A Chapter Conference for the Octave Day of Christmas

+ Ausculta, o fili, praecepta magistri... “Hearken, my son, to the precepts of the master…” Could the first Chapter of a new year of grace, the new year of 2018, commence with more appropriate words than these, the first words of the Prologue of the Holy Rule?

For each of us, for monks, for those for whom 2018 will bring the grace of a entry into the monastic life, for those for whom it will bring further clarity in discernment, these words call us to a new and deeper attentiveness to the realities of our God-given vocation.

And they are realistic words: St Benedict knows only too well that we can and do stray “by the sloth of disobedience,” that we can and do fail and fall “by our evil conduct.” Hence the importance – nay the urgency – of ‘inclining the ears of our heart’ now, today. For if we fail to do this, if we procrastinate further still, if we allow other sounds and words to fill our hearts and minds and to drown out the master’s voice, we risk disinheritance, indeed everlasting punishment.

And so, if we may borrow the secular custom of a making new year’s resolutions, let us resolve today to listen ever more attentively to the voice of the Lord, to follow the counsel and prayer of the Blessed Virgin Mary and to “Do whatever He tells you” (Jn 2:5), that in this year of 2018 we may “serve him with the gifts he has given us” and thereby “follow him to glory.”

Last evening after Vespers we rightly knelt before the Blessed Sacrament and sang the Te Deum in thanksgiving for the many graces received in the past year. This morning after Conventual Mass we shall kneel again and, by singing the Veni Creator Spiritus, implore God the Holy Ghost’s assistance and strength for the coming year. Let us open our hearts that He may fill them with heavenly grace, that our following of the Lord in this year may be ever more complete and ever more fruitful for the salvation of our own souls and for the good of the Church.
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So too, following Mass, we shall have the privilege of venerating the relic of St Odilo of Cluny on this the 969th anniversary of his death. Let us ask the intercession of this truly great abbot for our own vocations, for those in discernment, and even – especially! – for those who at this time and for whatever reason do not hearken to the precepts of the master. Through the intercession of Saint Odilo may we and those for whom we pray readily come to “freely accept and faithfully fulfil the instructions of a loving father.” +

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