Letters to the Friends

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

Once upon a time there was a small community of monks, who started a monastery in the everlasting hills of Oklahoma. Upon one of those hills, about a mile from the rustic monks, one hermit—a woman consecrated to God—took up residence in a very small house made of wood with a tin roof.

But the hermit was a bit lonely and so, when other women came to visit her, she encouraged them to stay, so they might all offer prayers, together with the monks, for the glory of God and the salvation of the world. Thus a small community came into being, the Benedictine Sisters of Clear Creek, which was placed under the patronage of Mary, Queen of Angels.

For several years these Sisters had no […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

Much has been said about the coming of the Son of God into this world on the first Christmas, during the night of Bethlehem. This was the first act of the Gospel, the first Evangelization, the first Noel. Over the years and centuries spiritual writers—not to mention the evangelists themselves—have made mention of just about every aspect of this unique scene: the place, the time, the actors, the circumstances of it all. In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled… .

One somewhat neglected facet of the Christmas story has to do with the face of this newborn, who arrives in a poor stable of Judea. As the theologians and philosophers tell us, the human face reveals something […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

It has been fourteen years now since we arrived here in eastern Oklahoma in order to establish a Benedictine monastery under the patronage of Our Lady of the Annunciation. And so it is with great joy that I announce our very first chant collection, recorded right here at Clear Creek Abbey, dedicated to Our Lady in the mystery of her Annunciation. Entitled: Ecce Fiat, the enclosed disk is our Christmas gift to you: a recording of Gregorian chant by our monastic choir. In this Advent season, as we look forward to the great feast of Christmas, it is most appropriate that we humbly contemplate the mysterious nine month gestation of grace that began with Our Lady’s fiat on the feast of the Annunciation.

Looking back over the […]

The print version of this letter includes additional images and explanations.

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

It was on the feast of the Assumption in 1998 that His Excellency Bishop Edward J. Slattery of Tulsa signed a charter of foundation, welcoming a group of thirteen Benedictine monks from Notre-Dame de Fontgombault Abbey in France to his diocese. Fourteen years later forty monks occupy several large buildings designed by Professor Thomas Gordon Smith, including a partially completed Romanesque style abbatial church. It is a story of the grace of God, but also of the immense help received from our Friends along the way. We hope you will enjoy seeing a few pictures of this story still in progress. It has been our dream—and more than a dream: our prayerful hope—to ‘build something beautiful […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

The Gospel sometimes speaks to us of economic matters. Such is the passage we read on the Feast of Saint Benedict.

At that time, Peter said to Jesus: Behold we have left all things and have followed Thee; what therefore shall we have?… (Mt. 19:27 and following)

The Lord tends to be rather uncompromising in this area: what is basically asked of us is to give it up — all of it — to the very last dime. Jesus simply will have nothing to do with us if we insist on keeping half. “If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me …” (Mt. 19:21)

The […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

When Our Lord departed this world, disappearing into the clouds of Heaven from a hill overlooking Jerusalem, He took a great deal more than His sacred and resurrected Body: in some sense He ascended with our own humanity, being Himself a summary and exemplar of the human nature, now restored and perfected beyond anything men of former ages ever dreamt of. He took us—or at any rate what is the best of us—with Him in hope. He did not drag our sins along to the place above, but whatever was found to be noble, pure, genuine, beneficial—whatever holy in the history of mankind—He carried it all to Paradise.

Inversely, since the moment of the Ascension, the world here below has never been quite the same. Whatever inspiration […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

We live in tumultuous times. Catholics in America are witnessing, not only the continued assault on the most sacred values that characterize civilized society — especially those values that build the family — but, more recently, a direct and unprecedented challenge, emanating from the highest civil authorities, to our right to practice the faith itself. More than ever, we need to look to our faith in order to find the necessary strength to remain steadfast in the face of this onslaught.

Ever since a certain Easter morning, when the unthinkable, the unspeakable, the unimaginable victory of life over death and of light over darkness occurred, Christians have looked to the place from which the Risen Christ escaped in radiant glory, as a symbol and proof of the […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

During this blessed season of Lent a voice from the desert calls to us. There is a pressing appeal to follow Christ into the wilderness, where we will be tempted and tested, where we will become hungry enough to eat stones. It is all part of the rugged road of the Beatitudes, leading from the wasteland of our sinfulness to Mount Calvary and beyond. How could we refuse? It is through a certain participation in Christ’s Passion that we enter into His Paschal triumph. The Cross is the key that opens the heavens.

The world around us — and this is perceptible even in a monastery lying on the outskirts of human society — seems to be falling under a spell. From cell phones to video games […]

“The child is father of the man.” — William Wordsworth

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

There once was a boy who dreamed of great deeds: of kingdoms he would conquer and of giants he would slay. In fact, he was little different from other boys in other times — although he never knew the constraints of a “politically correct” childhood or of “safe” toys. In fact he really never had any toys at all, nor did he particularly need them. The wind and the trees were his companions and the sun-beaten hillsides his classroom. What more is there to say? A boy.

Of course, the boy grew up as boys do, and although life did not treat him badly, the unconstrained freedom of early youth gave way, little by little, to […]

Dear Friend,

Today we are seeing a certain ‘eclipse of God’ taking place, a kind of amnesia which, albeit not an outright rejection of Christianity, is nonetheless a denial of the treasure of our faith, a denial that could lead to the loss of our deepest identity.

Such are the prophetic words that His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI uttered in his Message for the 2011 World Youth Day in Madrid. During one of his encounters with these enthusiastic young people in Spain, after repeating the words just quoted, he added this remark, referring to the religious life:

In a world of relativism and mediocrity, we need that radicalism to which your consecration, as a way of belonging to the God who is loved above all things, bears witness. […]