Letters to the Friends

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

Though the beauty of its sacred melodies rarely echoes in the parishes and religious communities of our time, Gregorian chant has a way of surviving the vicissitudes of liturgical decline and renewal. Despite the efforts of some to suppress it, this unique musical form, no doubt the greatest single musical repertory produced by our Western Christian culture, has a way of rising from the tomb.

“Like the music of the ancients,” wrote Dom André Mocquereau, the great restorer of Gregorian chant at Solesmes abbey in France, “the chant’s offspring is simple and discreet, sober in its effects; it is the humble servant, the vehicle of the sacred text, or, if you will, a reverent, faithful, […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

As this mysterious thing we call “time” inexorably devours people and things, it carries all before it like a river moving toward the sea of eternity. But this mystery also fulfills the providential plan of God, one that includes all of us, pulling us toward that Kingdom where God’s glory and beauty crown the efforts of our hard-fought battles on earth. If only we can get there…

At Our Lady of Clear Creek Abbey things continue to grow and develop. Our most recent construction project came to completion in May, leaving us with a beautiful sanctuary. In its exterior aspect this part of the church is referred to as the chevet.

We now have a […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

On May 13th, feast of Our Lady of Fatima, His Holiness Pope Francis will have canonized at the sanctuary in Portugal two of the three shepherd children who were the privileged witnesses of extraordinary events that took place a century ago near the Cova da Iria. To tell the truth, since that time the world has never been quite the same.

In their early lives, especially before the apparitions of Our Lady, Jacinta and Francisco Marto were surely two of the most insignificant human beings ever to walk the face of the earth. Nothing distinguished them from the numberless poor who constitute now as then most of the world’s population. And yet this very lack of human excellence, far from hampering them in their mission, made them […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

There is no subject more central to monastic doctrine than that of purity of heart. The conferences of St. John Cassian bear ample witness to this fact. Seeing God in the company of the Blessed of Heaven is what Cassian assigns as the end toward which our lives must be ordered. And purity of heart is the means to that end. This comes to us directly from our Lord himself: “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God” (Mt. 5:8). Of course this has all been expounded upon by the saints and doctors of the Church, but it is especially worth pondering as we enter into the Lenten season.

As we clearly see in the Gospel, most notably during the dramatic confrontations between the […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

The Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy, wrote that “happy people have no history.” Other interpretations of this mysterious saying are possible, but here is one: since what we call “history” is often made of wars and death-dealing revolutions, the happiest folk are those who can live for a time in peace, far from that violence and bitter conflict that fill our history books and constitute each day most of the world’s breaking news.

The village that has grown up, little by little, within hearing range of our abbey bells is just such a place—the home of a people with no history. It is a village that hardly has a name. It is never in the news, and its glory lies in its very smallness and in the glad […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

As the last logs (to use a homely metaphor) of the Year of Our Lord 2016 burn slowly down to embers, we remain pensive in our meditations, thinking back over battles lost and won. Before the brave new world of 2017 (whatever it may turn out to be) makes its appearance, there are lessons to be harvested and thanks to be rendered unto God, who alone in all the twists and tumults of this adventure we call life, remains ever the same.

The Child. What would become of the world without children, especially without the Child of Bethlehem? Gazing into the red glow of the Yule log, we might well contemplate childhoods past, present, and to come, marshaled so to speak around the one Child, who, in […]

John Senior and the Restoration of Realism, by Father Francis Bethel, O.S.B., Thomas More College Press, 452 pages.

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

This book about John Senior and his teaching, penned by our Dom Francis Bethel, has been so long in coming—truly a lengthy labor of love—that its publication will come as no surprise to many who frequent Our Lady of Clear Creek Abbey. No one, I think, will lament the time spent in its preparation, as the subject matter is a serious one, demanding that we rise above the fleeting “busyness” of our contemporary saeculum, in order to catch a glimpse of a beauty that endures. Some things take time, especially if they have to do with eternity.

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

One need not be a prophet to read the “writing on the wall”—especially when the font is of bold type. In our day this ominous writing stands out ever more clearly against a background of cultural chaos and social angst. Some speak of an approaching “storm.” That may, indeed, be a fitting metaphor for the forces of destruction that are lashing out already in many directions.

It has been said that the Church is “an anvil that has worn out many hammers.” In the current context this comparison is especially reassuring. It means that however violently the tempest may beat down upon her, our Mother the Church, the Church of the Holy Apostles and Martyrs, will survive the crisis and live to see a new day, again […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

When angels ask questions—especially of human beings—they do not engage in idle chatter, but open their “lips,” so to speak, only in order to communicate something of great importance on behalf of the divine majesty. As we read in the Book of Judges, when an angel had announced to Manue and his wife that the latter would give birth to a son, which is to say to Samson, Manue asked him his name. “Why askest thou my name,” replied the angelic messenger, “which is wonderful?” On Easter morning, to take another example, when the holy women encountered two angels at the empty tomb, they were asked quite directly, “Why seek you the living with the dead?” The question of these spiritual ambassadors was meant, in fact, to bring […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

To the Christian who has run the race, who has reached the Sacred Triduum in prayer and fasting, the light of Easter morning brings the unwavering certitude of a victory achieved, truly the end of “the war to end all wars.” It speaks of a peace that, at long last, does not disappoint us. The symbol of this solid victory is the heavy stone that was rolled away from the entrance to Christ’s tomb by an angel after an earthquake. This was no ordinary angel but a spirit whose countenance was as lightning, whose clothes were white as snow, one who made the Roman guards freeze with terror. He sits peacefully on the stone.

As for the man or woman of our day who has missed this […]