Several men have committed themselves more fully to the Lord and His Church today. A Benedictine monk, a Capuchin friar and Dominican deacons took vows or were ordained.
Since the beginning of Benedictine monasticism monks and nuns have written original works of art that were used in the monastery library or assisting the praying community. Some of the monks and nuns copied existing manuscripts in order to have copies of a text in their own monastery or to send to other people. The Benedictine way of life creates new things and it preserves others. Kindles and iPads are somewhat foreign concepts in a culture that’s manual, personal and original. But modern means ought not be totally dismissed as incongruent to the old ways of doing things.
The monks of Saint John’s Abbey and University have commissioned the Saint John’s Bible, the first handwritten, Illuminated Bible, the first work of this type in 500 years, that is, since the advent of the printing press. Certainly, the monks are leaving their mark on Catholic culture in the US for centuries to come. The artists commenced in 1998 with the idea of igniting the theological, liturgical and spiritual imagination of all people. The Saint John’s Bible illuminates the Word of God for the 21st century.
The dimensions of Saint John’s Bible is a manuscript that stands 2 feet tall and 3 feet wide when open. The head calligrapher is Donald Jackson, the calligrapher to Queen Elizabeth II. Jackson proposed the idea to Benedictine Father Eric Hollas who then waited three months before proposing the idea to Abbot John and the monks of Saint John’s. It’s written on vellum, using quills, natural hand-made inks, hand-ground pigments and gold leaf while incorporating various 21st century themes, images and technology. Artwork includes images of the World Trade Center towers, ashen skulls recalling the Cambodian killing fields, flora and fauna of Minnesota
On April 24, 2008, Pope Benedict XVI received the Books of Wisdom literature of the Saint John Bible and said it was “a work of art, a great work of art” and w “work for eternity.”
More info on the Bible project can be seen here.
Portions of the Saint John’s Bible is on display at The Church of Saint Paul the Apostle (9th Avenue & West 59th Street, NYC) until December 17.
The Abbey of Regina Laudis is a special place in Connecticut; and one of the special Benedictine monasteries in the USA. I’ve been spending more time there in recent months either attending the Divine Office and/or Mass or spending a few days in St Joseph’s Guest House (for men, there are guests for women, married folks, & clergy).
If the crèche at
the Abbey of
Regina Laudis strikes you as a little out place, there’s a good
reason. The austere Yankee barn that houses it is a world away from its previous
home. Handcrafted by artisans in Naples, the intricate nativity scene was
presented as a coronation gift to Victor Amadeus II, king of Sardina, in 1720.
It remained among Italian nobility until it was purchased by Loretta Hines
Howard, an artist and collector, in 1949. She immediately donated it to what
was then a fledgling Benedictine Abbey in, fittingly, Bethlehem, Connecticut
(although the nuns insist the name is a coincidence).
The crèche takes a few
liberties with the traditional nativity story. Instead of a Judean village,
Bethlehem appears here somewhere on the coast of Italy. The stable has been
replaced by Corinthian columns, and the traditional kings and shepherds are
joined by a whole host of other characters, who have shed their New Testament
robes for 18th-century knickers and coats. In one corner, some
peasants argue over the contents of a stem pot. In another, a noblewoman walks
her whippet on a leash. The crowd is puzzling at first, though it may
serve a distinct purpose. “For as
many people as there are, there are attitudes toward the birth of Christ,” says
Sister Angèle Arbib, who helps care for the crèche. She points out some figures
who seems reverential, others who seem distracted or dis-believing: “It’s so
representative. When people come here to see the crèche, they identify with
someone in here.”
And people of all faiths do come to see it. The mass of
Christmas pilgrims has returned after a recent restoration had taken the crèche
out of public view for three years. Conservators from New York’s Metropolitan
Museum of Art painstakingly repaired each of the 68 figures and the tiny
hand-sewn outfits they wear. The results are stunning. The crèche now stands as
a testament to the continued support of the community of nuns,
preservationists, and believers that has formed around it. It’s fitting. After
all, what is a nativity other than a story of people coming together?
November/December, Vol. 74, No. 6.
Abbey of Regina Laudis
273 Flanders Road
Bethlehem, CT
The crèche is open to the public daily 10-4 through Jan. 5 (closed Jan. 6-Apr. 24)
203.266.7727
The monastic family of Saint John’s Abbey and the American Cassinese Congregation mourns the passing of Abbot Timothy Kelly who died on October 7. He was 76 and had been suffering from cancer.
Let’s remember Abbot Hugh Anderson, abbot-president and the Benedictine monks of the American Cassinese Congregation who observe today as a patronal feast of their congregation.
For a number of years now, when I am in Rome, I stay at the Benedictine Abbey of Sant’Anselmo on the Aventine Hill. The Benedictine monks have been on the Aventine since property was purchased from Pope Leo XIII in the late 19th century. Technically, Sant’Anselmo is not a functioning abbey as other abbeys with a stable monastic community but it’s a house of studies for monks and others. There is an order for the day of prayer, Mass, study, and work but one does not become a monk of Sant’Anselmo as you would become a monk of Saint Vincent’s. At the Anselmo you’ll find a “permanent” faculty and staff, and a group of monks who work in the Abbot Primate’s offices and some monks who work at other universities or at the Vatican, but no monk vows stability to Sant’Anselmo.
This week in
Rome the Communio Internationalis Benedictinarum (CIB) for a congress, their
6th, on “Hope in Benedictine Spirituality.”
Benedictine nuns and sisters
from Europe, Africa and America are attending the meeting. The CIB is meeting
on the Aventine Hill at the Primatial Abbey of Saint Anselm (known in Italian
as Sant’Anselmo), home to the Abbot Primate , Notker Wolf (pictured left) who heads the confederation of
Benedictine monks and nuns, the Pontifical Liturgical Institute, the Mabillion
Institute and the college for theological studies for those preparing for
ordination, earning degrees in theology and monastic studies (the general link for all these institutes for higher learning is here).
Zenit ran an
interview today with Sister Maricarmen Bracamontes de Torreon, a Benedictine
sister from Mexico who talked to aspects of hope and how understanding this
virtue is key in Benedictine spirituality, and thus for all Christians. Sacred
Scripture instructs us to look at how God works with us, that is, He gazes on
us with faithfulness, compassion and mercifully. Looking to the holy Rule,
Saint Benedict tells us “not to despair of God’s mercy” (4.74).
Sister Maricarmen said the participants are keenly aware that there is “only
one Benedictine heart beats at the bottom of our universal diversity, and on
the other, there is no doubt that we are going through a historical moment of
darkness and we need a light, precisely like St. Benedict, which shines on high
and gives us clarity in the midst of darkness.”
Two questions of the interview
are worth thinking about here on the Communio blog:
ZENIT: Can we then speak of
a reflection from a holistic-rational perspective?
Sister Bracamontes: The
Benedictine way leads to a process of integration that embraces the different
dimensions of the human conscience: cognitive (the mind), affective (the
heart), ethics and morals (the will and all its capacities), religious (the
soul).
This integration enables us to love in a unified way and it is the
condition to advance on the path of conversion. “However, the workshop
where we must practice all these things diligently is the enclosure of the
monastery and stability in the community” (Rule of Benedict, 4.78). The
monastic dynamic animates the processes of integration in those who live in the
“monastery,” which is the place where we ask God with the most
insistent prayers to bring to completion the divine work of our lives: that
they all may be one.
If we persevere, trying to live in the
“conversatio,” the experience of God’s unconditional love gradually
integrates all the dimensions of our being, and thus we become unified in
ourselves and in the diversity and plurality that characterizes us. The result
of all this is that we live with transparency and consistency, that we do not
separate our judgments from our feelings, or our conduct from our belief. In
this way, our integrity and social and personal responsibility will not allow
us “to say one thing and do another,” or to establish ourselves in a
life of contradictions and inconsistencies.
ZENIT: At present the Church is
facing difficult moments. Does it call for hope?
Sister Bracamontes: Obviously.
I think that some sectors of the Church have slipped up in the dialogue with
the signs of the times that was so encouraged by the Second Vatican Council.
Those
signs have revealed that for centuries, both in the society as well as the
Church, efforts were dedicated to contain diversity and plurality, so
characteristic of humanity. There are many human groups, with different views
of reality; they are arriving on the first plane and ask that they be
recognized, respected and integrated. The new methods of understanding and of
discovery of humanity leave antiquated the old systems of relationship based on
dominion, submission and marginalization. These systems of the past considered
some human beings superior to others, based on race, gender, social class,
ideology, religion, etc.
In face of a clearer awareness of the common dignity
of all human beings, the absence of dialogue between those who are open to the
signs of the times and those who continue to adhere to visions of the past and
close their mind and heart to the historic change that we are experiencing,
calls for hope.
From a perspective of faith, we are conscious and are convinced
that the whole of humanity, with its differences, has been created with equal
dignity in the divine image and likeness. We are children of God and sisters
and brothers among ourselves in Christ, who is our peace (Ephesians 2:14), and
in him all discrimination and marginalization is overcome (Galatians 3:26-28).
From this awareness we hear the call and we open ourselves with wisdom and
maturity to our world with its urgent need to recognize diversity, to promote
integration and to encourage dialogue and participation. Hence, many challenges
arise.