Books in the Monastic Wisdom Series series

A Guide to Monastic Profession

"Lovers of the Place" weaves together allegory, narrative, and poetic intuition, gathering images and insights around an experience of conversion to the monastic way of humility. Through his insight and experience, Abbot Kline invites all the baptized to a participation in the monastic charism now loose in the Church at large.

The Monastic Way for Today

"A personal journal seeing language as a vital medium through which the divine is made present to us and which serves to reflect the truth and occasionally mask it. This book also includes an essay that looks at certain features common to myth, fairy tale, lore, and Scripture"--

Monastic Essays

This work was originally published in French as A L'Ecole de la Contemplation, A Lethielleux 2004.

On the Mystery of Music

"Recounts the ways in which monks actively seek God in all the practices and places of the monastic life and describes the gradual growth and transformation from novice to young solemnly professed to elder monk"--

Thomas Merton's deep roots in his own Cistercian tradition are on display in the two sets of conferences on the early days of the Order included in the present volume. The first surveys the relevant monastic background that led up to the foundation of the Abbey of Cîteaux in 1098 and goes on to consider the contributions of each of the first three abbots of the "New Monastery" that would become the epicenter of the most dynamic religious movement of the early twelfth century. The second set investigates the arc of medieval Cistercian history in the two centuries following the death of Saint Bernard, in which the Order moves from being ahead of its time, in its formative stages, to being representative of its time in its most powerful and influential phase, to becoming regressive with the rise of new religious currents that begin to flow in the thirteenth century. Merton stresses the need to respect the complexity of the actual lived reality of Cistercian life during this period, to "beware of easy generalizations" and instead consider the full range of factual data. The result is a richly nuanced picture of the development of early Cistercian life and thought that serves as a fitting concluding volume to the series of Merton's novitiate conferences providing a thorough "Initiation into the Monastic Tradition."

Father Matthew Kelty was an especially beloved monk at the historic Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. Perhaps best known as Thomas Merton's colleague and confessor in the year prior to Merton's death, Father Matthew was also an enormously gifted spiritual writer in his own right, one whose homilies at Gethsemani attracted a wide following. This is the first book-length study of Matthew Kelty's life in relation to his spiritual writings and his profound reflections on the virtues of the monastic life in the modern age.

A Spiritual Biography of Blessed Rafael Arnaiz Baron

As master of novices for ten years (1955-1965) at the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky, Thomas Merton was responsible for the spiritual formation of young men preparing for monastic profession. In this volume, three related sets of Merton's conferences on ancient and contemporary documents governing the lives of the monks are published for the first time:¿ on the Carta Caritatis, or Charter of Charity, the foundational document of the Order of Cîteaux¿ on the Consuetudines, the twelfth-century collection of customs and regulations of the Order¿ on the twentieth-century Constitutions of the Order, the basic rules by which Merton and his students actually lived at the time These conferences form an essential part of the overall picture of Cistercian monastic life that Merton provided as part of his project of "initiation into the monastic tradition" that is evident in the broad variety of courses that he put together and taught over the period of his mastership.As Abbot John Eudes Bamberger, OCSO, himself a former student of Merton, notes in his preface to this volume, "The texts presented in this present book eventually gave rise to the Cistercian way of spiritual living that continues to contribute to the Church's witness in this new millennium. This publication is a witness to the process of transformation that ensures the continuity of the Catholic monastic tradition that witnesses to the God who, as Saint Augustine observed, is 'ever old and ever new.'"

Initiation into the Monastic Tradition

Prophet of Renewal

The Tibhirine Journal of a Martyr Monk (1993-1996)

The Mission and Transmission of Monasticism

Pastoral Care of Novices

Offers an essay on the nature of humility that revisions this fundamental Christian virtue away from the misunderstandings of both the scholastic tradition and its modern counterparts to locate humility in the ancient sources of the monastic tradition.

Reflections for Novices

A Cistercian Retreat