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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. […]

… and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock (Mt. 7:25).

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

On May 22nd one of the most devastating tornadoes recorded in modern American history (the 7th deadliest) or in world history (the 27th) ripped through the mid-west. You may not have been aware — nor was I, being in France at the time for the General Chapter meeting of the Benedictine Congregation of Solesmes — that Clear Creek Abbey was directly in the path of this storm. It touched down in Joplin, Missouri as a ER5 multiple-vortex tornado, claiming more than 150 lives and wreaking some $3 billion of destruction. These storms generally move […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

The Gospel clearly shows the Blessed Virgin Mary to be one of the greatest contemplatives of all time — in fact the greatest, if we exclude her son from the contest. Her exterior actions are few and far between, but they are decisive. She speaks little, but each word is a gem preciously kept from generation to generation. Throughout her life — from her Immaculate Conception to the Annunciation and the virgin birth; from her presence on Calvary to the Upper Room at Pentecost — all these events are of an intensely spiritual nature, or at least tending toward the more spiritual and contemplative dimension of human existence. In Mary we find nothing trivial, nothing petty. No doubt this relates to the fact that her heart became, as […]

Dear Friends of Clear Creek Monastery,

A few weeks ago Our Lady of Clear Creek Abbey received the visit of a saintly missionary, Father Giovanni Salerno, founder of the Missionary Servants of the Poor of the Third World, whom we have known for many years, through his visits, both at Fontgombault Abbey in France and, now, here in Oklahoma. He and his fellow missionary, Father Vincent, came to ask, not for money or other material resources, but for the monks’ prayers. As he reminded us, once upon a time the earlier missionaries in Peru (where Father Giovanni works) came to the convent of Saint Teresa of Avila to ask the very same thing.

Rather than try to explain why we have accepted to help these particular missionaries— without abandoning our contemplative form of […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

The fact is inescapable: if there is something right with human existence, if God’s creation is filled with wonders both natural and supernatural, if Christ’s victory over sin and death stands quite complete and definitive, there is also something awry in the universe, something terribly wrong in the world.

St. Benedict takes it for granted and never loses sight of this reality. From the outset of his Rule for monks, he makes it clear in what kind of place we live:

Hearken, O my son, to the precept of your master, and incline the ear of your heart: willingly receive and faithfully fulfill the admonition of your loving father, that you may return by the labor of obedience to Him from whom you had […]

Dear Friend of Clear Creek Abbey,

Here is a little path you can follow through the days ahead, through the twelve days of the great feast of the humility of God, that is to say — the feast of Christmas. It is an upward path actually, a spiritual step-ladder. Its top reaches higher than the Christmas tree, higher even than the Star of Bethlehem. It is St. Benedict’s gift to the Order of Monks and to the world, the ladder of humility. It has twelve rungs, one for each day. It is for you too.

Jesus, Our Little Lord, followed it in reverse. He came down this ladder from Heaven, humbling Himself to a degree undreamt of before, from the beginning of world. Being God, He took upon Himself a true huuman nature, […]