grasses, to the worm that rears its lowly head in the dark soil — spring fills the very air we breathe. But Christ’s victory over death looms larger than even the rebirth of nature itself — so large that we may well miss it altogether.

Surrounded as we are (even, to some extent, in a monastery) with such threatening clouds as global terrorism and economic disaster, we might fail to comprehend the joy that comes to us […]

Dear Friend,

As we enter the Lenten season — leaving behind the splendors of Christmas and looking forward now to that other pole of the liturgical year which is Easter — we discover that the greater simplicity and sobriety of this time of year lends itself well to a meditation on man’s proper place in the universe as caretaker of creation.

For many years now ecology has aroused much interest, not only in regard to the immediate practical decisions that must be made by governments and businesses, but also as a topic of discussion in the broader cultural context. Our contemporaries seem to experience an ever increasing alienation from nature and a need to somehow “re-connect” with the earth, while scientists continue to point to signs that the ecological balance of the natural […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek,

Christmases come and go. The world plods on, like the donkey that carried Our Lady toward the stable of Bethlehem. We find ourselves each year a little bit the same and a little bit changed. Some great and consoling secret lies ahead, but the sadness of human affairs presses around us like the north wind on a December night in Judea.

This year many families will feel the pinch of an economic recession that has been a long time coming and which is likely to be felt for some time to come. Whatever may be the complex reasons for this decline, the ultimate explanation is surely to be sought with that old companion of humanity, human sinfulness. As always, it is the poor, who will suffer the most.

Dominus regit me, et nihil mihi deerit; The Lord ruleth me: and I shall want nothing… For though I should walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will fear no evils, for thou art with me. (Psalm 22)

Dear Friends of Clear Creek,

Some of you have followed from the beginning — for nearly forty years now — the monastic adventure begun at Fontgombault in France, involving several Americans. Others among you have been aware of the foundation at Clear Creek since our return to the United States in 1999. Even if you have only recently learned of our monastery located in the hills of Eastern Oklahoma, you may well have gotten a sense that the story involves something more than a handful of conversions to the Catholic faith and […]

Dear Friend,

This letter begins with a story. It is the story of the grace of God and a group of quite ordinary young men — a “band of brothers” — who were called upon to live a great adventure some thirty years ago.

In the fall of 1975, I finished my active duty in the United States Marine Corps and was ready to pursue an ideal that had previously come into my head during the time I spent at a large, mid-western university studying the Great Books of Western Civilization.

How did those three professors persuade so many of us, so very much in tune with our turbulent and confused generation to shift our radicalism to a higher and better sphere? In any case, I found myself once again packing my […]