Category Archives: ISSUE 2
The step towards the ultimate goal of life always requires a very high act of faith and abandonment that overcomes all despair, and one never crosses the threshold of existence without the tears of the original struggle for survival.
My point is simply to show the marvelous and providential, and you might say improbable intersection of lives, in this case, Norbert Sauvage of Belgium, Elena Gullini of Rome, and Maria Sagheddu of Dorgali, an intersection that shaped the monastic conscience of each and even shaped their particular form of Cistercian holiness.
After over eight hundred years of Cistercian monasticism, the authentic Cistercian patrimony had to be rediscovered only in the middle of the twentieth century . . . and it is Le Bail and the monks of Scourmont we have to thank for that retrieval of sources.
Today, too, we are heading toward some island.
After a journey of over forty years, we are now hoisting fresh sails toward a new island—toward hope.
What connects us with the other is the spirit of being together, the spirit of respect for others. We can appreciate each other’s presence.
We see the Abbey of Tre Fontane along Via Laurentina in Rome as a place of hope. Not only is it a jubilee church, but the male monastic community of the abbey and a small group of sisters in the adjoining house, which stands next to the Church of the Martyrdom of St. Paul, are also developing a life within it.
In his great novel The Great Divorce,C. S. Lewis elucidates that condemnation does not happen through circumstances, feelings, or ideas, but rather through the choices one makes on one’s journey.
What is hope? Is it the feeling of getting away scot-free [as the atheists and hedonists do]? No, St. Bernard underscores, hope is trust in achieving eternal salvation.
Among those crucified, some children looked to be as old as I was—specifically, the youngest one, Louis Ibaragi, was only twelve years old. Yet, despite their suffering, all the people on the crosses seemed filled with joy as they looked up at Heaven, even as they were dying.
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