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Read by Br. Mark Brown

Among our many partners in ministry, the men and women who earn their living by working for the Society have a special place.  We could not fulfill the mission to which God calls us without the contribution of their many skills to complement our own.  Our concern and gratitude for them should find frequent expression in our prayers.

Our belief in the dignity of work and the honor due to all forms of labor and creativity should be revealed by the respect we show to each of our employees. The way we exercise authority as employers must reveal our belief in the equality of all as persons and citizens.  We know that for many of our employees the work they undertake for us is the chief expression of their ministry within the Body of Christ.  Their dedication often leads them to give more than duty requires.  It is important that we regularly show our appreciation and gratitude in a variety of ways.

To help in maintaining the highest standards of integrity, fairness and clarity, we shall use a manual of guidelines setting out all the procedures to be observed in our professional relationships with our employees.  It is an important feature of community discipline to be faithful to these rules. The brother responsible for human resources guides those who supervise individual employees.  Our commitment to the well-being of our employees includes a concern for their professional develop­ment and continuing education as well as fair compensation and time off.

The nature of our community life and ministries leads us to require our employees to be especially respectful of our privacy, and to maintain confidentiality about ourselves and our guests.  We, for our part, must demonstrate our commitment to this ethos of confidentiality and refrain from any kind of inappropriate intrusion into the personal lives of our employees.

 

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Read by Br. Bruce Neal

The source of hospitality is the heart of God, who yearns to unite every creature within one embrace.  Only in the fullness of time will God gather all things in Christ, yet God’s boundless wel­come is something we already enjoy here and now in the Eucharist.  Our life together as a com­munity gives us a foretaste of the communion of saints.  So we have the power to be a sacrament of God’s hospitality, a house of God, offering his nurture and protection to all who come under our roof.

It is not enough merely to offer accommodation to visitors.  Our faith must recognize the one who comes to us in the person of the guest, the stranger and the pilgrim.  It is the Lord, who has identified himself with each of his sisters and brothers.  If we are to give them bread and not stones, and truly meet Christ in them face to face, we must realize the gifts the Holy Spirit has given us for the ministry of hospitality, and remember how deeply people are yearning for the things of God.  We have silence for our guests, which protects the mystery of their hearts and brings healing.  We have our ongoing stream of worship, which they can enter.  We have the fellowship of our altar and our table.  We offer security, where guests are safe from intrusion and free to pray.  Our houses have simple beauty.  We offer courtesy, acceptance and intercession.  And the Spirit has given us gifts of guidance, teaching and encouragement by which we can help retreatants grow in Christ.

We must also remain true to the limits of our hospitality.  The claims of our life together and our other ministries mean we cannot take in everyone who wants to come or meet a guest’s every need.  We cannot offer the closeness that some are seeking and can seldom be available as pastoral counselors.  Normally our guests can stay only for short periods.  If we let our life as a brotherhood be overwhelmed by the claims of guests, we could endanger the resources by which we can serve them.  We can be confident of the rightness of boundaries that contain and foster our own life to­gether.  Every house shall have a private area to which guests are not normally invited and there shall be interludes during the year when guests are not received.  The brothers who are given primary responsibility for our ministry of hospitality know its cost more than any and they need our support. Not every guest will be easy to welcome.  If we experience difficulties in our relationship with any guests we should pray specially to find Christ in them and consult one another about the most appropriate resolution.

Just as we enrich our guests’ lives, so they enrich ours.  We welcome men and women of every race and culture, rejoicing in the breadth and diversity of human experience that they bring to us.  Their lives enlarge our vision of God’s world.  The stories of their sufferings and achievements and their experience of God stir and challenge us.  If we are attentive, each guest will be a word and gift of God to us.

 

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Read by Br. Tom Shaw

Discerning which opportunities for ministry we should respond to brings into play the wis­dom of the whole community, the responsibility of particular brothers and the skillful supervision of the Superior.  In deciding which ventures to pursue or invitations to accept we take into account the resources of the community, the availability of particular brothers and their needs, the mission priorities of the Society, as well as the needs of those whose claims upon us are under consideration.  We must remember that we are called to exercise demanding ministries within the community for one another and amongst our employees and those who work alongside us. The prudence that in­forms this practice of discernment, however, is not meant to hold us back from responding gener­ously and spontaneously to unforeseen and urgent claims that the Spirit makes upon us.

The coordination of our tasks, responsibilities and ministries means that we must often turn down requests and opportunities.  Without faithfulness to our limitations we can jeopardize our com­munity life and its balance.  It will often be painful when we are unable to respond to the needs that touch our hearts.  It is important to share this frustration in prayer.  Christ can help us to accept our limitations as expressions of our poverty, and the constraints he imposes as ways in which he is shaping and molding our lives.  In a community such as ours it is unrealistic to expect that the balance between meeting our own needs and those of others can be kept always in perfect equilib­rium.  Instead we must be resilient enough to embrace the emergencies and stresses that belong to apostolic life.

Our reliance on the spontaneity of the Holy Spirit in our ministry does not replace the need for training, preparation and supervision.  We may only engage in ministries for which we have received training and whose disciplines we have embraced.  It is especially important in those minis­tries involving confidential work with individuals that we observe those boundaries and guide­lines binding on ministers of the Church.  A brother must never be left feeling isolated in his ministry.  The leaders of the community must make sure that resources of consultation and super­vision are available to him.

We make it known to groups and individuals who call upon our ministries that the Society needs donations to support our work.  Normally we help them in the exercise of their stewardship by suggesting amounts in proportion to our outlay of time and effort.  God’s generosity in supplying all our needs gives us the freedom to make our ministries available to certain groups and individuals who lack the resources to make these normal donations.

 

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Read by Br. David Allen

All our ministries are expressions of our community life; they are carried out in the name of the whole Society, supported by its prayers and the labors of those who carry on the other regular work of our daily life.  All of us share in the graces that flow from them.  While strictly respecting the confidentiality that covers many aspects of our work, we should share the rest of our experiences in ministry with one another so that we can appreciate them and give praise to God together.  Wher­ever possible we shall go out on mission in twos and threes rather than singly so that we can express our companionship in ministry.

Certain brothers bear their part in our mission chiefly by sustaining the life of the community with their work, witness and prayer at home.  It is important to express our awareness of their vital role within the body.  This sense of our interdependence and equality will be especially important for the infirm and elderly.

Christ has promised that if we abide in him, and consent to his skillful pruning, we shall bear fruit that abides.  If the results of our labors are to last, we need to root our endeavors in Christ and draw on our intimacy with him.  This involves prayer for ourselves and for those whose lives we have the opportunity to touch.  Knowing that grace is powerful in weakness, we hand over to Christ any anxiety about our own adequacy.  We are to trust our own experience of God and draw directly from it so that our witness can be authentic.  We also need to let go of any grasping for immediate results; much of what the grace of God achieves through us will be entirely hidden from our eyes. We also expect to experience failures.  Some of these contain lessons that can help us become more skillful in the future.  Other failures are means by which we enter further into the mystery of disciple­ship; we are not greater than the master, and many went on their way without accepting his words or deeds.

If we give freely of ourselves, we should expect abundant gifts in return, according to Christ’s promise.  We should enter into our ministries expecting to receive as much or more than we can give.  Christ will make himself known to us in wonderful ways in those we serve, especially in those who suffer and are poor in spirit.  Ministry itself will draw out from us gifts, insights and strengths that we never knew we had.  We will be continually taught, humbled, surprised and stretched.  Ministry is itself a vital means of our conversion by Christ and its disciplines are central to our asceticism.  We must also expect power to go out of us in ministry and to experience fatigue that may sometimes be severe.  Seasons of rest and relief are important for individual brothers and the whole community.

 

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Read by Br. Curtis Almquist

Christ sends us with the same passionate trust and love with which the Father sent him into the world.  Our mission is to bring men, women and children into closer union with God in Christ, by the power of the Spirit that he breathes into us.  Christ is already present in the life of everyone as the light of the world.  It is our joy to serve all those to whom we are sent by helping them to embrace that presence in faith.  Our mission is being fulfilled as our prayer, worship and daily life in community draw people into life in Christ.

It is also expressed through ministries that demon­strate the wide range of the Spirit’s gifts.  These ministries spring from our baptismal vocation; only a few of them are the specific responsibility of the ordained.  The Society’s identity is not defined by any particular ministries, since the Spirit is free to change them.  Nevertheless our tradition, expe­rience, and discernment of the signs of our own times encourage us to be alert for Christ’s invitation to serve in the following ways:

We are ready to respond to the needs of those who desire to learn how to pray, to understand the things of the Spirit, and to press forward on the way of conversion.  Some brothers therefore make themselves available, as the Spirit enables them, for ministries of spiritual formation, initiation and guidance with individuals and groups in the Church, and with seekers outside it. We will be alert to the claims of those who seek solid nourishment for the heart and mind, and be open to God’s call to preach, to teach, and to provide written resources through books and publications.

God may prolong our tradition of service to those who are exercising, or being prepared for, ordained ministry in the Church by calling us to support them with our hospitality, to act as guides and confessors, and to offer such training as we may be qualified to give.  Equally, we are ready to support and equip lay men and women for their ministries.

God can call us to further the work of healing and reconciliation by reaching out to the sick, offering the sacraments of healing and forgiveness, befriending the alienated and perplexed, serving those in prison and seeking the company of the marginalized.

We are to be prepared for God to call us to be active witnesses for peace and social justice, bearing witness to Christ’s presence on the side of people who are deprived and oppressed.  We expect our calling to continue to bring special resources to bear on the needs and claims of children and their families who are impoverished and at risk.

God may call a few of us to special ventures in mission in other places and countries, or to hold office in the Church.  In rare cases where a brother would be separated from community life for long periods we would look for clear signs that this was indeed a call coming from God.  In our understanding and discernment of ministry we must be careful to recognize how broad is the range of talents that God uses in ministry, and be prepared for ministries which draw on artistic gifts, and engage our concerns for the environment, and the renewal of society.

 

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Read by Br. Robert L'Esperance

In our own prayer Christ will come to us as a servant seeking to wash our feet, but he also seeks to attend to our needs through the ministry of others and the Church’s sacraments of nurture, forgiveness and healing.  We fall and fall again so we should be glad of the opportunities that the sacramental rite of Reconciliation provides to encounter Christ again in the places of our brokenness and poverty, and allow him to bind up our wounds and set us on our feet.  If we ever feel reluctant to use this means of grace, we must remember how Peter was tempted to refuse the touch of Christ  and how the Lord had to warn him of its necessity.The Superior ensures that each brother has regular access to a confessor outside the community.  We are to make our confessions at least every quarter.

We cannot keep pace with the risen Christ who goes before us if we are encumbered by guilt.  If we stay estranged in our hearts, we jeopardize the communion we have with our brothers and our fellow members of the Body of Christ.  Regular sacramental confession enables us to shed the bur­dens of remembered sin, and move forward encouraged by the Spirit.  We enter the fellowship of the community again with fresh gratitude for the reality of forgiveness.  Father Benson has taught us to live as penitents, “to rise thus to live in the full light of the presence of Jesus, to rise to have nothing hidden, to live in openness of heart to Him, and in an openness of heart to one another also, which the world does not know of, to tear away the veil which hides our hearts, to have our inmost life standing out in the presence of God.”

Each brother in vows, after consulting with the Superior, will find a spiritual director with whom to meet regularly.  Christ is not only the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,  but “the Way, and the Truth and the Life.”  In spiritual direction we make progress on the way which is Christ, learning how we go astray and discovering the paths of prayer and mercy.  Our spiritual directors help us enter into the truth which is Christ, uncovering our illusions and guiding us to ex­plore the freedom for which Christ has set us free.  They challenge us to seek liberation from all that is narrow and superficial so that we can find the abundance of life which is Christ.  Anyone who tries self-sufficiency in the spiritual life soon falls prey to illusion.  From the earliest days God has given members of our Society the calling and gifts for the ministry of spiritual direction.  It is especially important for those of us who are called to be spiritual directors to receive direction ourselves.

Christ will also make himself known as the good shepherd through the teaching and counsel of our retreat leaders.  In times of retreat we should open our hearts, expecting to hear his voice speaking through the one we have invited to guide us.

 

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Read by Br. Kevin Hackett

Times of retreat are essential elements in the rhythm of our life.  They enable us to celebrate the primacy of the love of God above all else.  Whenever we enter retreat we seek to be more available to God so that we may enter more fully into the divine life.  The community shall have one week of retreat together every year under the direction of a retreat leader.  The experience of shared silence and prayer deepens our solidarity in the Spirit and unites us in a common response to the living word.  In addition each professed brother shall have a week of individual retreat every year.

The arrangements about the time and place of this retreat will be made in consultation with the Superior.  In each quarter of the year there will be a day of corporate retreat, fasting and intercession.  Each brother will have an individual day of retreat every month in which there is no time of com­munity retreat.

Brothers who feel confident of God’s call to go forward in the Society will use their retreat before clothing or making their vows to deepen their self-offering to God.  If a brother needs further confirmation of his call, the focus of the retreat will be on the discernment of God’s will.

Retreat is an opportunity to experience the intimacy we have with God through our union with Christ.  Our availability to God will normally be expressed by setting aside three periods for prayer each day, and leaving all distracting tasks.  We seek an inner silence for communion with God and therefore refrain from conversation.  Exercise and gentle recreative activities in solitude will help us be open to the Spirit.

Retreats will often be times in which we hear Jesus inviting us to be at rest with him:  “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”  But we must expect retreats to expose us to spiritual trial.  We may be tempted to tire our­selves or waste the time in busy work and preparation.  We may find ourselves staying on the surface to avoid an authentic meeting with the living God.  And the emptiness of retreat time may compel us to face the painful signs of our need for healing that it was easier to overlook during our usual routines.  So our retreat times will be opportunities to strive against everything that would discourage us from radical dependence on the love of God.

Those of us who guide the retreats of others should be creative in their own use of retreat and guard against mere routine.  Our own experience must be real and vital if we are to draw on it when we guide those who are seeking God.

 

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Read by Br. Timothy Solverson

Jesus chose to work the first of his signs and reveal his glory at the wedding feast at Cana, and he was the chief guest at many meals held to celebrate the new life he was bringing through the gospel.  His joy will abound in us when we celebrate by feasting on the holy days that commemorate the great acts of creation and redemption, and the glories of the saints.  He will continue to reveal his glory among us on the joyful occasions when we have festal meals to mark professions, clothings, anniversaries, holidays and special turning points in our life.

These feasts are another expression of our eucharistic life, and anticipate the heavenly banquet which the risen Lord is preparing for those who love him.  The careful preparations that make our festivities so pleasing are sacred tasks.  Our ministry of hospitality finds one of its richest expressions as we welcome guests to join us in these festal liturgies and meals of celebration.

Just as we feast to celebrate the abundance of the risen life, so we also fast because the end is not yet and the bridegroom is still to come.  Our feasts will be holy and joyful if we are equally prepared to enter from time to time into Jesus’ desert fast.  When we fast we should be following him, moved by the Spirit, to offer to God the experience of emptiness and want.  This offering is made in faith simply to God’s glory, yet from time to time it will open us to the Holy Spirit’s work of revelation.  In our fasting the Spirit may disclose our need to grieve for sin, ours and the world’s.  There may be some temptation we will experience more sharply when fasting, and the Spirit can encourage us to struggle with it more directly.  Or Christ may want us to sense our connectedness with his countless brothers and sisters who suffer hunger, and embrace their cause in prayer.  Above all, the hunger of our fast can open our hearts so that we discover again our hunger and thirst for the living God and have our desire rekindled by the Spirit.

During Lent there will be a common discipline of abstinence with simpler meals and no meat. We will fast by abstaining from food until evening on Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, and the four quarterly days of corporate retreat.  We will join our brothers in a fast of preparation on the day before they make their vows.  On fast days the Superior will give dispensation to those who require some food for reasons of infirmity, medical condition or unavoidable duties.  Those dispensed can participate in other ways through prayer, silence and recollection.  We may also fast on our personal retreat days.

Both our feasts and fasts have a part to play in achieving a wise balance in our daily eating and drinking.  In our feasting we learn to savor and appreciate what we eat and drink, in thankfulness to the Creator who gives them.  Fasting can help us to become more attentive to what our bodies really need so that we can moderate our appetites and be liberated from greed.

 

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Read by Br. Kevin Hackett

The gift of silence we seek to cherish is chiefly the silence of adoring love for the mystery of God which words cannot express.  In silence we pass through the bounds of language to lose ourselves in wonder.  In this silence we learn to revere ourselves also; since Christ dwells in us we too are mysteries that cannot be fathomed, before which we must be silent until the day we come to know as we are known.  In silence we honor the mystery present in the hearts of our brothers and sisters, strangers and enemies.

Only God knows them as they truly are, and in silence we learn to let go of the curiosity, presumption and condemnation that pretend to penetrate the mystery of their hearts.  True silence is an expression of love, unlike the taciturnity that arises from fear and avoid­ance of relationship.

Silence takes root through our cultivation of solitary prayer in which we are free to take delight in our aloneness with God undisturbed.  The Spirit helps us through our struggle with  distraction to return to that inmost place of mutual love where God is simply present to us and we to God.  If we are faithful here in our movement into silence, we will bring the same spirit into our liturgical worship and cherish the silences observed before and during the Eucharist and Offices.  Without this constant opening of the heart in silence alone and together we are unable to feel the touch or hear the word of God.  Silence is a constant source of restoration.  Yet its healing power does not come cheaply.  It depends on our willingness to face all that is within us, light and dark, and to heed all the inner voices that make themselves heard in silence.

Our ministries demand silence for their integrity, in particular our speaking to others and our listening to them in Christ’s name.  Without silence words become empty.  Without silence our hearts would find the burdens, the secrets and the pain of those we seek to help intolerable and over­whelming.  And our ethos of silence is itself a healing gift to those who come to us seeking newness of life.

Each of the disciplines that  protect silence in our common life calls for respect.  The Greater Silence makes the night and early morning a healing time for recollection.  Silent meals and those accompanied by music and reading accustom our guests and us to enjoying fellowship without needing to converse.  Appointed days of retreat and quiet invite us to deepen our awareness and prayer.  Our cells welcome us into the silence of God’s company, and we spurn that welcome if we rely unthinkingly on radio, music and conversation.  We cultivate a thoughtful respect of one an­other’s need to stay focused by avoiding unnecessary interruptions.

Our own strength is not sufficient for weaving silence into the fabric of daily life.  For the hours of the day to be permeated by mindfulness of the divine life we must be engaged in constant struggle, depending on God’s grace.  Powerful forces are bent on separating us from God, our own souls, and one another through the din of noise and the whirl of preoccupation.  Technology has in­tensified our risk of becoming saturated with stimuli.  We who are called to maintain a lively interest in our own culture, so that we can bear witness to Christ within it, can never rest from the effort of discernment and resistance or we shall fall captive to scatteredness and stress.

 

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Read by Br. James Koester

The Father of all whom we seek to love is a hidden God.  Therefore we take to heart the words of Jesus, “Whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”  The cell is the place of this secret encounter and reward.  From time to time we may choose to pray in chapel, where the icons and sacramental presence of Christ in the tabernacle draw us to contemplation.  Or we may pray in a quiet place out of doors.  But the cell is the primary place of prayer where we are to stand before God.  The cell therefore must be ordered as a space for prayer and treated as sacred.

God has promised to be there for us: “Here I will dwell, for I have desired it.”  As we enter our cells we renew our commitment to meet God there by praying these same words.

We will experience our cell as a place of divine presence and companionship not only in our prayer but in our studying, resting and sleeping there.  There is solace in being alone with God, but the privacy of our cells is not meant to shut us off from one another.  We gladly welcome one an­other into our cells for quiet conversations.

Maintaining a balance in our life between solitude and engagement with others is not easy. We are subject to many pressures that deter us from experiencing solitude:  the claims of work, the fear of loneliness, and the reluctance to face ourselves as we are in the company of Jesus before God. Without solitude we would forfeit an essential means of inner restoration and encounter with God in the depths of our own souls.  Therefore we must find times to be alone.  We need to love our cells and take opportunities to stay quietly there in reflection, and in restorative activities such as reading and listening to music.  We will need to be disciplined in our use of the radio and recordings so that we use them as means of enrichment rather than of empty distraction.  Whenever staying in the cell becomes repugnant to us, or it begins to lose its attraction as a place of solitude, we must remember that we are called to life through death:  “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”  In persevering in our cells we shall discover for ourselves the wisdom of the ancient saying, “The cell will teach you all things.”

Our close proximity to one another in our houses means that further solitude may need to be sought elsewhere.  We should value opportunities to be alone out of doors and in places where we can be replenished in spirit by ourselves.

Our cells are meant to be congenial and personal places so we are free to have around us plants, pictures and other things that beautify them in simple ways.  If we clutter the cells with a profusion of objects or make them chaotic and untidy, our rooms will be a hindrance instead of a help to centered, prayerful living.  Therefore at least once a year the Superior or Senior Brother shall require each brother to renew the order and simplicity of his cell.

 

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Read by Br. Andrew Gary

From the beginning the Church has entrusted to the monastic communities a special re­sponsibility for intercession.  Our hearts must always be open to those who ask for our prayers and depend on us to share their burdens.  We will rejoice with them when the gift we have sought together from the Lord is given them.  And we will stay joined to them in their struggle if God’s response seems to deny their request or calls them to wait.

Our prayers for one another, those we serve, the Church and the whole world, the living and the dead, are gathered up in our worship, particularly at the prayers of the people at the Eucharist. We should gladly use the opportunities provided in the liturgy of the Eucharist and in the Daily Office to offer our intercessions aloud as the Spirit moves us.

Once every quarter the community devotes a day to the offering of prayer and fasting.  On these days it is our custom to pray together in the presence of the eucharistic elements.  Through our fasting and these special times of prayer, we open ourselves so that the Spirit can draw us into the prayer of adoration, and move us to offer intercession for all the people of God.

We shall intercede also in our personal prayers day by day, appealing to God to pour out his saving grace on particular people and situations.  In intercession we shall discover the power to love those we find difficult.  Father Benson taught that “in praying for others we learn really and truly to love them.  As we approach God on their behalf we carry the thought of them into the very being of eternal Love, and as we go into the being of him who is eternal Love, so we learn to love whatever we take with us there.”  God will also inspire each one of us to make certain causes our special concern.  We may also be moved to draw the needs of the world into our contemplative prayer, holding them silently in the radiance of God’s mercy within our hearts.

Intercession is not an intermittent activity, restricted to those times in which we are de­liberately praying for the world and for people.  The entire life of each member of Christ’s body is intercessory.  Christ takes up our actions and everyday experiences into the eternal offering of his whole self to the Father.  If we abide in Christ he will show us that he accepts our labors, our struggles, our afflictions and the ordinary actions of our daily lives as sacrificial, and uses them to bless and uphold the world.

 

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Read by Br. John Goldring

Father Benson taught us to look always to the glory of the ascended Christ and find the mean­ing of all we do in union with him.  We shall enter into the mystery of intercessory prayer only if we realize our oneness with Christ the great High Priest, who lives forever to make intercession for all the world.  Christ makes this prayer to the merciful Father through the prayers of all the faithful who are baptized into his body.  His voice does not appeal to God separately from theirs; “They are . . . so many mouths to Himself; and as they pray . . . His voice fills their utterance with the authority and claim belonging to Himself.”  The Father hears the voice of his beloved Son in our prayers and accepts them as Christ’s.

It is the Spirit of Christ who stirs our prayer and weaves the movements of our hearts into his great offering.  Because the Spirit moves so deeply within us we cannot always be conscious of the full meaning and substance of our prayer.  Often our intercessions will feel weak and incoherent. Yet the Spirit is helping us “in our weakness for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.  And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”

Through faith we see Christ not only in his majesty in heaven, but in his lowly presence in every creature.  He suffers with and in everyone in need.  Our intercession does not call down the divine presence to come to the place where we have seen a need, for the Christ who fills all things is already in that place.  It is his Spirit who calls us to join him there by offering our love in inter­cessory prayer and action, to be used by God for healing and transformation.

It is a wonderful thing that God makes us his fellow-workers and uses our love, acting in in­tercession, to further the reconciliation of all things in Christ.  We offer thanks with joy whenever prayer results in the transformation for which we had hoped.  However, we must often suffer the pain of seeing no visible result to our prayer.  But we should let no frustration wear down the trust that sustains our waiting on God.  Every offering of love will bear fruit.  “I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.”

According to an ancient monastic saying “A monk is separated from all in order to be united to all.”  The pioneers of monasticism believed that the monk was called to the margin of society in order to hear within himself the deepest cries of humanity, and to discover a profound unity with all living beings in their struggle to attain “the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”  In our in­tercessory prayer this solidarity will find its deepest expression.  We shall also experience through faith our communion with all the saints in glory who pray unceasingly with us and for us.

 

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Read by Br. Timothy Solverson

In our meditative prayer each of us seeks intimate communion with God.  Quietness and freedom from interruption are needed for us to enter deeply into this prayer.  Accordingly, each house of the Society shall have one hour of strict silence set aside each day so that all the brothers can spend this time in meditative prayer completely undisturbed.  Occasional necessity may compel a few of us to have their hour of prayer at another time of day, but the community hour is sacrosanct. Although we usually pray alone we are especially close in this hour, bearing one another up.

In times of struggle the sense of unity in prayer will be a great support.  When we are away on vacation or mission we shall aim at spending half an hour in prayer each day.

“There are varieties of gifts but the same Spirit.”  We shall not all have the same ways of prayer, but we will be united in seeking to open our hearts to “know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that [we] may be filled with all the fullness of God.”  The focus of our meditation may be on the Word of God in Scripture or holy writings.  We may use our imaginations to enter into the deep meaning of a scriptural story.  Or in slow, reflective reading we may wait for the Spirit to alert us to the words or image that are to be the means of God’s particular revelation to us on this day: “The Spirit of truth . . . will take what is mine and declare it to you.”  Then meditation opens our minds and hearts, and our response to God’s gift and disclosure is kindled by the Spirit within us.  God may touch us through icons, images and symbols, impregnating our hearts with grace and fur­thering our transformation “from one degree of glory to another.”  Sometimes God’s word is waiting to be heard in our own current experience.  The call may be to sift through it in company with Christ to see how he is at work in our lives and where he is leading.

Our prayer may distill our heart’s desire in single words or hallowed phrases lovingly re­peated, while we lay aside discursive thoughts in order to be unified in Christ.  Or we may simply wait on God expectantly until our affections are kindled, and our hearts find a few words to give voice to our worship.  When God wills, we may be drawn to contemplation.  In the radical simplicity of contemplative prayer we surrender ourselves to the mystery beyond words of Christ’s abiding in us, and our abiding in him close to the Father’s heart.

Meditative prayer is the receptive and responsive prayer of our whole selves.  Our bodies are at prayer in the postures and breathing that enable us to be centered.  The solitude of the cell gives us the freedom to be spontaneous in expressing prayer through gestures, movements, tears and singing.

 

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Read by Br. Curtis Almquist

God the Holy Spirit longs to inspire in us prayer that includes and embraces the whole of our life.  It is a great privilege to be called to the religious life, which offers us every opportunity and en­couragement to welcome the Spirit’s transforming grace so that prayer may enter more and more into all that we are and all that we do.

Resisting the tendency to restrict prayer to set times, we are to aim at eucharistic living that is responsive at all times and in all places to the divine presence.

We should seek the gifts which help us to pray without ceasing.  The Spirit offers us the gift of attentiveness by which we discern signs of God’s presence and action in creation, in other people and in the fabric of ordinary existence.  We are called to spiritual freedom by which we surrender fretfulness and anxiety in order to be avail­able to God in the present moment.  There is the gift of spontaneity, which gives rise to frequent brief prayers throughout the day in which we look to Christ and express our faith, hope and love.  There is the gift of prompt repentance, which encourages us to turn to God and ask for forgiveness the instant we become aware of a fall.  Through these and other like gifts, prayer comes to permeate our life and transfigure our mundane routines.

The life of prayer calls for the courage to bring into our communion with Christ the fullness of our humanity and the concrete realities of our daily existence, which he redeemed by his incarna­tion.  We are called to offer all our work to God and ask for the graces we need to do it in Christ’s name.  In our prayer we are to test whether God is confirming our intentions and desires or not.  We are able to pray about one another, our relationships and common endeavors.  We are to bring him our sufferings and poverty, our passion and sexuality, our fears and resistances, our desires and our dreams, our losses and grief.  We must spread before him our cares about the world and its peoples, our friends and families, our enemies and those from whom we are estranged.  Our successes and failures, our gifts and shortcomings, are equally the stuff of our prayer.  We are to offer the night to God as well as the day, our unconscious selves as well as our conscious minds, acknowledging the secret and unceasing workings of the Spirit in the depths of our hearts.

This deep intention at the heart of our life to find God in all things means learning to trust that divine companionship continues undiminished even when we feel only boredom and  frustration.  We can learn to stay still in our experience of numbness and resistance, and trust that Christ is just as truly alive in our hearts in these times as in those in which we enjoy the sense of his presence.

The more we discover through prayer how completely the divine presence permeates our life, the greater will be the integrity of our ministry as we teach others to pray.  Men and women come to us not merely to learn to pray, but to learn to pray their lives.  The prayer that has spread its roots into our whole life bears fruit a hundredfold as we use the resource of our own experience in guiding and initiating others.

 

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Read by Br. Bruce Neal

A ceaseless interchange of mutual love unites the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Our prayer is not merely communication with God, it is coming to know God by participation in this divine life. In prayer we experience what it is to be made “participants in the divine nature”; we are caught up in the communion of the divine persons as they flow to one another in self-giving love and reciprocal joy.  If we hold before us in wonder the mystery of the triune life of God our prayer will realize its full potential.  The conception of prayer as homage paid to a distant God will fall away.

We shall find ourselves full of awe and gratitude that the life of divine love is open and accessible to us, for God dwells in us.  “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.”  If we begin to accept God’s generosity in drawing us into the divine life, and grasp the dignity bestowed on us by the divine indwelling, prayer will spring up in adoration and thanksgiving.

We shall find ourselves adoring the Holy Spirit who is poured out into our hearts and gives us the love with which we can love in return.  Our hearts will be filled with thankfulness that the Spirit stirs in the depths of our being and unites all that we are, even what is broken and not yet formed, with the risen Lord.  We shall worship Christ himself with adoring love, full of gratitude that he abides in us, and that in him we enjoy the fullness of the Father’s acceptance and love.  Our contemplation of his undiminished humanity will continually encourage us to offer ourselves, our souls and bodies in all their humanity, to God through him.  Through Christ we shall adore the Father in whom we live and move and have our being, the life-giving mystery of love, who is beyond all words and above all thoughts.

There are many conflicts on the way into the experience of divine love.  Sinfulness originates in a deep wound to our humanity that hinders us all from accepting love.  As the Spirit exposes it to Christ’s healing touch in prayer, we shall often have to struggle with our reluctance to be loved so deeply by God.  Christ himself will strive with us, as the angel strove with Jacob, to disable our self-reliant pride and make us depend on grace.  Our love must be purified and tested by many times of darkness, loss and waiting.  The nearer we draw to God, the more we will sense our vulnerability to the “cosmic powers of this present darkness” that seek to isolate us from God and one another.  So there are sufferings to be expected in our prayer but through them we come to the peace Christ promised.  “After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ will himself restore, support, strengthen and establish you.  To him be the power forever and ever. Amen.”

 

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Read by Br. Kevin Hackett

The life we live is permeated by Holy Scripture; it has a central place in our worship, our preaching, our meditation and reading, and our study.  Through the scriptures the living voice of God is continually active to convert, nourish and transform us.  The more we open ourselves to their riches, the more we have to share with others.  And the more we open the scriptures to others, the more we discover in them for our own lives.

In the Daily Office and the eucharistic liturgy of the word, Scripture is continually absorbed into our beings as we pray the psalter and canticles and listen to the readings and preaching.  In our worship the Spirit sometimes touches us immediately through a word, an image or a story; there and then we experience the Lord speaking to us.  But we shall often go unaware of the ways in which the images and words of Scripture are seeping into the deepest level of our hearts.  These hearts of ours are not empty vessels but inner worlds alive with images, memories, experiences and desires.  It is the Spirit dwelling within us who brings the revelation of Scripture into a vital encounter with our inmost selves, and brings to birth new meaning and life.  Gradually we become aware of the deep resources of truth that this inner process of revelation has formed in us, and are able to draw upon them for our own needs and for the building up of others in ministry.  The effect of the scriptures upon us in the liturgy is largely subliminal, but this fact does not justify inattentiveness.  We should take care to read the scriptures with a clarity and energy that does justice to our love for them, and to listen as attentively as we can.

In our personal lives of prayer we shall feed on the scriptures and trust in expectant faith that God will be present in them for us.  If the Spirit draws us to ways of meditation and prayer that do not directly engage with the scriptures, then we would be wise to keep ourselves open to them by means of reading and study.  Often the scriptures will become most vivid and alive to us as we pre­pare to expound them in preaching and teaching.  However, we need to guard against the temptation to let our call to preach become the chief motive for investigating the scriptures.  We should learn to listen to the needs of our own hearts and search the scriptures for our own healing and revival.

The disciplines of critical biblical study and the spiritual appropriation of Holy Scripture in the heart are commonly treated as incompatible or kept separate.  Our community bears a valuable witness in the Church when we demonstrate that intellectual honesty and contemplative openness belong together in our life with Scripture.

If we are truly called by God into this Society we can be sure that the Gospel of John will be an unfailing source of life and light for us.  If we become intimately familiar with it by prayer and study, its riches will prove to be limitless.  In times of difficulty, when we are tempted to turn away, we should trust that this gospel will be our rock and mainstay.  Entering into it again we shall find ourselves praying the words of Simon Peter to Christ, “Lord, to whom can we go?  You have the words of eternal life.”

 

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Read by Br. Mark Brown

Preaching is central to our full experience of the living presence and power of Christ in our worship.  Although we do offer the Eucharist at certain times when silent reflection on the readings is judged to be sufficient, a homily will usually be preached at our regular community celebrations of the Eucharist.  In preaching, Christ, who will be present to us in communion, comes first to those who are listening in “the word of God . . . living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword,” and as the one who speaks words that are spirit and life.”  The preached word is thus part of our experi­ence of the daily bread of God’s nourishment. Continue Reading »

 

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Read by Br. James Koester

Each eucharistic meal empowers us to approach God afresh in worship, united with Christ; Father Benson teaches us that “Just as in Holy Communion we receive His substance into our bodies, so in the saying of our offices we bring forth the power of that substance, so that it may rise up to God.”  The Daily Office is a sustained act of union with Christ by which we participate in his unceasing offering of love to the Father.  In reciting the psalms, singing canticles and hymns, pro­claiming the divine word in Scripture or lifting our voices in prayer, we are to enter more and more into the mind, heart and will of Christ, and be borne up by the Spirit in him to the Father.

Our praying of the psalter, which is the heart of the Daily Office, takes us ever deeper into the mystery of the Incarnation; the psalms give voice to the whole range of human experience which Christ has embraced and redeemed as the Savior of the world.  Although nothing essential is lacking when the office is said, we continue the tradition of our Society by singing whenever there are sufficient voices.  As we sing and chant deep levels of our being are involved; our hearts are lifted up in greater exultation.  And music enhances our worship with riches inherited from many ages.

This fellowship in praise at the heart of the Church continually deepens our integration as a community, making us one in Christ.  Our desire to experience this deepening communion will find expression in the care we give to the disciplines of choral prayer.  Among these disciplines are practice and preparation; the custom of taking our place in good time; stillness of posture; attentive­ness to the readings; sensitivity and responsiveness to one another so that we can sing and recite together.

The office will also nourish the inner life of each brother.  It is the means by which our hearts are constantly impregnated with the riches of the word of God in Scripture so that they bear fruit in our prayer and life.  When a brother’s heart is full of heaviness, praying the office can sustain him.  But for the office to be truly a means of our transfiguration we must cooperate by continually re­newing our inner attentiveness, laying aside again and again the preoccupations and daydreams that confuse and tie us down.  This effort to keep our hearts open to Christ will be needed all our lives; it is a hidden dying to self day by day.

The Daily Office offered by the Society shall be drawn from the Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church or of its equivalent in the Anglican Church of Canada:  Morning Prayer, the Order of Service for Noonday, Evening Prayer and Compline.  Each house will establish a pattern in the recitation of the offices and the celebration of the Eucharist that best suits the local setting.

Each brother shall take part in every office unless he is permitted to be absent for reasons of infirmity or is prevented by some necessary work.  We shall recite Morning and Evening Prayer by ourselves if we are unable to join the community in choir and when we are away from the house.   In this way the community remains united in the common offering of praise even when we are separated.

 

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Read by Br. Bruce Neal

Our worship of God finds its fullest expression in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist.  It is the offering through which we return thanks for all that God has given us in creation, and in our redemption through the pouring out of Christ’s life-blood on the cross.  In this sacrifice of bread and wine all that we do and are is joined by the Holy Spirit to the eternal offering of Christ on behalf of the world.  It is the meal which intensifies our union with Christ, draws us together as a community, and nourishes us with the grace needed for our transformation and our mission.

It is the mystery through which we are caught up into the communion of saints on earth and in heaven, the mystical Body of Christ.  It is the gift through which we experience a foretaste of the life to come.

The celebration of the Eucharist on the first day of the week is our central act of worship as members of the people of God.  Our seeking to abide in Christ, and to feed on him constantly as our daily bread, moves us to celebrate the Eucharist also on other days of the week.  Although it is not our custom to offer the Eucharist on our day of rest, and there may be another day in the week at which participation is voluntary, the community will normally celebrate the Eucharist together day by day.  Reservation of the sacramental gifts enables the community not only to communicate the sick, but also to have a sign of Christ’s abiding presence in our midst.

John the Evangelist alludes to a profound dimension of the mystery of the Eucharist in the account of Jesus washing the feet of the disciples at the Last Supper.  The Eucharist is a means for Christ to serve us and to give us the love whereby we can serve and love one another.  Our celebra­tions of the Eucharist are occasions of spiritual hospitality, mutual service and witness.  Eucharistic hospitality is an important ministry to all those to whom we open our worship.  We should be sensi­tive to their needs and order the liturgy in a welcoming way that enables them to participate with us.  Through our celebrations we bear witness to our faith in the presence of the risen Christ in the living word of Scripture and preaching, in the assembled body, and in the sacramental Body and Blood of Communion.  Our eucharistic worship is a primary expression of our mission because it has the power to draw people into a living encounter with Christ, the living bread and true healer.

The frequent offering of the Eucharist is a privilege but it also brings challenges.  We need to work together to keep on revitalizing our eucharistic worship so that it does not become a repeti­tive routine.  Creative variations in our liturgies are important.  Frequent communion is a challenge to us also as individuals.  It is not possible for us to participate in the liturgy with intense devotion and awareness every time.  Often we must accept being borne along by the corporate devotion of the assembly, remembering that the power of the sacrament is not dependent on our mental clarity or warmth of feeling.  However each one of us will need to discover for himself ways of constantly renewing through meditation his self-offering and receptivity, so that we can come to Communion often “with that tender love which is due to Him with whom we are so mysteriously united,” as Father Benson urged us.

 

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Read by Br. Jonathan Maury

Human beings were created to bless and adore their Creator and in the offering of worship to experience their highest joy and their deepest communion with one another.  In our fallenness we continually turn in upon ourselves to seek fulfillment without self-offering.  We squander on lesser things the love that is due to the one source of all being.  But the Father never ceases from seeking true worshipers to worship him in spirit and truth.  God sent the Son into the world to heal and raise us up so that, empowered by the Spirit, we could surrender our whole selves in adoration and be reunited in the love of God.

God draws us into our Society so that our calling to be true worshipers can reach fulfillment in the offering of the continual sacrifice of praise.  In this life of worship to­gether we are transformed in body, soul and spirit.

We offer our worship in the Spirit as a community of the Church on behalf of the entire world.  Our life is ordered so that we can sustain the full expression of the Church’s worship in the constant offering of the Daily Office and the Eucharist.  We bear witness to the riches of the liturgy and its power to permeate life with the remembrance of God.  Our liturgical life is in itself a vital ministry.  We lift up the Church and world in prayer, and strengthen those whom we encourage to take full part in our worship.  We also influence the renewal of the Church’s worship by our example, and the value we place on beauty in music, dignity in ceremony and depth in the word.

If we become the true worshipers whom the Father seeks, no part of our life is untouched by our worship.  It makes our experience of time itself sacred.  The offices express the inmost meaning of the times of each day from dawn to nightfall.  The weeks are sanctified, beginning with the com­memoration of the resurrection on the first day.  The liturgical cycle of the year redeems the passage of time by making the months and seasons the means of appropriating again the creating and healing acts of God, reaching its climax in our renewed experience of the life-giving cross and resurrection in Holy Week, Easter and Pentecost.

Our worship will bind us in community with one another and with those for whom we inter­cede in the liturgy.  It unites us with our brothers who have gone before us and to the entire com­munion of saints.  In worship we are not bound to our own time and place; the commemoration of the saints links us with all the ages and every place where God has been glorified.  It reveals to us the great cloud of witnesses in the heavens, encouraging us on our straight course to God.

Worship sanctifies work, continually interrupting it so that we can offer it to God in thanks­giving.  Worship, like play, is free from the need to produce tangible gains, but it is work.  It takes skill to craft and carry out the “work of God,” as monastic tradition calls it.  Worship makes costly demands on our time and energies.  It calls us from the inertia of self-centeredness.  When we come to worship in dryness and fatigue, we learn to make the offering of sheer faith and allow ourselves to be borne along by the devotion of our brothers.

 

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Read by Br. John Mathis

From the day of our clothing to the day of our burial, the habit acts as a powerful sign of our common life and identity that we should cherish.  It manifests not only our membership in this Society but our solidarity with men and women following the monastic way the world over.  It expresses a precious continuity linking us through the centuries to the beginning of the monastic movement in the Church of Christ.

This clothing, dense with meaning, is a source of joy.  We have put on Christ in Baptism and the habit can remind us of our present union with him.  The triple-cord round our waists is an ancient sign of readiness that can summon us to be prepared to meet Christ whenever he should come.  The knots tied in the cord at profession are signs to the hand and eye of the vows we have made to abide faithfully until he comes.

Each house of the Society shall have its own guidelines about when the habit will be worn at home.  Sometimes when we are away on mission wearing our habits may be a valuable witness to our calling, but whenever the habit is likely to be a barrier in our dealings with others we should wear ordinary clothing.  The habit loses its spiritual value if it is used for ostentation or to imply a false distinction between ourselves and other Christians.

The cross of the Society is an emblem of our common life to be worn with ordinary clothing whenever we choose.  It enables us to bear close to our heart a sign of the lifting up of Christ from the earth that he might draw all people to himself.

When we make our life profession, we are given as a further sign of our entire dedication to Christ a ring to be worn thereafter at all times.  This ring is a sign of our espousal as lovers of God. It shows our solidarity with those who have made vows to meet the demands of love and faithfulness in marriage and dedicated partnership.

It is a joyful thing to have our lives enriched by these and other symbols, but their power will fade if we fail to renew our appreciation of their depths.  The occasions when a brother is given the habit and cross, or puts on the ring, are opportunities when we can all re-experience the richness of these symbols, and from time to time we should meditate on them in our prayer.  Our hallowing of these outward signs involves taking care of them, particularly making sure that our habits are clean and in good repair.

 

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Read by Br. Eldridge Pendleton

The professed brothers elect one of their number who they believe has the necessary gifts of the Spirit to lead the Society.  The community, faithful to our tradition and vocation that calls for strong leadership, entrusts authority to him which he exercises in these ways as the servant of all.

The Superior is empowered to distribute leadership and share administration throughout the community by choosing the officers and allocating specific areas of responsibility to the brothers.

All the brothers are accountable to him in the exercise of their responsibilities.  He coordinates the ministries of the community and no new work can be accepted without his permission.  The Superior is also the chief pastor of the brethren and has the ultimate responsibility in Christ for the well-being of all. Although the Superior never acts as confessor within the community, and must honor the boundaries of each brother’s inner life, if he is to serve and cherish the brothers he needs to know what is important in their lives.  By fulfilling his share of the responsibility for staying genuinely in touch, each brother helps make sure that the Superior’s ministry to him is timely and effective.

He is responsible for guiding the community as it makes plans and decisions.  He presides over meetings of the Chapter in which important decisions are made by vote, and makes sure that less formal decisions are made with appropriate discussion and consultation.  The Superior has the freedom to make various decisions about community policy on his own authority.  The limits of this freedom are defined by the Statutes and maintained by the collective wisdom of the community.  Once a year the community shall hold a discussion in which the Superior’s ministry of leadership is reviewed.

The Superior serves the community as chief interpreter of the Rule.  He is expected to enrich the community through his own spiritual teaching and by inviting men and women of the Spirit to give us guidance and inspiration.  The Superior also receives a mandate to lead the community as a prophet who looks to the future and fosters our collective vision.  This orientation towards God’s future finds a particular expression in the way the Superior cultivates gifts of leadership within the community and equips potential successors.  The Superior may not serve more than three consecu­tive terms of three years, to make sure that the gift of leadership is renewed.

The office of Superior needs outside resources of support.  In addition to a spiritual director, the Superior shall have regular recourse to a consultant of his choice who is qualified to help him monitor his ministry.

The benefits of endowing our leader with strong authority are great, but so are the demands. We need to be aware of both the negative and positive psychological forces that are inevitably brought into play wherever authority is strong.  The Superior can be overwhelmed by the number of expecta­tions placed upon him.  He will not be equally gifted in meeting them all and will fall short through his own weakness.  Only prayer and genuine love can sustain him in his office.  The brothers shall fre­quently call upon God to give our leader the graces needed for his ministry day by day, and to show them how to support and cherish him.

 

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Read by Br. Geoffrey Tristram

By the vow of obedience, each brother gives his complete allegiance to the community by accepting the Rule of Life as his own.  The Rule is the expression of our distinctive way of disciple­ship.  It embodies the values, disciplines and patterns of response that experience has shown to sustain our identity.  In the vow we promise to cherish the Rule as a gift, being attentive as we read it together and taking it to heart through meditation.

The vow is a pledge to put our whole heart into the community’s continuous quest to learn the will of God for us and to do it.  God has called us to be active co-creators in Christ, not passive recipients of external instructions.  Obedience calls us to pray, to search our hearts and minds to­gether, to consult and discuss with one another, to bring passion and commitment to our cooperation as brothers and ministers in the New Covenant.  Our hope is to reach a common mind in our discern­ment and decisions as often as we can.  When a brother disagrees with a decision that commends itself to most of us, the vow of obedience gives integrity to his subsequent support of the outcome.

Grace makes it possible for our obedience to one another to transcend mere acquiescence and to express instead the power of brotherly love and unity.  In our cooperation with the Superior we should arrive through discussion at a full understanding of the response or task that is being proposed and pledge ourselves to full accountability.  If difficulties occur in following through on any project we should promptly consult with him so that the goal can be realistically reset.  We should observe the same standard of cooperation and accountability in our response to any brother who has been given authority in any sphere.  In particular we are to give our full cooperation to the brother in charge of the house we live in.

We express our obedience also in the way we are receptive to the Superior’s teaching and pastoral ministry, and the openness we have to one another’s contributions to the common life.

The practice of obedience to our own interior wisdom as it is being inspired by the Spirit requires us to search our own desires and motives in prayer.  In any case where our conscience seems to be in conflict with something required of us in community, we should open our hearts to the Superior about it promptly.  The vow encourages us to listen to our own hearts so that we can take responsibility for setting our own goals in the unfolding of our development as men of God.  It requires us to be attentive to our own needs and gifts.  It spurs us to be imaginative and hopeful about ourselves as active contributors to our common life.

If we remain alert we will see the signs that reveal whether we are indeed being converted. Where obedience is still immature there will be passivity, complaining, resentment, reluctance to be held accountable, rigidity and lack of candor.  Where obedience is emerging from a growing freedom we will recognize the fruits of the Spirit in frankness, initiative, generosity and flexibility.  We need to pray for these fruits not merely for our own good but so that our community can be a sign in the Church of what it means to be a living branch of the true vine.

 

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Read by Br. Robert L'Esperance

The Gospel of John will teach us to experience obedience as a growing freedom to love all that God desires and wills.  Jesus bears witness to this freedom, “Very truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise . . . my judgment is just, because I seek to do not my own will but the will of him who sent me.”  On our own we are powerless to act in selfless freedom in response to God’s desire. Obedience is only possible because Christ dwells in us and we dwell in him through Baptism.  His obedience is active within us, drawing us into his union with the Father.

By the vow of obedience we join together to make this loving consent to God’s will the corporate offering of a community. We learn together to listen intently to God, and we support each other in the struggle against all that resists God within and around us.

The vow has many facets.  It is a pledge to unite in a common response to God by embracing and fulfilling the Rule of the Society.  It is a promise to work together to discern God’s will as a body and act in concert to God’s glory.  The vow binds us to cooperate with the Superior in carrying out our mission.  It is a pledge to listen to the voice of the Spirit speaking within the heart and to respond to God’s invitations to self-surrender.

Resurrection into the freedom and constancy of Christ’s obedience can be attained only  through death and burial in union with him.  Our share in humanity’s sinfulness means that we are still hindered by fear of what God desires and resistance to what God ordains.  As a community bound together in obedience we support one another through the inevitable pain of dying to our old selves, and encourage one another to trust in the goodness of God’s will for us.  The community is a school of reconciliation, conversion and healing for sinners, in which we can grow in our capacity to give ourselves to God.

Obedience is also a path of detachment.  We have our own ideas of how best to serve God, our dreams of serving in particular ways.  God’s actual call will often be to follow in other ways; as our vocation unfolds we will find that obedience requires us to lay aside again and again the plans we had made for ourselves.  Monastic obedience gives us constant practice in letting go of attach­ment to our individual preferences and learning to trust in the wisdom of the community.  It trains us to be resilient and prompt in responding to the Lord in the here and now.

The vow of obedience is fraught with risks.  In the name of obedience human beings have gladly abdicated responsibility and taken refuge in passivity and conformity.  Unless our obedience is in the Spirit we could be tempted to use the life of the community as a shelter from claiming and using our own responsibility and power as sons of God.  The vow of obedience requires us to be constantly attentive to the voice of the Spirit within our hearts, endowing us with our own unique authority and gifts.  We are called to be obedient to our true selves as they are being formed in Christ.  Only where there is a growing respect for our true selves can there be authentic participation in the community’s common endeavor to discern and carry out God’s will.

 

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Read by Br. Timothy Solverson

Our lives of committed celibacy can act as a powerful sign of the reality of God’s grace.   As we grow in our understanding of the meaning of our vow we are called to become more aware of our role as witnesses.  The celibate life is a risky one.  If it is lived as a cowardly way of avoiding intimacy and commitment, it can wither the soul.  But if as celibates we embrace our sexuality as a divine gift, and draw upon it as a source of energy and creativity, we can bring hope and encourage­ment to many who meet us.

Our singleness of life awakens the need to discover within our own selves the mystery of the male and female dimensions of the divine image.  If we are courageous in this exploration, and cooperate with the converting power of the Spirit, we can bear a significant witness to both men and women.  Women will find encouragement if they encounter in us not only the security that comes with deep respect, but also empathy of soul.  Men will find encouragement if they encounter in us confident forms of masculine identity that do not depend for their vigor on force or competition.

Our fidelity to this vow can be an encouragement to those who are united in the sacrament of Marriage; like them we depend on divine grace to help us remain steadfastly together until death through all the changes and trials of life.  Some partners of the same sex who have made a covenant of faithfulness in Christ may find inspiration in our loyalty and perseverance.

We are also witnesses to those who for many reasons live single lives.  Much of the con­fusion and pain in fallen humanity’s struggle with sexuality stems from the illusions that sexual activity is essential to wholeness, and that other forms of intimacy are inferior to the sexual bond. We can help people by the example of our lives to honor the depth and fullness to be found in the intimacy of friendship.  We can bring inspiration and support to the struggles of those who seek to find meaning and purpose in their singleness.  In our ministries, especially of hospitality, our celibacy gives us a special freedom to provide a setting in which single people of all ages and walks of life find respect, welcome and affirmation.

 

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Read by Br. David Allen

Each of us will pass through different phases in our lives of celibate chastity.  At times we will be glad of our inner solitude, which fosters prayer, and the diversity of relationships we enjoy in community and with friends; at other times we will feel loneliness.  While others are enjoying the consolations of community life, some brothers may be missing the solace of partnership, the joys of sex and the satisfaction of having a home of their own.  There will be seasons of contentment in our singleness; there may be days of testing and confusion if we fall in love, or become strongly attracted to another.

Struggles will come at different stages as we break through to new levels of integration; the challenges faced by young religious will not be the same as those that come with the onset of middle age.  Old age may bring its own trials of doubt.  Only if we share these different experiences in candor and trust can we offer one another genuine support.

At times many of us will miss having fathered children.  We shall need to open the poignancy of this loss to Christ in prayer.  He will show us that in union with him our lives have been far from barren.  As we nurture others in Christ, and bring them to maturity, we shall discover that fatherhood has found expression in our lives.  In prayer, meditation, our thought, our work and our friendships, we are called to fulfill our deep human urge to be creators with God of new life, and to bear fruit that lasts.

The disciplines that let chastity take root in our lives are not mere curbs.  Their purpose is to help us live with vitality and spirit.  When we meditate we should truly pray with our bodies, and dwell on the glory with which the indwelling Spirit endows them.  We are to reverence our bodies and do justice to their need for regular exercise and adequate sleep.  Physical sloth and stress from overwork are equally liable to make sexual tension worse.  Lethargy makes us more susceptible to the escapism of fantasy.

The disciplines that foster celibacy include those which prevent our spirits from becoming solemn and heavy.  We can all contribute to the sanity and balance of our life together by allowing playfulness and humor to keep us in touch with our humanity and to release tension.

Jesus taught chastity of the heart, not merely of outward behavior.  The conversion of our imaginations continues all our lives as we seek to make his integrity our own.  We shall need to examine our hearts often to test the degree of our emotional honesty in our relations with others, and our faithfulness in honoring our personal boundaries.  Whenever we are in perplexity or temptation it is essential to open our hearts to our spiritual directors or confessors; secrecy makes us more likely to deceive ourselves.

It is through friendship that we will be of most support to one another.  Celibacy could be unbearably lonely unless we uphold one another with affection.  Our friendship with one another does not draw us away from the centrality of the love of Christ in the heart, for that is the very thing we all have in common.

 

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Read by Br. Geoffrey Tristram

Through our vow of celibacy we offer ourselves as members of a community to be com­pletely available to Christ.  We commit ourselves to remaining single forever, instead of united to another in marriage or partnership.  We pledge to forgo the expression of love through sex, which God has blessed as the means for human partners to become one.

It is our desire to make a vow of celibacy that is the deepest possible expression of trust in Christ who has chosen us to follow this path.  Christ is the creative Wisdom through whom the Father created all things; he is the light who lightens all who come into the world.  Our sexuality, our power to love, our creative energy for relationship and union are of his making.  They reflect the mystery of the triune life and mirror God’s passionate love for all creation.  In our vow we offer these gifts that belong to the heart of our humanity to Christ, trusting that he will bless, shape and use them.  Our faith in Christ as creator also expresses itself by revering our manhood itself as sacred.  If we foster a climate of celibacy in which this faith and reverence flourish, each brother, whatever his sexual orientation, can come to accept fully the particular way the mystery of sexuality has been woven into the texture of his humanity.

Our vow is also a response to Jesus’ own way of life.  His own freedom from ties of family and home, in order to be completely available in the Spirit for the proclamation of the good news, attracted others to choose the same path.  They trusted in his promise that their choice, though full of painful losses and risks, would bring the reward of an abundance of new relationships among those who were awakening to the joy of the Kingdom:  “a hundredfold now in this age – houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children . . . and in the age to come eternal life.”  When we make our vow we affirm our own confidence in this promise.

We make our vow also trusting in the healing power of Christ, the redeemer of human brokenness.  Our capacity for intimacy, our sexual desires, our readiness to be faithful, are all damaged by the confusions and wounds of our fallen human condition.  For us celibacy is a path of healing and redemption, as the vocation of marriage and partnership is for others.  As we make our vow we acknowledge humbly our need for grace to give us that unity and integrity of heart which we can never attain by our own power.  We set out on the celibate way as a path of salvation that gives us the hope of attaining maturity as loving, disciplined and free men.

Our vow flows also from the experience of Christ ascended and glorified dwelling in our own hearts.  Though we have surrendered the fulfillment we may have found in marriage or partnership, the mystery of union and mutual love is truly given to us.  In the emptiness and absence that celibacy opens up in our hearts, Christ waits to make known to us the infinite strength and tenderness of his love.  The exploration of our sexual solitude through prayer will reveal the depth of Christ’s desire to be the one joy of our hearts.  We can find the joy of celibacy only by entering into the mystery of our union with him and returning his love.

 

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Read by Br. David Vryhof

The vow of poverty is a commitment of faithfulness to the gospel itself, which summons us to a new vision and way of life that reverses the values of the world.  The beatitudes of Jesus call us to trust the promise of divine fulfillment hidden in things that the world counts as barren and negative.  By our vow we reaffirm our baptismal renunciations and pledge ourselves to seek out the mystery of divine grace present in places and experiences that seem insignificant, dark or empty.

By our vow of poverty we recognize that in our own spiritual lives there will be seasons in the shadow, experiences of dryness, waiting, obscurity and the seeming absence of God.  In the light of the gospel we know that these are necessary, and that some of them yield more blessings than times when we are filled with devotion and confidence.  “Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.”  Our whole spirituality should bear the mark of our vow, showing that God is freeing us from dependence on feelings of success and happiness.

Poverty involves radical truthfulness about our own persons and the community itself, grounded in the knowledge of our fallibility and brokenness.  Popularity and acclaim are dangerous, as they can lure us away from the sober awareness of our spiritual poverty that compels us to confess that “this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.”  The knowledge and acceptance of our fragility preserves us from complacency and illusion, continually throwing us back on the mercy and compassion of God.

In the great prayer of Jesus in the fourth gospel he says of his disciples, “They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.”  The vow of poverty is one of the chief ways in which we affirm our separation in Christ from everything in the world that opposes God’s way of self-spending love.  It sets us in opposition to the way of coercion, violence and militarism.  It commits us to reject in Christ’s name every manifestation of exploitation, prejudice and oppression.  It calls us to dissociate ourselves from structures of privilege and wealth.  By this vow we confess the rule of the cross:  “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are.”  Through the vow of poverty we pledge ourselves to look for the signs of God’s activity and glory, especially in the lives of those who are strangers to success and power as the world defines them.

One of the signs that our poverty is authentic will be the readiness of others to confide in us their own experiences of suffering, grief and loss.  If we are evading the mystery of poverty in our own lives, we will shut ourselves off from the pain and weakness in the lives of our brothers and sisters.  If we are living our vow, they will find in our company a holy place of acceptance and under­standing where they can wait for God to bring strength out of weakness and resurrection from death.

 

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Read by Br. Jonathan Maury

As we come to enter more completely into the offering of the Eucharist we learn more and more to offer thanks at all times and in all places.  This gift of overflowing gratitude to God, who supplies all our needs, enables us to let go of dependence on possessions and all that is superfluous. In the sacrifice of thanksgiving lies the secret of simplicity of life to which we bind ourselves in the vow of poverty.

This simplicity of life finds expression in the way we enjoy and value the goodness of ordinary things and the beauty of creation.  As we cherish the essential gifts of life, we grow in freedom from the compulsion to accumulate things, and cease to long for wealth.  The movement towards simplicity puts us at odds with our culture, which defines human beings primarily as consumers, and gives prestige to those who have the power to indulge themselves in luxury and waste.  As a community and as individuals we shall have to struggle continually to resist the pressure to conform.  Our vow of poverty inevitably commits us to conscientious participation in the movement to establish just stewardship of the environment and earth’s resources.

Our personal responsibility in this vow means taking care to gather around ourselves only what is appropriate and necessary.  We must always seek the permission of the Superior to keep any gifts offered to us.  We shall readily share among ourselves the things we have for our use, and give away whatever we cease to need.  Whenever we have reason to buy anything for our own use we are to be watchful for temptations to be irresponsible.  Our collective responsibility involves us all in the careful stewardship of our resources, especially in the policies which govern the use of our endowment and properties.  Those who have responsibility for using funds allocated by the com­munity need to guard against the temptation to misuse this power by spending thoughtlessly or failing to involve others in significant decisions.

The security we enjoy as a community makes us strangers to the precariousness and destitu­tion that are the lot of the poor.  Therefore we come to the poor in need of their witness to what it means to be powerless and to put one’s trust entirely in God.  As a community we must continually watch for signs that God is calling us to live and work with those who endure the hardships of material poverty.  Even when our work among God’s poor is limited in scope we should be their allies in every way.  Our vow binds us to ruthless self-examination as to our real solidarity with the poor.  In our education, preaching and political lives we are committed to advocacy for the poor, and the struggle to restore to them their just share of power and the bounty of God.

 

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Read by Br. Mark Brown

The poverty we embrace through our vow has its source, supreme example and eternal home in the being of God, who is a Trinity of Persons.  In the Godhead there is no possessiveness, no holding back of self.  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are One in mutual self-giving and receiving.  Faith sees the cross of suffering and self-giving love planted in the very being of the God revealed to us in Jesus.  When God made room for the existence of space and time and shaped a world filled with glory, this act of creation was one of pure self-emptying.

But God broke all the limits of generosity in the incarnation of the Son for our sake, “who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.”  By the vow of poverty we bind ourselves to have Athe same mind . . . that was in Christ Jesus.”

The poverty that comes from God is not a barren emptiness.  Christ “became poor that by his poverty [we] might become rich.”  It is only because we are being “filled with all the fullness of God” that we can pledge together in this shared vow to give ourselves away in a common life of worship, hospitality, evangelism and service.  “From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.”

By this vow we renounce personal ownership.  We are to be of one heart and soul, holding all things in common.  By sharing everything we will be in harmony with the very being of God whose Triune life is boundless sharing.  We will have a foretaste of the life of the communion of saints.  We will recognize that the concern with individualistic fulfillment and private security that prevails in our culture is a trap from which we are being set free.  More and more we will come to know that we were all baptized into Christ to be set free from self-centeredness.  Our fulfillment comes together as members of one Body, and the Spirit will summon us again and again to surrender individual desires for the sake of our brotherhood and our mission.

If our religious poverty is to be authentic we must stay soberly aware of the essential differ­ence between the deprivation of those whose poverty is forced upon them, and the way of life we choose by vow.  We continue to be privileged by our education, our access to power and our material security.  Nevertheless, the Spirit has many ways of making us poor and we are in no doubt that they will be costly to accept.  In particular we can be sure that the Society’s life will be marked by fragility and many frustrating limitations.  The resources to meet the demands made on us will seem inadequate, and our numbers too few.  Our energies will seem insufficient for the claims made on them, and the task of balancing our life and husbanding our strengths too difficult.  Even some of our ideals and dreams will need to be surrendered; the way God actually calls us to live may seem less appealing or less heroic than other forms of the religious life.  God will give us our poverty. Every day we will be called to grow in reliance on grace alone and to surrender those inner and outer riches that hold us back from risking all for Christ, who risked and gave all for us.

 

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Read by Br. Robert L'Esperance

Every Christian is called to live in community as a member of the Church. Christ in his wisdom draws each disciple into that particular expression of community which will be the best means of his or her conversion. Our way of life in this religious community is one of many expres­sions of the common life in the Body of Christ. We can be confident that Christ has called us into our Society because he knows that the challenges and the gifts it offers are the very ones we need for the working out of our salvation.

The first challenge of community life is to accept whole-heartedly the authority of Christ to call whom he will. Our community is not formed by the natural attraction of like-minded people. We are given to one another by Christ and he calls us to accept one another as we are. By abiding in him we can unite in a mutual love that goes deeper than personal attraction. Mutual acceptance and love call us to value our differences of background, temperament, gifts, personality and style. Only when we recognize them as sources of vitality are we able to let go of competitiveness and jealousy. As we actively seek to grow, and discern which men are being called into our Society, we must ardently seek for signs that God desires to increase our diversity in culture and race.

We are also called to accept with compassion and humility the particular fragility, complexity and incompleteness of each brother. Our diversity and our brokenness mean that tensions and friction are inevitably woven into the fabric of everyday life. They are not to be regarded as signs of failure. Christ uses them for our conversion as we grow in mutual forbearance and learn to let go of the pride that drives us to control and reform our brothers on our own terms.

The Society’s dedication to the fourth gospel draws us to see reflected in it certain values which we especially take to heart as we live in community. In John’s gospel the community of disciples is portrayed as a circle of Christ’s friends, abiding in him in obedience and love, and depending on the Advocate who leads them together into the truth. In this portrait we recognize an implicit critique of the tendency for communities to harden into institutions, and for officialdom to replace the spontaneity of mutual service. Our faithfulness to our calling will be seen in the ways in which we fearlessly subject our life to hard questions in the light of the gospel, resist inertia and rigidity, minister to one another generously as equals, and stay open to the fresh inspiration of the Spirit.

Because community life provides so completely for all our basic needs we must rise to the challenge of making sure that our sense of personal responsibility stays strong. Community life is arduous, and not an escape from the toil of earning a living. It is essential that work is distributed in such a way that each brother shares in its demands to the full extent of his ability. We are called to maintain an ethos that stimulates each of us to learn new skills by which he can serve the brotherhood and develop his ministry to others.