PLEASE forgive the late appearance of this edition, I am afraid pressure of work during October prevented me from getting it out then, but an advantage of being late means that we are able to include information about the Pre-convention Papers for the 2000 American Benedictine Academy.

Kathleen Norris who you may remember had been due to visit Douai last March but was prevented by her husband’s illness, is now expected in February 2000. She is coming to Britain to promote the publication by Lion Books of her latest work ‘Amazing Grace’, and the paper back edition of ‘The Cloister Walk’ which has deservedly had great success in the hard back edition. If you have not read it yet, you really should. We hope as many oblates as possible will come to meet Kathleen Norris and to hear her read from her books.

Since the last number of ‘Douai Oblate’ we held a successful retreat in July, during which, on the 7th, Joy Nye and Jim O’Mara made their final oblation and Mary Macauley, Oliver Mead and Katherine Ryan were received as oblate novices. Since then Michael Blackburn, a former pupil of Douai School and a long-time friend and visitor of Douai became an oblate novice on October 5. Michael had intended to come for the July retreat, but was prevented by reason of health. Happily he is now restored to full health.

In the monastic community, the two postulants, Christopher Greener and Andrew Grattan become novices in August, and Peter Hill joined us as a postulant in September.

Last week, Henry Haig, the artist, installed twelve stained glass windows in the nave of the Abbey Church. The two in the narthex are, on the south, a war memorial to the pupils of Douai School who died in the two World Wars and, on the north, a commemoration of all those people who have contributed to the building of the Abbey Church. The ten around the nave are designed to draw the eye forward to the altar. These windows will be blessed at Mass on the feast of our patron, St Edmund, Saturday November 20 at 11.30am. All oblates will be very welcome. Also last week the organ case around the pedal pipes was completed, which helps blend and enrich the sound.

THE American Benedictine Academy has held a convention every two years for the past fifty years, at which papers on issues of monastic theology and history have been read and discussed. At first membership was limited to monks and nuns, in practice if not in theory, but in recent years more and more oblates have been involved. The Convention for the year 2000 entitled The Good News of Monastic Life: Reading the Signs of the Times will be held at St Meinrad in August. Of the sixteen papers, no fewer than eight, that is half, are by oblates. and only seven are by monastics, the remaining paper being by someone who is neither monastic nor oblate.

This shows two things, that the number of oblates is growing and that they are becoming an increasingly important part of the Benedictine family. All these papers are recommended reading for oblates as well as for monastics. If you do not have internet availablity, I am sure we can make downloaded copies available to you.

The relationships of Oblates and the Home Community is the subject of several papers. Phyllis K Thompson OblSB, of St Peter’s Abbey in Muenster, Saskatchewan in Canada in a paper entitled Oblates: Gifts from Within has examined how she faces this question, now that circumstances have forced her to move home from close to the monastery to a more distant location. She compares the monastics to the ‘meat and potatoes’ and the oblates to ‘herbs and spices’. She writes: "There is a symbiotic relationship between the essential ingredients in a recipe and the spices and herbs that enhance the flavour. This should be so between monastics and oblates. As an issue, this must be looked at as one considers the average age of the members in most monastic houses, as the number of candidates to monastic houses lessens, while the number of lay people honourably searching for a deeper spiritual life increases, and finally, as monasteries see the need to draw on non-monastics in increasing numbers if those monasteries wish to maintain many or all of their apostolates. Central to this is whether there is a willingness on the part of both monastics and oblates to be open and vulnerable to each other, so that the charisms of each group benefit the other and more importantly so that the essence of Benedictinism can reach beyond even the oblates: through them to the rest of the non-monastic world."

"This may well be a time for many monasteries to recall one of the reasons why Benedictinism has not just survived, but thrived for 1500 years: its monastics’ ability in striving to be obedient to the need to move forward even as one stays in place and to risk the change necessary for growth, in striving to witness to the tension between traditional values and contemporary concerns, ideas, and in seeking to find a workable meld of the two. In paraphrasing 1 Tim 4, this is a time for Benedictine monastics to recall Jean Pierre de Caussade’s ‘sacrament of the present moment’ and ask whether oblates are elements essential to celebrate that sacrament today."

Norvene Vest OblOSB, of St Andrew’s, Valyermo, whose books will be familiar, includes a paper that she presented to the Oblate Directors’ Meeting in July entitled Monastics and Oblates: Mutual Blessings

"The call which emerges from the unique Benedictine commitment to witness and conversatio is to be people not of perfection, but ones in progress. Our call is not to tranquility, but to willingness to be sorely tried and passionately caring. Our call is not to certainty, and not even to ‘success’, but rather to be foolish for Christ, for we are a people willing to rely (or at least seeking to rely) on the living God for yesterday, today, and tomorrow. And that in itself is a glorious witness to the world in which we live.

I am suggesting that monastics and oblates can be mutual blessings, not just to provide mutual support and encouragement, though that is certainly important. But the mutual blessings may also be a shared vocation to help one another in the crucial task God gives to Benedictines in this time: that together, monastics and oblates are to be a witness and challenge to our society as a whole. By our willingness to be open to and transformed by the living God, we model for our society, the essential work of moving into the next millennium with health and wisdom."

Many of the papers deal with the internet and its importance for the modern world, not least for Christian mission and for monasticism. Oblate of St John’s Minnesota, Peg Gawne-Mark OblSB in a paper called The Good News of Monastic Life: Reading the Signs of the Times writes, "As an Oblate monastic today, the good news of monastic life is ‘COMMUNITY IS POSSIBLE’".

"One does not live in a vacuum. Community is a life-giving necessity. From the very time we are born, we are thrust into a community. Once experienced, we continue to seek it. Community is a longing of the heart. We seek it with, and through, and along with our fellow monastics. It is only in a committed community that one is truly free to really be oneself.

This necessity called community is possible both inside and outside the monastic enclosure. As an Oblate who lives a three hour drive from the monastery where I am affiliated, one of things I need to do is re-vision how I have community with my fellow monastics. ....

While not always able to join the larger community for the funeral celebrations of life or the seasonal celebrations, I am able to have ready access to Father Abbot’s homily on-line. The Abbey maintains a web page, which posts the homilies. These provide me lectio material otherwise unavailable to me.

Computers are definitely a sign of the times. The monastic challenge in the millennium will be to discern how to harness them for the good of the community and the individual."

Several other papers also deal with the importance of the internet. Br Jerome Leo Hughes OSB of St Mary’s Monastery, Pertersham, MA sees the importance of the web in handing on the monastic tradition, "The gift of monastic good news is far too precious to risk its loss while waiting in obstinacy for them to come to us. A vast new territory has opened to us, one we would be wise to cultivate. We dare not take the chance — all too real in some venues — of becoming like Shakers, best remembered for chairs and furniture, with the bulk of their in-house wisdom lost for ever." The internet is as all-important for keeping alive the monastic tradition as it is for Christian Mission.

Other topics covered in these papers include The Cursing Psalms, Lectio Divina, Ecumenical Monasticism.

Oblate Studies Programme

SR Dolores Dowling OSB has created a studies programme for Oblates on the Internet. There are nine conferences and a bibliography. There is a invitation to e-mail her with questions and comments, so the course is interactive.

Essential Monastic Wisdom Writings on the Contemplative Life by Hugh Feiss OSB

foreword by Kathleen Norris

HarperSanFrancisco £14.99

Christian monasticism has been around since the third century, and the Benedictine tradition since the sixth, so there is quite a wealth of wisdom contained in the writings of monastic authors. Today more and more lay people are turning to monastic spirituality, the number of oblates is increasing rapidly. However most people have neither the time nor the resources to be able to tap into this treasury, but here in one volume Fr Hugh Feiss OSB has made available the essential wisdom of many of these monastic teachers.

Hugh Feiss OSB is the Oblate Director of Ascension Monastery, Idaho, formerly he was librarian at Mount Angel, the founding abbey of Ascension. He is also the director of the Benedictine Distance Learning Programme. This book is written primarily for those who are not monks, but who wish to acquire more monastic wisdom. He has oblates in mind, and others who are interested in monasticism.

There are eighteen chapters dealing with various monastic charisms, beginning with ‘Prayer’ ‘Reading’ and journeying through ‘Humility’ ‘Discernment’ ‘Stability’ and the like and ending with ‘Love’. Each chapter contains a short essay on the particular charism or virtue which is followed by pertinent quotations from the Rule of St Benedict and the corpus of monastic literature from the Desert Mothers and Fathers, and Pachomius to contempories, Joan Chittister and Esther de Waal and including such historical figures as St Wulfstan of Worcester, Hildegard of Bingen and Jean Mabillon.

Fr Hugh has a strong conviction that the ‘cloister of the monastery is not primarily a barrier but a meeting place where monks and others can encourage one another on the journey to God and human wholeness’. In this book he expounds those monastic features that would be valuble for people living in the world today. St Benedict wrote his little rule before the splits of Christendom, and monastic wisdom transcends these divisions.

Kathleen Norris is her introduction points out that monastic spirituality is not a romantic venture, but a demanding daily practice. Monastic wisdom can enable people today to live in harmony and peace with themselves, their neighbours, and creation.