Amen: This Word is Full of Mystery
I referred to this text of Mother Mectilde de Bar in yesterday’s homily. It is taken from Le véritable esprit [The True Spirit], the book...
Saint Joseph and Mother Mectilde
Last year I translated the account of Saint Joseph’s apparition to Mother Mectilde de Bar on 19 March 1653. Mother Mectilde, very much like her...
The Desert of the Most Holy Sacrament
This painting of Christ in the wilderness is the work of Alessandro Bonvicino (1498–1554), know as the Moretto da Brescia. It is found in the...
More About Lectio Divina
I realized, after I spoke to the fine priests of the Archdiocese of Armagh on Monday evening last, that there was much more that I...
To be nothing and to await all from God
This text of Mother Mectilde is very fitting for today’s feast of Saint John Cassian. My own commentary is in italics. The image of Mother...
Tunc dixit: Ecce venio
CHAPTER XXXIII. Whether Monks Ought to Have Anything of Their Own 11 Mar. 11 July. 10 Nov. The vice of private ownership is above all...
Let their healing redound to the glory of God
People burdened with sufferings of all sorts often come to the monastery to ask for our prayers. I often recommend enrolling the sick, the burdened,...
In pace locus eius
Peace Within In writing this morning to a young man, a friend of the priory, I was inspired to translate for him a text of...
Recognise the gift of God
On 28 April, 1695, Mother Mectilde, being at the customary recreation of a Thursday evening, began, all of a sudden, to speak to her daughters,...
Lose yourself in His adorable, divine immensity
Oh, I love to reflect on the presence of God in a soul! To think that we are immersed in God, that we are in...
Coming to fulfil what is written of me
The Annunciation in the Mectildian Jubilee Year By a wonderful and mysterious disposition of Divine Providence, Mother Mectilde de Bar received permission for the first...
The only spotless priest without sin
The Proper Mass of the Feast of Reparation for Offenses Committed Against the Most Holy Sacrament (Thursday after Sexagesima) contains the following beautiful Preface: It...
Neither divine consolation nor human
“The bother and troubles that your charge give you are the bother and troubles of obedience. If you bear them with a little bit of...
Into the silence of God
The Mectildian Jubilee Year (1614–2014) continues to provide me with an opportunity to share something of the immense treasure of her spiritual doctrine with the...
The Way of the Pilgrim
Pilgrimage and Enclosure When one thinks of the Benedictine ideal, one imagines monks behind their enclosure walls, buried deep in a kind of unshakeable stability....
One must never fear to give Mary too much
I continue today my translation of Mother Mectilde’s text on true devotion to the Blessed Virgin. She wrote this text sometime during her Benedictine noviciate...
One must begin with the Mother
Your Life is Hid with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3) The Annonciades, having been obliged to flee their monastery in Bruyères, found a compassionate welcome...
I lost myself in Him
Catherine de Bar’s Mysterious Prophetic Dream Some time after her religious profession in 1633, and before the destruction of the monastery of Bruyères in 1635,...
Led on by God’s Providence
In Doubt Go to Mary Catherine de Bar, now Sister Saint John the Evangelist, novice in the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Annonciade,...
Vocation, Depression, Crisis, and Grace Through Mary
A Girl Grieved by Offenses against God In 1629 Catherine de Bar is going on fifteen years of age. With the Thirty Years War...