Letters to the Friends

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

In an essay entitled The Idea of a Pilgrimage, Hilaire Belloc, who had a certain personal experience of the thing, takes us beyond the mere definition and into the fuller, incarnate, sense of what it means to go on pilgrimage:

There has always hung round the idea of a pilgrimage, with all people and at all times – I except those very rare and highly decadent generations of history in which no pilgrimages are made, nor any journeys, save for curiosity or greed – there has always hung round it, I say, something more than the mere objective. … I will visit the grave of a saint or of a man whom I venerate privately for his virtues and deeds, but on my way I […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

As with most houses, the monastic house has its common areas and its special places. There are rooms where a spider’s web will hardly last a day before being unceremoniously swept into oblivion; there are others where, well, the standard of cleanliness is somewhat lacking at times (from which the spider knows how to benefit). The most important places in a monastery are called “regular places”, loci regulares in Latin. In these places there must be a more profound silence and greater respect all round. The church is, of course, the first of these regular places, but there is another which the monks frequent assiduously, which is to say the Chapter Room, or Chapter House. All the great cathedrals and monasteries of Europe had their Chapter House.

Dear Friend of Clear Creek,

Today I am writing to you for a very special purpose. Clear Creek Abbey has accepted to be the headquarters for the promotion of the cause of beatification for the Servant of God Empress Zita of Habsburg. I think you will see how well this endeavor fits with our vocation as contemplative monks.

As is commonly said, Noblesse oblige: that quality we name ‘nobility,’ far from providing a reason to dispense a person from hard service, brings with it, on the contrary, a grave obligation to serve more than others. The Lord Himself said as much: “The Son of man is not come to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a redemption for many” (Matthew 20:28). The idea is familiar to monks, who […]

It gives me a kind of perfect joy to announce the construction of a new residence hall at Clear Creek, a building we call “the Chapter House.” This large building will include essential rooms for the life of the monastery, including the Chapter Room, the Sacristy, the Infirmary, and more than 30 cells. This much needed part of the monastery has been a long time coming. Construction is to last for 16 months, beginning in the middle of May.

If “a picture is worth a thousand words,” then the graphic art (spanning the inside two pages) of our architect, Mr. William Heyer, and his team, will give you an excellent idea of the scope and […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux is quoted as saying, “You will find something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters.” Our monastic life at Clear Creek often takes us into that school of God’s wisdom where we find “tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything” (William Shakespeare, As You Like It, II.i. 1-17). Here is a text summarizing what one of our monks has learned. — br. Philip Anderson, abbot

The inspired and wonderful yet often under-appreciated book of Ecclesiasticus (aka Sirach) tells us: “The principal things necessary for the life of men are water, fire and iron, salt, milk, and bread of flour, and honey, […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

After repeated threats, in the year 410 “the Visigoths appeared outside Rome in force and the senate prepared to resist, but in the middle of the night rebellious slaves opened the Salarian Gate to the attackers, who poured in and set fire to the nearby houses. ‘Eleven hundred and sixty three years after the foundation of Rome,’ Gibbon pronounced, ‘the Imperial city, which had subdued and civilized so considerable a part of mankind, was delivered to the licentious fury of the tribes of Germany and Scythia’” (Richard Cavendish, “The Visigoths sack Rome”, History Today). The Romans were left in a state of despair, and many of them blamed the Christians for this unmitigated disaster.

It was Saint Augustine who set himself the task of refuting the charge and restoring hope to the Christians. […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

As I pen these few lines to accompany our Christmas greetings to you at the end of the Year of Our Lord 2020, much in the world remains uncertain. Our political destinies as Americans continue to vacillate amid our ever deepening divisions over the recent presidential election; the incalculable troubles occasioned by a virus unleashed on the world from China have not yet ceased to interfere with our lives; finally, the specter of war on a grand scale—with its particular horrors in our age of advanced technology—though remote for the moment, ever skulks in the background.

And yet, and yet… We Christians are a stubborn people in the sense that our hope […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]