Letters to the Friends

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

By now you will have read something about the “Benedict Option,” an expression devised by journalist Rod Dreher in reference to an idea of Alasdair MacIntyre’s in his book, After Virtue. Needless to say, as a son of St. Benedict I find the theme intriguing, even while realizing that the Benedict Option, along with the discussions it has occasioned, has more to do with choices faced by Christians living in an increasingly pagan culture outside the monastery walls than with the concerns of us denizens of the cloister.

This Benedict Option suggests a way forward for those who wish to live in conformity with their Catholic faith, despite the pressures of a society […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

As Saint Thomas teaches us, it was out of overflowing goodness, of love, that God created the universe;  it was out of the same Divine goodness that He communicated Himself to the world in the mystery of the Incarnation at Christmas.

Another word for this goodness and love is “mercy,” especially when we consider that this love comes down from Heaven to meet the tragic figures of Adam and Eve exiled from Paradise—in other words you and me.

We have now begun, in the Roman Catholic Church, an Extraordinary Jubilee dedicated to Divine Mercy. This is no trifling event. There is nothing the world so needs at present, there is nothing each one of us so needs so urgently as this mercy that God would give […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

On August 23rd a very close friend of Our Lady of Clear Creek Abbey was suddenly and tragically swept away from us. We will never be quite the same. Mark Costello was part of the Clear Creek adventure from the very start and ever faithful. The following excerpt is taken from the homily it was my privilege to offer at the solemn requiem mass for him in Edmond, Oklahoma on August 29th.

“It could be said,” wrote Pope Saint John Paul II, “that human history is marked from the very beginning by the limit God the Creator places upon evil.” The […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

The abbot of Solesmes was a man of a great and single idea. He had from the start the genial intuition of his mission, and he devoted himself entirely to it: that of restoring to our disinherited age all the scattered treasures of the thousand-year tradition of Christianity, and above all the forgotten riches of antiquity that the Church preserves in her liturgy. Such was the luminous star that guided him in all his ways. And he envisaged this ideal in all its aspects: … the study and the love of liturgical institutions; the pastoral value of the liturgical year and its ever varied teachings; the doctrinal foundations of this theological […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

Our abbey belongs to a family of monasteries, the Congregation of Solesmes. Every four years, abbots from various parts of the world travel to France in order to attend the General Chapter at Saint-Pierre-de-Solesmes Abbey, on the banks of the Sarthe River. On Low Sunday, in company with the young monk who was to be my socius (in monastic language, my traveling companion), I boarded a plane to Paris.

Once we arrived in Sablé, at the nearest train station to the Abbey, we decided to walk the last few miles to our destination rather than asking to be shuttled in an automobile. It was a glorious spring day, but just a bit on the warm side. As we made our way along the footpath by the Sarthe, […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

“The sacred liturgy,” writes Dom Daniel Kirby of Silverstream Priory, “is the Church’s theologia prima … The Church’s doctrine emerges in all its shining purity … from the wellspring of her liturgy….”

It is interesting in this sense to see how powerfully the liturgy of Ash Wednesday teaches us “what’s what” in the world and puts everything in its place, especially with regard to the human race and its history as seen by God. “Remember, man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return.”

In a fundamental sense all things come from Heaven, since all creation comes from God. But the return trip to God, the great business in which we are all engaged, begins from the ground up. It starts in the humus, […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

Our abbey is nestled on the flank of a rocky hill. Some call it a mountain. Situated all around this hill-like mountain covered with oaks are various houses and clusters of houses that make up what is sometimes referred to as Clear Creek Village. There are dwellings elsewhere, but the greatest number lie at the foot of this hilly eminence. No one is pretending that there is here a village in the full sense of the word; however, something very much like a village is beginning to emerge from this human clay. Something is awakening. Perhaps a case in point could illustrate what I mean.

As I write this letter, the primitive shelter perched on the scaffold above the front door of the church is empty. It […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

In the mystery and poetry of Christmas there is an awareness of a catastrophe that has upset creation, a kind of ancestral memory of a certain garden and the sad burden of sin that weighs upon the world.

The Child of Bethlehem, Emmanuel, is coming to set things right. Lying between the ox and the donkey in the stable, He rules from his crib the stars, the winds and the tides, and so has power to usher in a renewed order. This new creation will not come without a struggle, but that is another story…

And to Adam [God] said: Because thou hast harkened to the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat, cursed […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

It is said that at the Abbey of Cluny such were the spaciousness of its buildings and the good order of its grounds and appurtenances, that the Pope, the Emperor, and several kings with numerous suites could be received simultaneously as guests without impairing the tranquil regularity of monastic life. Truly, this monastery was a spiritual citadel, a monastic “keep” at the heart of Christendom.

As a member of the Solesmes Congregation, Our Lady of Clear Creek Abbey is a spiritual heir of Cluny. By decree of Pope Gregory XVI in 1837, our Congregation replaced the ancient Congregation of Cluny and several others that disappeared during the French Revolution. The spiritual and material greatness […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

Reflecting on the stupendous phenomenon of Fatima—the apparitions and the revelations—one is tempted to modify the well-known saying of Saint Bernard to say De Fatima numquam satis, “When it comes to Fatima, enough is never said.” As a Carmelite theologian expressed it at the end of the last century, “Fatima is the prophetic message of our time.” As we move closer to the centenary of the apparitions in 2017, does this still hold true?

Most Catholics know the story. On May 13th, 1917, three young shepherds were herding their flock not far from their home in Fatima, Portugal, when they saw, as they reported, a lady “brighter than the sun, shedding rays of light clearer and stronger than a crystal goblet filled with the most sparkling water […]