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January 9, 2020

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Abbey News

To Novo Mundo
Yesterday, Abbot Gerard left for our daughter house in Brazil. As Fr. Immediate of the Community he is obliged by our Constitutions to make the visitation every two years during which he will meet with each of the members of the community to evaluate how things are going. He will then make a report to the next General Chapter. He is expected to return on the 19th??

New Publication 
Our Fr. Isaac Slater, our newly appointed vocation and novice director, has just published a new book on one of his favorite topics, St. Bernard,  entitled: Beyond Measure, The Poetics of the Image in St. Bernard. Fr. Bernardo Bonowitz, Abbot of Novo Mundo  and author of Truly Seeking God  Describes it as:

“From the beginnings of our Order, Cistercian monks and nuns have expressed their desire for—and sometimes their insistence on—seeing God in the here and now `sicuti est’ (`as he is’ – 1 Jn 3:2), and none more than Bernard of Clairvaux. In this clear and illuminating study, Slater demonstrates to what extent Bernard considered this contemplative knowledge possible in this life, to what extent he accepted it as impossible, and how, by the transformation of desire, men and women could be brought closer to the impossible. Reading Slater’s book, we are renewed in the willingness to allow the Word to work on who we are interiorly in the unrelinquishable hope of coming to know him for who he is.”
It is available at Cistercian Publications.
Lectio Divina

There is a profound harmony between the external demands of Christianity and the internal dynamism of the human heart. Christian discipleship asks no more and no less of us than that we become what God intends us to be, that we fulfill the potentiality inherent in our individual nature, that we cease acting a role and allow ourselves to become fully ourselves.

What theology terms ‘sins” are, it seems to be, not primarily offenses against God; they are offenses against ourselves – refusal to act in accordance with our God-given natures.

We were made in the image and likeness of God; our most authentic behavior is when we act as God acts, as this has been revealed to us in the words and example of Christ.

The Road to Eternal Life
Michael Casey, OCSO