Volume 37, Nr. 2a, 2007 Richardton, ND 58652
A study tour in 2006 brought 15 monastics to China. The primary goal of the tour was to familiarize the participants with the work of the Benedictines in China before 1949. The group explored the historical sites of Benedictine as well as present day China-Church interaction. We looked forward to the possibilities of future growth in community living and spirituality, while also aiming for understanding of the traditional Chinese culture, which we experienced through the richness of Chinese art/archaeology, and philosophy/religion in museums, temples, libraries and religious institutions in six of China major cities and four rural areas.
The participants were 15 diverse, gifted individuals. Ranging from a young seminary student to spiritual formation directors, our participants came from the United States, the Philippines, Taiwan, Hong Kong and China. They were Father Anthony Wesolowski, OSB (St. Vincent Archabbey, Latrobe, PPA), Father Simon O?Connell, OSB (St. Andrew Abbey in Valyermo, CA), Sister Katherine Kraft, OSB (St. Benedict Monastery, St. Joseph, MN), Brother Aaron Raverty, OSB (Saint John Abbey, Collegeville, MN), Timothy Klosterman (seminarian, Los Angeles Diocese), Sister Eloisa David, OSB (Leyte, Philippines), Sister Rosalyn Tsai, OSB (St. Benedict Monastery, Tanshui Town, Taiwan), Sister Regina Alvarado, OSB (Immaculate Heart of Mary Abbey, (Vigan City, Philippines), Sister Maureen Sansaet, OSB (St. Benedict Priory, Davao City, Philippines), Father Joseph Moreno, OSB (Digos Priory, Digos City, Philippines), Sister Paula Yahya, OCSO (Teromolpos, Indonesia), Brother Vincent Ng, OSB (St. Andrew Abbey in Valyermo, CA), and Maxwell Brown, a student from Portsmouth Benedictine Abbey School (Portsmouth, RI).
The group was organized and led by Brother Nicholas Koss, OSB, a member of St. Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe and dean of the Graduate Foreign Language School at Fu-Jen Catholic University in Taiwan, and Sister Baulu Kuan, OSB, a native of China and member of the Sisters of Saint Benedict in St. Joseph, MN, who is an art instructor and curator there. The itinerary included Beijing, the Great Wall, Jilin City, Kouqian City, Meihekou, Shijiazhuang, Nanchong, Xin, Chengdu, and Shanghai.
Besides visiting a range of towns and cities in mainland China to become acquainted with the nation rich historical and archeological sites, universities, libraries, and museums, the group also toured Buddhist temples, a Muslim mosque, urban and rural Catholic parish churches, cathedrals and basilicas, religious men and women communities, and seminaries, and met with two Chinese bishops to discuss the Catholic Church in China.
As part of the partnership between North American monasteries, the
Alliance for International Monasticism, and the communities of Benedictine women in Africa, four sisters have traveled from the US to Africa. Sisters Patricia Seipel (Mount St. Scholastica, Atchison, KS) and Margaret Mary Liang (Sacred Heart, Cullman, AL) taught English to Benedictine Sisters of St. Agnes in Tanzania for six weeks in the summer. Later, Sisters Michael Mack (St. Benedict , Pittsburgh, PA) and Rose Marie Stallbaumer (Mount St. Scholastica, Atchison, KS) took their financial management expertise to six communities in Namibia, Tanzania and South Africa. They taught the sisters principles of accounting and financial record keeping.
AIM, an organization of 168 communities in the US and Canada, is again campaigning for Lenten alms to provide for spiritual, educational, formation and building assistance to English speaking communities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Sister Christine Kouba, OSB (Sacred Heart Monastery, Lisle, IL) was part of a
Joliet Diocesan Mission to Bolivia, along with nineteen lay volunteers. During a ten-day service period in Sucre, a construction team worked to improve the quality of four adobe, the surgical team completed 54 surgeries, the community health team checked the children for health problems and assisted families with health issues, and the education team brought fresh ideas to the teachers and supplied them with teaching tools.
They brought a variety of professional skills to the people of Sucre, but Sister Christine reports, most important, barring the labor-intensive program, our main goal was to form a relationship with the Bolivian poor. We came to respect them as special human beings who live in poverty very much below our standard of human expectations. We marveled how patient these needy people are under such adverse conditions and we admired their sincere gratitude for the work we did to make life a little more comfortable for them.
At their recent board meeting, the ABA made one Monastic Studies grant to Dorothy Baroch to continue her study on applying the process of monastic visitations to parish life. The evaluation committee for this year's grants consisted of Sisters Dorothy Neuhofer and Dorothy Jean Beyer, Father Eugene Hensell, and Oblates Phyllis Thompson and Gerry Allen.
The grant provides funds to support projects which foster the mission of the ABA, "to cultivate, support and transmit the Benedictine heritage within contemporary culture." Grant support may be used for research, travel, or other modes of exploring and promoting the Benedictine heritage. It may also be used for travel expenses and registration fees for the purpose of presenting a paper on a monastic topic related to the Benedictine heritage at a scholarly convention.
Applications must come from ABA members and are selected on the basis of the quality of their proposal, its potential benefit for monastics, and relevance to the purposes of the Academy. The deadline for submission of applications is December 15. Recipients of grant support submit a report on the use of the grant and/or a brief summary of the topic of the scholarly paper to the ABA Board of Directors within a year from the completion of the project or presentation for which the grant was given.
An Unexciting Life: Reflections on Benedictine Spirituality, by Michael Casey, OCSO (Petersham, MA: St. Bede's Publications, 2005) 520 pp., ISBN 1-879007-47-9.
The title may not be a grabber, but any monastic who has been around for a few years can recognize the tongue-in-cheek truth of it immediately. The table of contents looks like a promising list of delicious articles; the foreword offers an enticing list of substantial resources used in the notes. The opening chapter offers the promise of explaining that risky title with an article written in 2002 -- not bad, after all this is a 2005 publication. But whoa!
Leafing to the next chapter you find that it was written in 1977 and the one after that in 1972! Suddenly that table of contents doesn't look so promising. Fear not, little flock! This collection of some of Michael Casey's articles covering a 30-year span is not a musty file-drawer emptying into a book for a quick sale, but a well-planned valuable resource. The selected articles, though perhaps written at the time for a specific audience or occasion, transcend those boundaries for the modern reader simply by the thrust and worth of the content itself.
The book is divided into five main sections: "The Art of Interpreting the Rule," "The Benedictine Tradition," The Benedictine Community," "Monastic Formation," and the Epilogue, "The Monk in the Modern World." The style and content of the articles are typical Casey: in delicate balance of prescriptive/descriptive, scholarly/livable, simply reasonable/astutely thought-provoking. In that sense, the dates mean nothing because whether yesterday, today or tomorrow there is fresh nourishment in the pages.
We footnote addicts have no support groups to whom we must answer and can thoroughly indulge ourselves here. What greater luxury is there than finding a footnote referring to an article by the author, saying, "Hmm, I'd sure like to read that," and leafing a few pages to find just what you wanted! Many of the footnotes are annotated, enriching the articles even more. The one small glitch with the book is that the pagination in the table of contents is off a bit, but that's a small matter.
Like everyone, I have my own way of ranking books and mine has nothing to do with stars and everything to do with placement. The lowest is, I admit, I pass the book on to others with "I hope you get more out of this than I did." On the next rung, I give it to someone with a more positive comment. A higher climb is that, if the book is really good, I put it in our monastic library if we don't have copy. Better than that is that if it is really good, I keep the copy to pass around myself and merely recommend we purchase a copy for the library. My highest praise for a book is that it goes on my shelf to stay within easy reach because I know I am going to keep reaching for it. This is one of those books.
--Renée Branigan, OSB
The Contribution of Monastic Life to the Church and the World: Essays
in Celebration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of Mount Saviour Monastery, edited by Martin
Boler and Anthony J. Cernera (Fairfield, CT:
Sacred Heart University Press,
2006) 199 pp.
A look at the list of authors for this celebratory series of essays hints immediately that the contents will be wide-ranging and substantial. The presentations at Mount Saviour in Pine City, NY, were given by Martin Boler, OSB, David Burrell, CSC, Anthony Cernera, Mary Collins, OSB, Camille D'Arienzo, RSM, Jeremy Driscoll, OSB, Charles Dumont, OCSO, Frank Griswold, Marie Julianne Farrington, SSMN, Timothy Kelly, OSB, Jerome Kodell, OSB, Gottfried Burkhard Neunheuser, OSB and John T. Noonan, and J. Noonan, Jr. Their subjects range from the historical roots of the community, to Benedictine life and spirituality, to implications of monasticism for the Church and the world. Several pages of pictures also chronicle the life of this unique community.
Journey in a Holy Land: A Spiritual Journal, by M. Basil Pennington, OCSO (Brewster, MA: Paraclete, 2006) 178 pp. This book is merely the entries, mostly brief, from the author's final trip to the Holy Land. If one is traveling there and wants to read about another's impressions, or one is particularly attracted to Father Basil's writings, the book will have interest. This book is billed as the late writer's last book, but judging from the "output" of other deceased spiritual writers, such as Merton and Nouwen, it may be the last book he wrote, but perhaps not the last book he'll have published.
As usual, the Newsletter has received a good number of books on monastic spirituality over the past several months. Many diverse people continue to find many diverse things to say about the same basic principles. The Slow-Release Miracle: A Spirituality for a Lifetime (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 2006, 142 pages, $14.95) is by Andrew Nugent OSB, prior of Glenstal Abbey in Ireland. It is an uneven collection of reflections, some from his days as headmaster of what is described on the cover as a "prestigious boys' school in Africa," which might explain what appears to be a romanticized view of the African people in parts of the book. Some of the chapters are specifically Benedictine in theme; others address more general topics of spirituality.
Another book is not strictly Benedictine, but certainly nods reverentially towards it. At Home in the World: A Rule of Life for the Rest of Us is the work of Margaret Guenther (New York: Seabury Books, 2006, 184 pages, $16). The noted writer on spirituality and spiritual direction does a good job of identifying what a "rule" is and isn't, and why structures and asceticism are crucial for everyone. She then focuses on such elements as family/community, hospitality, work, solitude and many others, and challenges the reader to address each of these. Each chapter is both spiritually rich and down-to-earth, and has a few questions at the end to help the reader both think about the issue and think about action. This might be a better book for oblates than some of the recent ones which have been billed as specifically for them because it holds a broader, less romanticized view of any lay person in the real world.
A unique new perspective will be that of Christopher Jamison, Abbot of Worth Abbey in England. His book Finding Sanctuary: Monastic Steps for Everyday Life, follows on his experience of hosting the five men in the BBC reality TV series The Monastery. The book is published in the US by Liturgical Press (Collegeville, MN: 2006, 182 pages, $19.95). He divides his reflections into several "monastic steps" starting with such concrete things as busyness and silence, and progressing to spirituality and hope. Just as these different realities affected the participants in the TV series, the author suggests the importance of their effects in every life. He is clear, practical and conversational in his writing as he must have been in the TV series, which resulted in hundreds of requests for retreats from some of the three million viewers of the shows.
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