+ “Sed haæc quid sunt inter tantos?” “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what are they among so many?”

This question of St Andrew—which contains the majority of his few words recorded in the Gospels—resounds through the centuries to our own day. How can we manage with so few resources? What can we do in the face of the impossibility of the circumstances that confront us?
 
From the duty of preaching the Gospel of Christ to all nations (cf. Mk 16:15) to the duty to love and care for our neighbour who is poor or suffering (cf. Mt 25;31-46) the Church has faced an impossible task since her foundation. For even today she is very few, and the need, the sheer number of people to whom she must reach out and touch with the saving embrace of Christ, is enormous.
 
In our own times, which is witnessing a rapid decline in the numbers of practicing Catholics—accelerated without doubt by the liturgical, doctrinal and pastoral dissipation that the Church seems almost to have wished upon herself the past half-century, and which in the last decade seems to be being pushed even further still almost as a matter of urgency—we may very well ask sed haæc quid sunt inter tantos? How can we possibly manage to fulfil the duties of Christian life and worship and witness that Our Lord expects of us?
 
Here in France many, many dioceses find it impossible even to assure a Sunday Mass in each parish, let alone provide the wider sacramental care God’s people need for their salvation. Throughout the world Catholic hospitals and charitable institutions have closed and stand empty, sometimes replaced by secular counterfeits, at other times unable to continue because of a lack of those willing to offer themselves in the service of God through love of their neighbour. Even here in our own small monastic foundation we can be tempted to ask how can we possibly manage: what hope do we have in a world (and even a Church!) that seems to spurn all that for which we stand?
 
In the second chapter of his Rule St Benedict addresses the anxieties that may confront an abbot: “If he be tempted to complain of lack of means,” St Benedict says, “let him remember the words: Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you. (Mt 6:33) And again: They that fear Him lack nothing. (Ps 33:10)” One can almost hear some pragmatic abbots reacting: “That is all very nice, of course, but it does not pay the bills!” Some such abbots may even have been called Andrew: “Sed haæc quid sunt inter tantos?” “But what are they among so many?”
 
And yet the history of the Church is replete with the miraculous transformation of but a handful of good men and women into great missionaries and saints and martyrs who have preached the Gospel to throughout the world, who have brought the hope of eternal salvation to those who hitherto worshiped false gods and who have reformed human societies according to the law of the love of God and of one’s neighbour. Monastic history boasts of many sons and daughters of St Benedict and of St Scholastica who have reformed monasteries or established new ones that they might become true households of God’s praise and worship—beacons of Christian life, culture and learning (and indeed, as necessary, of pastoral care and practical charity) in very dark ages of the Church’s history.
 
Our own times, too, has seen such miracles, perhaps most eloquently expressed in the lives of such tenacious individuals of St Teresa of Calcutta or, closer to home, of Dom Gerard Calvet, the founder of the Abbey of Le Barroux—whose prophetic fidelity in the face of much hostility bears abundant fruit in the Vineyard of the Lord down to this day. Who were they amongst so many? They were individuals who offered all that they had—all the little that they had and were—before the Lord and allowed him to bless it and multiply it that it might nourish and sustain many. They sought first the Kingdom of God and found that they were given the spiritual and material means they required.
 
Who are we amongst so many? How can we persevere in the face of the world, the flesh and the devil that constantly threaten us and in the light of persecutions that arrive even from within the Church? The answer is the same: we must offer all that we have—no matter how meager that be spiritually or materially—to the Lord and allow him to bless it and multiply it that it might nourish and sustain us, and that through us it will bear fruit. To be sure our offering to the Lord must be pure, and because of this our Lenten disciplines, particularly confession are of vital importance. If we but offer ourselves, the Lord can and shall work miracles in and through us.
 
This morning, as once again we go to His altar, let us offer ourselves anew, confident that He will bless our offering, and that He will do so abundantly. +

+ Qui non est mecum, contra me est: et qui non colligit mecum, dispergit. He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters. These words, with which Our Blessed Lord concludes the dispute about His power to exorcise demons, and which the Church addresses to each of us on this third Sunday of Lent, leave little room to maneuver, as it were. They demand clarity on our part. Am I for Jesus Christ? Or am I against Him?
                                                                                               
These questions are quite stark—almost rude. But we must remember that they arise from Our Lord’s own unequivocal words: He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters. The shallow comfort of defaulting into abstention is not on offer. The refuge of a so-called ‘diplomatic neutrality’ is not an option. Am I for Jesus Christ? Or am I against Him? I must stand with Him or be found to be against Him.
 
And these questions resound all the more clearly as our Lenten disciplines strip away the worldly comforts with which we so often anesthetise ourselves. (Or they should: perhaps we need to re-start them, or even start them once and for all? It is not too late!) For whether it be our busyness, even with good things, or be it our pursuit of our own wills and pleasures—legitimately or otherwise—the brusque reality that I must choose to stand with and for Our Lord Jesus Christ in the varied realities of my daily life, or be counted as standing against Him, often escapes us.
 
But there is no escaping this reality. We either face up to it now and deal with its implications or we shall face up to it on the day of our judgement at the end of our lives on earth. The choice is ours.
 
In placing this fundamental choice before us in Lent, the Church is calling us, her children, to that conversion of life that is necessary in each one of us so that we shall indeed stand with and for Christ. She is calling each one of us to the conversion that each of us must undergo—perhaps even radically—so that the day of judgement shall not find us amongst those who do not stand with Christ but are scattered without hope of salvation.
 
This requires a radical honesty on our part. It requires that we ask ourselves the difficult and stark questions that are necessary in respect of our own Christian vocation and discipleship—questions which often lurk at the back of our consciences but which, perhaps, are never allowed fully to come to the fore.
 
We know of the Church’s requirement (the “Paschal precept”) that we receive Holy Communion worthily at least once a year between Ash Wednesday and Trinity Sunday, and that we confess all grave (mortal) sins also at least once a year. This minimum requirement assumes the necessary examination of conscience. If we are not in the habit of making an examination of conscience regularly (and even if we are) the Holy Gospel of this Mass and the questions that it places before us—Am I for Jesus Christ? Or am I against Him?—shall assist us greatly.

Of course, these questions are not about some vague so-called “fundamental option” that I may of may not think I have. They are about whether, in the detailed daily circumstances of my life and vocation, in larger questions as well as in smaller ones, I stand with Christ or against Him. They are about whether, in respect of my own life’s vocation, I am prepared to take the steps necessary to stand with Christ, or whether I shall continue to hide from His call behind the various excuses and other options (even seemingly good ones) that the devil proffers in its place.
 
Indeed, these questions challenge the Church of our day, as the news coming out of Germany in recent days makes painfully clear. Will the Church stand with Christ and the Truth, or is she to dissemble into national or other groups with their own edition of the Catechism, edited according to their preferred ideologies? The fact that this question could even be asked should give us cause for very grave and urgent concern. It should move us to offer much prayer and fasting for the bishops concerned, and in particular for the Successor of St Peter, whose vocation it is to promote, protect and preserve the unity of the Church in faithful adherence to the Truth revealed by Christ.
 
Qui non est mecum, contra me est: et qui non colligit mecum, dispergit. He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters.
 
My dear brothers and sisters, through our Lenten disciplines let us earnestly beg Almighty God for the grace courageously to stand with Christ and the Truth He revealed, handed on in Tradition by the teaching of the One Church He founded. Where necessary, let us not delay in seeking the cleansing and healing that are offered to us in the Sacrament of Confession, so that we may be able to stand with Christ at His altar and worthily receive Him in Holy Communion and, nourished thus by His Body and Blood, receive the grace and strength to persevere in faithful and fruitful witness to Him. For our godless world—and the increasingly divided Church—has desperate need of the witness we are called to give. Let us not scatter in fear: let us stand with Christ in faith and with courage! +

As has become our custom in Advent and Lent,
the monastic community kept the Ember Days of last week as days of retreat.
We are happy to publish the texts of the conferences given here
​for those who may wish to profit from them. 

​+ Domine, bonum est nos hic esse. Lord, it is good that we are here.
 
Through the Sacred Liturgy of the Church Saint Peter’s words uttered on the high mountain of the Transfiguration echo through the centuries down to us this morning: “Lord, it is good that we are here.”
 
Saints Peter, James and John were taken apart from the remainder of the twelve to witness the Transfiguration of the Lord. It was a singular privilege accorded to them, no doubt to cement their formation and to strengthen them in due course for their mission as great Apostles who would shed their blood rather than deny the truth that Jesus of Nazareth is the long-awaited Christ of God, the definitive revelation of Almighty God in history and the unique saviour of all mankind. Second to their physical encounters with the Risen Christ after His resurrection, the Transfiguration and the awe that it inspired in its three chosen witnesses no doubt served as a solid foundation for all that would be required of them in the future.
 
Domine, bonum est nos hic esse. Lord, it is good that we are here—that we are here in this monastery church this morning on this Second Sunday of Lent.
 
It is good that we monks are here, in answer to the prayer of psalm 26 that we sing at matins each Sunday: “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple.” (v. 4) It is good, indeed salvific, that it is possible to continue to glimpse the Transfigured and Resurrected Christ each day at Holy Mass, to dwell in the light of these realities and to sing His praises throughout the day and the night, rendering Him the rightful worship that is His due.
 
And it is good that others, with different vocations, are here with us throughout the week, but most particularly on this, the Lord’s Day. The demands of living in the world are many and varied, but without the consolation and strength that is given to us by the transfigured and resurrected Christ—Who is here for us to see and adore at the elevation of the Sacred Host and of the Chalice at every Mass—the burdens of the world may very well become too heavy to bear. The Church’s precept of keeping Sunday sacred so as first and foremost to be able to worship Almighty God at Mass ensures that, as a bare minimum, we have one re-creative encounter with Christ each week.
 
Be we a monk, a nun, a lay man or woman or a secular cleric, we need this. We need the strength and the consolation that encountering God’s glory gives us—which is why we search always to celebrate the Sacred Rites of the Church’s liturgy as worthily as we are able, with great dignity and beauty. We need help and sustenance in daily persevering in all that is demanded of us. We need to know, whilst carrying the cross, that we too shall share in the glory of the Resurrection.  We need the assurance of the psalmist who continues psalm 26: “He will hide me in His shelter in the day of trouble; He will conceal me under the cover of his tent, He will set me high upon a rock.” (v. 5)
 
For this encounter with the Resurrected and Glorified Christ that is ours each time we offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is good, as was the encounter of Saints Peter, James and John with the transfigured Christ on the high mountain, It is a direct and personal encounter with the source of all goodness: Almighty God Himself. We could not ask for anything better in this life!
 
We are, like Peter, James and John, privileged to be taken apart and invited to share in its fullness. But in order optimally to profit from this opportunity we must do our part. None of the three saints taken up to the mountain excused themselves because they were tired or had other things to do. We must be at Sunday Mass, every Sunday (and holy day of obligation). The monk must be in his choir stall, for every office. This is the bare minimum!
 
Then we must be awake and spiritually attentive and alert, seeking to participate in the action of Christ in the liturgy of His Church as optimally as possible. We must be prepared, cleansed—with sacramental confession if necessary—and concentrated, so as carefully and fruitfully to listen to Him with Whom, as the Holy Gospel reminds us, the Father is well pleased.
 
Domine, bonum est nos hic esse. Lord, it is good that we are here. May our Lenten disciplines purify us and enable us to be able to draw more and more strength from the glory that He makes manifest to us here, daily, on His altar, to sustain us in this life and so as to bring us to share in His unending glory in the next. + 

Notre lettre aux amis pour le carême 2023 est maintenant publiée sur ce lien.
​​
Our Lent 2023 newsletter is published at this link.

+ It is exciting, is it not, when someone offers us a gift? It is affirming. Very often gifts open up new possibilities for us, small or large. They expand our horizons and introduce something new into how we proceed in the future.
 
So too, it is pleasing when we are entrusted with greater responsibility in our vocation or career. It is right and fitting that when we work hard and diligently over a long time that this be recognised and rewarded and that, if we are capable, when we are ready to exercise authority, we are given the opportunity so to do. Advancement in life and responsibility and a successful career are all good things. St Paul exhorts us to be ambitious for the higher gifts (cf. 1 Cor. 12:31)—insisting, of course that they are exercised in love.
 
There is nothing intrinsically wrong, then, in accepting gifts or responsibilities. They are often gifts of Almighty God Himself that call us further in His service and the service of others. And yet, as the Gospel of this Holy Mass teaches very clearly, some gifts that are offered are in fact pernicious temptations:
 
“The devil took Him to a very high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them; and he said to Him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Begone, Satan! for it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve.’”
 
“All the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them,” is quite an offer! What child does not dream of ruling the world and making all things right? Thankfully children grow up and as adults, usually, rightly recoil from any such ambitions—because the offer is made by the devil on one condition: “if you will fall down and worship me.”
 
On this first Sunday of Lent the Sacred Liturgy of Our Holy Mother, the Church, confronts us with the fundamental realities of good and evil and of their personification in God and the devil. She starkly puts before us the choice to fall down and worship the devil by grasping for whatever we can in this life, or of saying: ““Begone, Satan!” and of worshipping the Lord our God and of serving Him alone.
 
This choice—and our radical human freedom enables us to choose either of them—is as fundamental to our existence as it is frequent in the fabric of our daily activities. The monk who daily takes back more and more of what his self-will prefers is on the road to perdition: his habit and his profession call him to serve God, not his own desires. The married man or woman for whom their spouse and their family do not come first has placed something else in front of their God-given vocation—and that something needs to move to second place so that it is the Lord God, and He alone, who is worshipped. The young man or woman who considers what “I want…” rather than the radical self-sacrifice to which Almighty God calls them may never realise their true vocation.

So too, for those who exercise responsibility and power in the Church or in the world, this temptation is an insidious reality: to politic and grasp for power as an end in itself, or for one’s self-aggrandisement and the advancement of one’s ideologies, is a grave danger. We are, perhaps, too used to this in the cutthroat realm of secular politics: one party replaces another and, in a solemn act of homage to the demon of relativism, declares black to be white and white to be black and the contradiction of this political dogma to be illegal. The next party changes everything yet again, and we hope that one day black may be black and white may be white once again.
 
The Church, it seems, is by no means immune to such positivistic political relativism. The demonic seduction of power and prestige has been a debilitating factor throughout the Church’s history, and its resurgence in our own times is deeply distressing. For the use of ecclesiastical power to advance a political programme to reverse the policies of a previous administration, to declare white to be black, and to rejoice in the doing thereof, is a very long way indeed from the humble exercise of authority under God as a service to the Church.
 
For whether we be a president, prime minister, a prince of the Church or a pope, be we a parent or a priest, a postulant or a prior, it is the Lord our God and Him alone whom we serve, not ourselves or our own febrile ends, and the exercise of any authority or power that may be given to us must reflect this reality: for according to that reality, according to whom we bow down and worship, we shall be judged.
 
That “all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them” are offered to us by the devil in one way or another is a reality—a seductive reality that will lead to our perdition. Through our prayer, fasting and almsgiving this Lent, and with the help of the grace of the sacrament of confession, we must rid ourselves of this temptation and return ever more to the worship of the Lord our God alone even—most especially!—when we hold authority, power or responsibility in the Church, in the family and in society. For that humility, and for the grace to persevere in its daily exercise, let us beg Almighty God at His altar in this Holy Mass. +

+ “Qui meditabitur in lege Domini die ac nocte, dabit fructum suum in tempore suo.”
 
These words, which are amongst the very first words of the Psalter and which are sung during the Communion procession of the Mass of Ash Wednesday, resound deeply in the monastic heart: “He who contemplates the Law of the Lord, day and night, shall yield his fruit in due season.”
 
For what is the monastic vocation if it is not to contemplate the Law of the Lord day and night: in singing the Lord’s praises in choir, in the precious, golden early-morning silence of lectio divina, in the silence and recollection that protects us whilst we are about our monastic work no matter where it must be, in our various studies, and even in our rest? The world may see this as a burden, as a restriction, as an imposition, but as every novice who perseveres to profession comes over time to discover from within, the discipline of silence is a liberation—the liberation of the new man “created according to God, in justice and holiness of life” (Rite of the Clothing of a Novice) from the old man, from the constant noise in which the world engulfs us and anaesthetises us, that he might become the man, the monk, Almighty God calls him to become so as to be able to yield his fruit in due season.
 
To be sure, monks young and old and everywhere in between must work at maintaining and protecting the discipline of silence, just as a novice must patiently learn its fundamental importance over time. It is all too easy for us to let the observance of silence slip and to allow noise to infest our hearts, minds and souls, leaving little or no room for the contemplation of the Law of the Lord.
 
This, then, I would ask, is our first Lenten priority: to ensure that our observance of silence is as it should be externally, and that it is generous and loving internally. The Law of the Lord must not only find space within us in which to enter, it must also find a welcome that allows it to take root and grow within us. It must find in us the good soil of the Gospel of Sexagesima Sunday.
 
This welcome must also be a patient one. We are used to instant messages and responses and to all manner of immediate cause-and-effect activity. But he who contemplates the Law of the Lord, day and night, shall yield his fruit in due season, not by return of electronic message.
 
That is to say that a monk—indeed any Christian, but especially those who live by the Rule of Saint Benedict—must have a supernatural patience which is content with doing that, and only that, which is the business of the day. A monk who is anxious to see the fruits of his prayer in this life, shall in all likelihood see the shipwreck of his vocation sooner rather than later. Our fidelity to the Office in Choir, to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, to the other liturgical rites, to our lectio divina, to perseverance in fraternal charity, to all of the customs and observances that shape and protect our vocation, is sufficient for today. They shall yield their fruit in due season, according to the Providence of Almighty God, in this life and in the next. Looking anxiously at our watches will not help: indeed, it may be regarded as a lack of faith in God’s Providence—and at worst a blasphemy.
 
So, brethren, we must be patient with ourselves, and with Almighty God. God is God: He knows what He is doing with us. He knows what He is doing here in our small, new foundation. When He is ready, we shall see more of His Holy Will for us. We must be patient—whilst all the while contemplating the Law of the Lord. This supernatural patience is, I submit, our second Lenten priority.
 
The third is that we offer our Lenten penances for two particular intentions. Firstly, for those young men within whom the Holy Spirit has begun the stirrings of a monastic vocation. Some of them we already know; some are at this point known to Almighty God alone. Such stirrings are a grace, certainly, but it requires courage and fortitude and many other supernatural gifts for a young man in the modern world to allow them to bear fruit. We have our very real part to play in winning for them the graces necessary that they may respond generously to His call so that they may themselves bear the fruit in due season that He wills.
 
Secondly, I ask that we offer our penances for the Church. She is sorely afflicted throughout the world by strife within and without. The former is more insidious. We do not expect the pastors of the Church to inflict unnecessary suffering upon us, most especially in respect of the very foundations of our ecclesial life, but even in the past day the monastery has received several messages from faithful around the world anguished at the restrictions being placed on the traditional liturgy in the name of obedience.
 
Our little monastery cannot solve this crisis, but we can carry the suffering of others with us into choir and to the altar. So too we can light a lamp, howsoever small, that will nevertheless shine in the current darkness; we can become an oasis in a desert if that is God’s will. But only if, first and foremost, we are faithful to our vocation to mediate on the Law of the Lord, day and night.
 
Our duty, then, is clear. May this Lent of 2023 be a time of purification, growth and renewal in our vocation that each of us, when the due season arrives, may indeed be found to have brought forth the fruit that is his due. +

​+ “Quid tibi vis faciam?” Our Lord asks the blind man who cries out to Him in the Gospel of this morning’s Holy Mass: “What do you want me to do for you?”
 
This encounter almost has a fairy-tale quality to it: ‘You have one wish; make it and it shall be granted!’ And yet this is no fable for children; it is the Gospel of Salvation announced by the unique and definitive revelation of God in human history, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and proclaimed anew by His One True Church in her Sacred Liturgy on this Quinquagesima Sunday. This very morning Our Blessed Lord, hearing our cries, turns to us and asks: “What do you want me to do for you?”
 
It is an apposite question, is it not, as we prepare for the great fast of Lent? What graces, what purifications, what growth do we hope for this Lent? What progress do we desire to have made when we celebrate the coming feast of Easter? What do we want the Lord to have done for us and in us by then?
 
The blind man was clear in his own request once again to be able to see. We, however, may not be so clear. We may well be approaching this Lent as many others with an habitual acceptance of its coming disciplines without, as it were, a clear goal in view. In one sense it would be quite possible to observe Lent quite correctly but to miss its great opportunity, as it were, to make real spiritual progress in uprooting vice and growing in virtue.
 
It is vitally important that we do not miss this opportunity; it is imperative that each of us takes the time and makes the effort to answer the question: What do we want the Lord to do for us in the coming weeks?
 
This requires an act of the will on our part. We must positively will to make the spiritual progress that is necessary in us. Complacency in respect of our spiritual life is a form of the sin of sloth, and we must overcome this temptation first and foremost if we are to move forward. We must actually want Our Lord to do something for us and in us. So too, we must be prepared for the consequent responsibility this will bring.
 
Then, if we wish Him to do something for us, we must work towards it. We must prepare ourselves worthily and fruitfully to receive His gift. Our Lord did not heal the blind man against his will. He did not force His grace upon him. The blind man cried out to Our Lord time and time again even when quietened by the bystanders. But Our Lord heard his cries for mercy and responded “…your faith has made you well.”
 
So too must we cry for mercy through our penitential practices, most especially in the coming weeks. If needs be we must cry all the louder through our faithful perseverance in them. The disciplines of prayer, fasting and almsgiving are at our disposal as always, as is the Sacrament of Confession. Our state in life and the duties it involves, our age and our health, will regulate what is prudent and possible, but if we want the Lord to work within us, we shall be as generous as we can in what we offer Him in faith and in penitence.
 
We may well have something very specific in mind for which we wish to ask this Lent: growth in a particular virtue (in this morning’s Epistle St Paul would have us remember the need to grow in charity), the uprooting of a particular vice. We may wish to see God’s will for us more clearly and to ask for the grace generously and courageously to carry it out for His glory and for the salvation of our soul and the souls of others. We may need to ask for the grace of further perseverance in our longstanding vocation. We may need the Lord to heal our unworthiness in the face of the responsibilities He calls on us to accept.
 
Or perhaps, without any great or urgent demand, we simply seek an increase in faith, hope and charity—we could ask for nothing more valuable—so as better to be at the disposition of God’s will in the particular circumstances of our lives. In this case we ought not to be surprised if we receive these gifts in abundance for use in the Lord’s service in ways in which we presently cannot imagine.
 
“Quid tibi vis faciam?” “What do you want me to do for you?” Our Lord asks each of us this question today. It requires an answer; an answer that shall itself make demands on us, most particularly in the coming weeks. And yet these demands should not cause us anxiety, for as the Church sings in the words of the psalmist in the Communion Antiphon of this Quinquagesima Sunday, “They ate and they took their fill; all they asked, the Lord granted them; he would not disappoint them of their longing.” +