Investiture of Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles

Four postulants make first profession on Wednesday, 6 January 2010, the Feast of the Epiphany, during Pontifical Mass sung by Bishop Finn of Kansas City-Saint Joseph. Kansas Catholic has images of the occasion.

New Communities continued...

The Contemplative Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate

Lanherne Convent in Cornwall, in the far south west of England, is the home of the Contemplative Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate in the UK.

This branch of the Franciscan Order has four contemplative houses for women religious in the world. Two in Italy (Citta Di Castello and Albenga), one in the Philippines, and Lanherne. Someone with a vocation first enters the apostolic sisters where she does her postulancy, novitiate and takes temporary vows and probably final vows also. It is only after some years – perhaps five, six or seven - that a sister feels her vocation is to the contemplative life. Perhaps the superiors think that this sister is called to the contemplative life. Therefore at this stage a sister might well pass from one way of the religious life to the other vocation. My point being one does not enter the contemplative life direct from “the world”.

The recently aquired former Carmel in England

THE HORARIUM

Rise at midnight - Matins and Lauds at 12.10 am
5.35 am - Lauds of Our Lady (in cell)
6 am - Prime followed by Little Office Prime
Meditation and Terce and Little Office Terce
7.30 am - Conventual Mass (sung daily)
12.20 pm - Sext (+ Little Office Sext)
1.20 pm - None (+ Little Office None)
3 pm - Vespers (Little Office – in cell)
3.15 pm - Vespers
3.45 pm - Rosary and Litany
4.15 pm - Meditation and anticipated Little Office Matins until 5.40 pm
8.25 pm - Compline (followed by Little Office Compline in cell)

Stations of the Cross – Fridays at 8.20 pm
Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament and Benediction – Fridays 8.40 am – 1 pm

The Sunday timetable varies very slightly – the main difference is that the Conventual Mass is at 10 am

In Choir - Chantresses at the Ambo

The High Altar and Grille to the Left

Grace before Meals in the Refectory

After the promulgation of Summorum Pontificum in 2007 the FSI superiors decided that these four contemplative houses would take up the full and exclusive use of the 1962 liturgical books.

The New Communities continued...

The Benedictine Monks of Le Barroux, established in the 1980's have completed the building of their Abbey Church and have since made another foundation in France. the average age until recently was 27.

Aerial shot of the Abbey with Mt Ventoux in the background
Lavendar picking in the forecourt of the Abbey

Lavendar picking by the monks in work habits

During his ordination a monk follows the Missal

The ordaining Cardinal at the throne
Dom Gerard the forme Abbot at the throne with Assistants

The Conventual Mass

Ordinations in the Abbey Church

Pontifical Mass celebrated by the fromer Abbot Dom Gerard R.I.P.

Profession of a Monk - his hands upraised as he sings the "Sucipe"

At the ponifical blessing

Candidate for the priesthood enter by the western door

The New Communities

I will be posting a number of images of Religious Life starting with those use or have returned to the Classical Roman Liturgy Usus Antiquior.

Mariawald Cistercian Abbey - returned to Cistercian Rite last year

Fransican Friars of the Immaculate adopted the Usus antiquior for conventual liturgies last year

The Prefect of the "Congregation for Religious" Cardinal Franc Rodé CM

From a recent speach;

"In the last forty years, the Church has undergone one of her greatest crises of all times. We all know that the dramatic situation of consecrated life has not been marginal in this state of affairs. In practically all Western countries, observers note that most religious communities are entering the end-game of a prolonged crisis whose outcome, they say, is already determined by the statistics.In many of these Western countries, religious have lost hope....Under the umbrella of “consecrated life” and behind the statistics there lies a variety of situations.

First, there are many new communities, some better known than others, many of which are thriving and whose individual statistics are the reverse of the general trends.

Second, we have older communities that have taken action to preserve and reform genuine religious life in their own charism; they are also in a growth mode, contrary to the general trend, and their median age is lower than the overall average for religious.

Neither of these two groups sees “the writing on the wall” in the sense that observers of the general trends use it; on the contrary, the future looks promising if they continue to be what they are and as they are.

Third, there are those who accept the present situation of decline as, in their words, the sign of the Spirit on the Church, a sign of a new direction to be followed. Among this group there those who have simply acquiesced to the disappearance of religious life or at least of their community, and seek to do so in the most peaceful manner possible, thanking God for past benefits.

Then, we must admit too, that there are those who have opted for ways that take them outside communion with Christ in the Catholic Church, although they themselves may have opted to “stay” in the Church physically. These may be individuals or groups in institutes that have a different view, or they may be entire communities.

Finally, I would distinguish those who fervently believe in their own personal vocation and the charism of their community, and are seeking ways to reverse the trend. In other words, how to achieve authentic renewal. These may be whole institutes, or individuals, pockets of individuals or even communities within institutes....Operating at the root of this “pseudo-aggiornamento” was what can best be described as “naturalism”.

It supposed the radical centering of man on himself, the rejection of the supernatural, and operated in a climate of radical subjectivism.It showed itself in multiple ways: In talk about holiness that is totally divorced from fulfillment of Christ’s law and the concept of grace. In minimizing sin. In the acceptance of the world as it is, with no need of conversion. In taking the world as the criterion according to which the Church ought to be reformed. In a notion of apostolate or ministry that consists in being at ease in the world rather than changing it. In rejection of authority, and especially divinely constituted authority, hence the rejection of the magisterium and all canonical and disciplinary ordering in the Church....

Towards the end of the Second Vatican Council, I was in Paris finishing my doctoral thesis on “miracles of the modernist controversy.” At that time in France there was a pervasive atmosphere of enthusiasm for the Council as the press and other media presented it, which was a partial image of the Council as a “victory of the liberals over the conservatives.”

When I returned to Slovenia I found that the communist regime was isolating the Catholic faithful, suffocating public expression of the faith and reducing it to a merely private affair. I found a faithful people within a society shaped by the ideology of materialism. I soon realized that what I brought with me from my studies in Paris was of very little use for my pastoral work. I needed to be close to the people and to respect the traditional ways of expressing of their faith. I learned so much from the Christian faithful! They taught me to love the Church, to respect the Pope and the bishops in communion with him.

The great lesson I learned from that experience was this: The religious who secularized consecrated life were not doing so for the sake of the faith of the people of God. It was not the good of God’s people that they were seeking. Rather than God’s will, what they were seeking was their own.

Religious life, being a gift from the Holy Spirit to the individual religious and the Church, depends especially on fidelity to its origins, fidelity to the founder, fidelity to the particular charism. Fidelity to that charism is essential, for God blesses fidelity while he “opposes the proud.” The complete rupture of some with the past, then, goes against the nature of a religious congregation, and essentially it provokes God’s rejection."