Letters to the Friends

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

For his part, Saint Paul argued that talk about certain subjects should simply be eliminated from the conversation of Christians: “Let it not so much as be named among you, as becometh saints” (Eph. 5:3). It seems that in our sad times, we Catholics are obliged to hear of nothing else but those forbidden subjects. Where has innocence gone?

At least on Christmas, let us hope, we can leave aside for a moment the depressing news and focus our eyes and hearts on the perfect innocence of the Christ child. For this one day, nothing threatens the spiritual peace. Herod’s black riders, those fearful population-control henchmen, have not yet arrived in the streets of Bethlehem. The Child in His Mother’s virginal and immaculate hands does not yet […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

Contemplating the calendar invites us to look beyond the present moment, whether to the past or to the future. Together with this calendar I am sending you, I offer a few reflections on the past, present, and future of Our Lady of Clear Creek Abbey.

In a homily given at the Mass for the official opening of our monastery on the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, February 11, 2000, the Most Reverend Edward J. Slattery, then bishop of Tulsa, made comments that seemed to take on a prophetic character:

…[T]he monk who freely consecrates himself to God through the voluntary renunciations of poverty, chastity, obedience, through the practice of conversion and stability, all this leading him to a life of prayerful passion and […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

While news from the nation’s capital and around America—truly a nation divided— continues to be unsettling; as scandals and rumors of corruption within the Catholic Church unleash their confusion upon us week-by-week, we instinctively search for a sure point of reference, one that will provide our lives with stability and ensure our peace. Where on earth shall we find it?

When, a few years ago here at Clear Creek, it came time to devise a coat-of-arms for the newly established abbey (this happened in 2010), someone wisely suggested we include a cross on our shield. As the most likely place for this cross turned out to be near the bottom tip of […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

The Catholic faithful thought they had seen it all. We hoped the worst of the clerical abuse scandals were behind us. But the perfect storm was yet to be unleashed. As I write this letter, both the Church and American society in general are reeling under the shock produced by the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report documenting some seventy years of predatory activity involving children and young people in several dioceses, at the hands of clergy members and others working for the Church. And all of this on top of substantial allegations involving former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick—and even a report that the Pope himself may have been part of the cover-up! We wish we were dreaming, but this dream has morphed into a nightmare of reality.

It is […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

Following the resounding—the deafening—defeat of the pro-life cause in Ireland on May 25th by a referendum that repealed the eighth amendment of Ireland’s constitution protecting the unborn, someone asked me, “What now?” Despite the rather great odds against a favorable result—that is to say against an outcome that would have been in harmony with the age-old teaching of the Church and the immemorial common sense of civilized peoples—despite the slim chances of success, there still remained (before the voting) some hope. There remained the hope that the Irish people would see through the New World Order that was pushing them into the acceptance of almost unlimited abortion, thereby robbing them of their patrimony. There remained a glimmer of hope that the descendants of Saint Patrick would keep their […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

There was a time when life was ordered, not by the ringtone of your so-called smart phone, but according to the melodious and mysterious voice of the church bell. This is undoubtedly still the case in some places, although one may wonder how long it will take before even that voice is silenced. The English poet, Thomas Gray, begins his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard with the evocation of the peaceful atmosphere that descends upon a village as the “curfew,” that is to say the church bell, announces the coming of night:

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
     The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
     And leaves the world to darkness and to […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

While I write this letter America is struggling—once again—to come to grips with the unspeakable horror of a mass shooting, perpetrated this time on Ash Wednesday, which was also St. Valentine’s Day this year. Even monks behind their cloister walls cannot entirely escape the effects of such a tragedy, one that plunges a whole people into sadness and renews the sense of desperation that gnaws at our society as the all-too-familiar scenario unfolds.

For the better-informed Christian, this recent killing is not very surprising. When a society loses touch with the well-springs of authentic culture and thrives instead on the pride of its technology and the promise of ever more individualistic freedoms and pleasures, there is danger lurking at the door—a “culture of death.” Sadly, too many […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

In a remark delivered at a meeting of monastic superiors a few years ago, an abbot argued that the Church should stop cultivating beauty and instead promote ugliness. This ironic statement (uttered no doubt for shock effect) seems to have been aimed primarily at the architectural and artistic beauties of Christian Europe, where the essential thing—the Faith—now appears to be waning, leaving only the splendors of marble and canvas. These magnificent works speak now more to tourists than to humble believers—or so the argument goes.

It is true that we must not pay greater homage to the genius of Michelangelo than to the holy things he represented in his artwork. It is also true that one might pray just as well in the humblest chapel as in […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

As angry voices fuel the endless debates of partisan politics and simple souls find themselves ever more confused amid the struggles of a society having lost its human and divine bearings, we aspire as never before to that peace which Christ alone can give, which is Christ Himself (cf. Eph. 2:14). In a very real sense the path to that peace is by means of spiritual silence.

In his recent book devoted to the subject (The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise), Cardinal Sarah explores the invaluable lessons that silence can teach us and reminds us of what a sane society might look like were we to heed it. He notes the relationship between peace and silence, writing, “Silence is friendship and love, interior harmony […]

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky …
— William Wordsworth

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

If there is a biblical image that speaks to all mankind—in all times and places—it is surely that of the rainbow. “And God said: This is the sign of the covenant which I will give between me and you, and to every living soul that is with you, for perpetual generations. I will set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be the sign of a covenant between me, and between the earth” (Gen. 9:12-13). This was the great sign of God’s mercy, the sign that there would be no more flood “to destroy all flesh” (9:15).

The rainbow likewise had a privileged place in Greek mythology and the philosophical tradition […]