“Open your hearts, children of the Catholic Church, and come and pray the prayer of our Mother.” – Dom Prosper Guéranger
Dear Friends of Clear Creek Monastery,
Is something wrong in your neighborhood? Does the social order seem to have slumped into chaos? In spite of all the well-intentioned words of sociologists and talk-show hosts, perhaps a more radical remedy is needed.
Culture moves out from the center in concentric circles – something like the way ripples move outward from the point of impact, when a stone is tossed into the center of a pond. The rest of culture, including popular music and art, will only get better if beauty radiates from the silent center of things, from hearts and minds on fire with the love of the one true God. Prayer does this in a personal way. Liturgy accomplishes this in the social sphere. Is there any such influence at work in your neighborhood? Does anyone or anything broadcast those ripples of Christian culture? Does anything bring that silent presence of eternity into the hustle and bustle of your day-to-day existence?
The famous Benedictine, Dom Prosper Guéranger, was born two hundred years ago on April 4, 1805. He came into the world in a little French town named Sablé, situated along the Sarthe River, not far from an abandoned monastery, Saint Pierre de Solesmes, which was to dominate the landscape of his boyhood imagination.
Some years later, while visiting what was left of another monastery, Saint Martin at Marmoutiers, Prosper felt a profound sadness well up within him before these sacred ruins. He was filled with an ardent desire to see monastic life flourish again in France, where it had been destroyed during the French Revolution. After his priestly ordination, he set about to save the old monastery of Solesmes from being sold as a stone quarry. Overcoming numerous difficulties, he eventually succeeded in acquiring the property and established a small community of Benedictine monks there in 1833. In 1837, at the age of 32, he became the first Abbot of Solesmes.
Dom Guéranger soon became the head of a large monastic family destined to form a group of monasteries or “congregation.” God had endowed him with an acute sense of the Benedictine spirit, thus enabling him to bring back to life a tradition fourteen centuries old. He became a true patriarch for this spiritual family.
Dom Guéranger’s most formidable contribution to the life of the church, however, was in the domain of liturgy. He maintained – against many determined critics – that the fullness of Catholic life must be centered once again around the public celebration of the Church’s solemn liturgy. The Church’s Magisterium has since confirmed this intuition: “[E]very liturgical celebration, because it is an action of Christ the priest and of His Body the Church, is a sacred action surpassing all others. No other action of the Church can match its claim to efficacy, nor equal the degree of it.” (Sacrosanctum Concilium n. 7) Dom Guéranger understood that the liturgy was the principal means of restoring the Faith after the decimation of churches under the French Revolution. He advocated fidelity to the living tradition handed down by the Roman Church.
Through his best-known work, The Liturgical Year, in which he explained the liturgical texts and rites, Dom Guéranger succeeded in renewing the interest of the faithful in the liturgical treasures of the Church. In the general preface to this work, he wrote: “The prayer of the Church is the most pleasing to the ear and heart of God, and therefore, the most efficacious of all prayers. Happy, then, is he who prays with the Church, and unites his own petitions with those of the Bride….Prayer said in union with the Church is the light of understanding, it is the fire of divine love for the heart….Open your hearts, children of the Catholic Church, and come and pray the prayer of our Mother.”
Carried along by what he called “the marvelous waters of the liturgy,” Dom Guéranger and his monks knew how to close their eyes and ears to the distractions around them. “One of the great happinesses of our state,” he once observed, “is to let ourselves go with the current, because the liturgical life is a great and mighty river.” (cited in Solesmes and Dom Guéranger by Dom Guy Oury, p. 103)
Divine Providence seems to have disposed that Solesmes should resemble the vision of the Temple in chapter 47 of Ezechiel, where the waters issue forth in abundance from the threshold, in such a manner that “wherever the river goes every living creature which swarms will live” (v.9) while “… [O]n the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees….Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing,” (v. 12). Indeed, the liturgy is food and medicine for a world dying of spiritual hunger and malady.
Having issued forth from the same monastic tradition, our little foundation at Clear Creek hopes to continue the story begun at Solesmes and continued at Notre Dame de Fontgombault, the Abbey that founded us in 1999. Being situated in the heartland of America, it is our fondest hope that we might contribute in some small way in restoring the life-giving waters of Catholic culture to our homeland, by simply being what we are as Benedictine monks. The essential task is that of perfecting the monastic family here. We ask your continued prayers and moral support for that.
There also remains the more practical matter of completing our monastic buildings. Thanks to your very generous financial support, I am happy to say that we still hope to continue our construction project later this year or early next spring. The challenge remains daunting nonetheless, as the price of building ever increases. We continue each day to recite the Chaplet of the Child Jesus, who is our main “fundraiser,” along with the great St. Joseph and, of course, Our Lady of the Annunciation. May her loving gaze be upon you and your families.
br. Philip Anderson, Prior
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“Open your hearts, children of the Catholic Church, and come and pray the prayer of our Mother.” – Dom Prosper Guéranger
Dear Friends of Clear Creek Monastery,
Is something wrong in your neighborhood? Does the social order seem to have slumped into chaos? In spite of all the well-intentioned words of sociologists and talk-show hosts, perhaps a more radical remedy is needed.
Culture moves out from the center in concentric circles – something like the way ripples move outward from the point of impact, when a stone is tossed into the center of a pond. The rest of culture, including popular music and art, will only get better if beauty radiates from the silent center of things, from hearts and minds on fire with the love of the one true God. Prayer does this in a personal way. Liturgy accomplishes this in the social sphere. Is there any such influence at work in your neighborhood? Does anyone or anything broadcast those ripples of Christian culture? Does anything bring that silent presence of eternity into the hustle and bustle of your day-to-day existence?
The famous Benedictine, Dom Prosper Guéranger, was born two hundred years ago on April 4, 1805. He came into the world in a little French town named Sablé, situated along the Sarthe River, not far from an abandoned monastery, Saint Pierre de Solesmes, which was to dominate the landscape of his boyhood imagination.
Some years later, while visiting what was left of another monastery, Saint Martin at Marmoutiers, Prosper felt a profound sadness well up within him before these sacred ruins. He was filled with an ardent desire to see monastic life flourish again in France, where it had been destroyed during the French Revolution. After his priestly ordination, he set about to save the old monastery of Solesmes from being sold as a stone quarry. Overcoming numerous difficulties, he eventually succeeded in acquiring the property and established a small community of Benedictine monks there in 1833. In 1837, at the age of 32, he became the first Abbot of Solesmes.
Dom Guéranger soon became the head of a large monastic family destined to form a group of monasteries or “congregation.” God had endowed him with an acute sense of the Benedictine spirit, thus enabling him to bring back to life a tradition fourteen centuries old. He became a true patriarch for this spiritual family.
Dom Guéranger’s most formidable contribution to the life of the church, however, was in the domain of liturgy. He maintained – against many determined critics – that the fullness of Catholic life must be centered once again around the public celebration of the Church’s solemn liturgy. The Church’s Magisterium has since confirmed this intuition: “[E]very liturgical celebration, because it is an action of Christ the priest and of His Body the Church, is a sacred action surpassing all others. No other action of the Church can match its claim to efficacy, nor equal the degree of it.” (Sacrosanctum Concilium n. 7) Dom Guéranger understood that the liturgy was the principal means of restoring the Faith after the decimation of churches under the French Revolution. He advocated fidelity to the living tradition handed down by the Roman Church.
Through his best-known work, The Liturgical Year, in which he explained the liturgical texts and rites, Dom Guéranger succeeded in renewing the interest of the faithful in the liturgical treasures of the Church. In the general preface to this work, he wrote: “The prayer of the Church is the most pleasing to the ear and heart of God, and therefore, the most efficacious of all prayers. Happy, then, is he who prays with the Church, and unites his own petitions with those of the Bride….Prayer said in union with the Church is the light of understanding, it is the fire of divine love for the heart….Open your hearts, children of the Catholic Church, and come and pray the prayer of our Mother.”
Carried along by what he called “the marvelous waters of the liturgy,” Dom Guéranger and his monks knew how to close their eyes and ears to the distractions around them. “One of the great happinesses of our state,” he once observed, “is to let ourselves go with the current, because the liturgical life is a great and mighty river.” (cited in Solesmes and Dom Guéranger by Dom Guy Oury, p. 103)
Divine Providence seems to have disposed that Solesmes should resemble the vision of the Temple in chapter 47 of Ezechiel, where the waters issue forth in abundance from the threshold, in such a manner that “wherever the river goes every living creature which swarms will live” (v.9) while “… [O]n the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees….Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing,” (v. 12). Indeed, the liturgy is food and medicine for a world dying of spiritual hunger and malady.
Having issued forth from the same monastic tradition, our little foundation at Clear Creek hopes to continue the story begun at Solesmes and continued at Notre Dame de Fontgombault, the Abbey that founded us in 1999. Being situated in the heartland of America, it is our fondest hope that we might contribute in some small way in restoring the life-giving waters of Catholic culture to our homeland, by simply being what we are as Benedictine monks. The essential task is that of perfecting the monastic family here. We ask your continued prayers and moral support for that.
There also remains the more practical matter of completing our monastic buildings. Thanks to your very generous financial support, I am happy to say that we still hope to continue our construction project later this year or early next spring. The challenge remains daunting nonetheless, as the price of building ever increases. We continue each day to recite the Chaplet of the Child Jesus, who is our main “fundraiser,” along with the great St. Joseph and, of course, Our Lady of the Annunciation. May her loving gaze be upon you and your families.
br. Philip Anderson, Prior
