Cistercian Founders 26 Jan 2012

Sent: Thursday, 26 January 2012
Subject: Founders' Sermon - Fr. Mark 

Sts Robert, Alberic and Stephen                                 Chapter Sermon, 2012

• What is it that makes us celebrate our founders?  They lived in a very different age and time from our own.  Much of their style of living seems worlds away from what we do today. 
• But if history is anything to go by, it is amazing how much those in the past can still teach us how to live and how to cope with the vagaries and problems of life, whatever the age we happen to be in.
• Robert, Alberic and Stephen were like any other monks who were seeking to answer their call to seek God in a monastery.  Monastic life has not changed all that much in the basics of community living, where there is a spirit of silence and a fair modicum of solitude even as they live together.  There was an obvious structure to their day, centred as it was on the common work of God in choir.  The day was designed for them by creating a balance between their prayer, reading and work.  Because of their practical personal needs, there had to be a common awareness of the requirements of each other so that they had sufficient time to pray, to read or study. It was important that everyone respected that time for personal silence and the space for prayer and silence.
• It is not always easy to find one’s own balance within the one set up for the whole community.  It is also difficult to continue keeping such balance with the passage of time.  That is why communities need from time to time to reassess how they live their monastic life.
• What led Robert, Alberic, Stephen and some of the members of their community to uproot themselves from Molesme and go to the wilderness of Citeaux was their dissatisfaction with their practice of the Rule of St Benedict. Recent historical studies show that there were human elements in our founders which showed a tendency ― perhaps an over-tendency ― to move on to new fields in their zeal to seek God.  Who is to be sure what is a genuine urging of the Spirit to make a radical move from their present circumstances and what may be, as is mostly the case, a temptation to be ignored.  Novices routinely seek something ‘higher’ or ‘more spiritual’, like going to join the Carthusian.  The same can be true of monks who have lived for a number of years in the monastery.  In a time of renewal there are many examples when experiments failed to achieve anything worthwhile.  That was the case in so many instances in the ‘60s. 
• But renewal within monasteries as well as attempting to set up new foundations somewhere else has been successful.  The 11^th century saw much new life in many monasteries right across the board.  This period was an era of renewal when fledgling attempts at setting up new religious communities where people could go to find God in a more radical way took root and flourished.  Citeaux was one of these.  Through the courageous efforts of Robert, Alberic and Stephen and their other companions the Cistercian form of monastic life was established and promoted.  There have of course been other renewals since then.  Each time the new reform has produced new growth and a more vibrant monastic life.
• Perhaps celebrating the feast of our founders is a good opportunity to take a long look at what we had embarked on when we first entered the monastery and how we have journeyed over the years since then.  Does the vision and willingness of Robert, Alberic and Stephen and the other Cistercians who later joined them in the Order still shine as clear for us today?  Would we benefit from going back to look at what they had achieved in their renewal?  Would some of their innovations still be of benefit to us in our own personal lives?  It is by such simple steps that we can go forward and grow in our vocation.  Such attempts help to find and put on Christ and help us to truly seek God.