Vocation Discernment Retreat at Brownshill

Last weekend, we had the joy of welcoming several young men and women wishing to explore God’s call in their life. The weekend was organised by the Vocations Team of the Diocese of Clifton and YouCAN. The weekend was a great success, with thought-provoking talks by several speakers on listening, discerning and responding to the Lord’s invitation and time for the participants to pray and socialise.

Thank you to all who came!

If you are a single man or woman, aged between 18-35, and want to know more about monastic life, come along to our “Seeking God” Retreat in June (more info on our programme page).

Retreat Programme, Lent and Easter and Summer

Lent will soon be upon us and our Lent Retreat this year will be on the theme “Prophet, Priest and King”. It will be over the first weekend in Lent and there are still places available. See the programme page for more details.

We look forward to welcoming guests to share with us the great liturgies of the Easter Triduum from 5th to 10th April.

You may have seen some of the other events on offer on our programme page. You may have noticed that one of them clashed with a royal event. Yes, King Charles III chose the weekend of our “Prayer for Beginners” retreat for his coronation! Our weekend “Opening the Door to Encounter: Prayer for Beginners” will now be held between 16th and 18th June (now postponed to August/September).

There will be also a Lent Quiet Day on March 9th , and opportunities for those exploring a vocation to religious life in March and in June.

There will be Quiet Days in April, May and June on dates to be confirmed. Do watch this space!

Week of prayer for Christian Unity

Today marks the end of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, on the theme of Be-Longing: Praying for Unity amidst Injustice. Every year, this week helps us to focus our prayer on the unity of the Body of Christ.

For many years, it has also been the opportunity to gather together with our brothers and sisters of Mucknell, at either of our monasteries. The Society of the Salutation of Mary the Virgin at Mucknell Abbey is an Anglican Benedictine community of monks and nuns based in Worcestershire.

On Sunday January 22nd then, we had the joy of going to Mucknell.

The community treated us to a sumptuous tea before we all went to pray Vespers together in their lovely church. A big thank you to Abbot Thomas and the whole community for their warm welcome and hospitality.

Happy Christmas

The community at Brownshill wishes you all great……

Christmas Newsletter 2022

What a year it has been: three prime ministers; violence in many places, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which affects our Sisters in Goma; war in Europe; the escalating climate crisis; frightening price rises. The year has been shaped too, by the Church’s “Journeying Together” Synod, an exercise in listening and discerning as the People of God, where the Holy Spirit is leading us. How much we need the silence and hope of Advent and the faith, hope and love that come to us in Christ at his birth in Bethlehem.

For our community it was a year marked by departures and new beginnings, a year of many “returns”. However, Sr. Maria did not return, but remained as our Prioress after our General Chapter, a decision with which we are delighted. Sr. Mary Philippa has been particularly pleased to return to a more full-time role as guestmistress, now that we are able to offer hospitality almost as we did before the pandemic. Sr. Michelle Marie returns to the kitchen whenever extra help is needed or she has a spare half hour to peel apples - we were given generous quantities of apples this autumn and our own little tree produced some delicious fruit early in the season.

At the end of 2021 COVID was still dictating and orchestrating many aspects of our lives. Nevertheless, we were able to receive some guests for Christmas, which was a great joy. They used the new video-link to the conference room from Chapel to join the community at times of prayer.

The celebration of the Paschal Triduum is always the highlight of our year, and it was a real joy to be able to offer hospitality to 12 guests after two Easters with an empty guesthouse. It was rather poignant, as it was Father Peter Craddy’s last celebration of the Paschal Triduum as our Chaplain. In Easter week he returned home to Mount St. Bernard Abbey in Leicestershire after nearly 17 years with the Bernardines. We are extremely grateful to him and to his community for his generous service, his many spiritual and practical gifts, his monastic wisdom, all the faith and love he devoted to help to build up our Monastery. He made a valuable contribution too, to the life of the Diocese of Clifton. Bishop Declan Lang presided at a Mass of thanksgiving for Fr. Peter on March 22nd and several priests of the Diocese came to concelebrate and to say farewell to their brother priest. Upon his return to Mount St. Bernard Abbey his brother monks promptly elected him to be their new superior! This led to another return.

Fr. Peter was back at Brownshill in late May when the superiors of the Cistercian communities of the Region of the Isles met here for some days of pastoral sharing. Among them was Sr. Elizabeth Mary, a few days after her election as Prioress General of our Order, and Dom Bernardus Peeters OCSO, the new Abbot General of his Order.

Our new Chaplain is Fr. Ted Wildsmith, a Missionary of Africa. He made contact and asked to come and meet Sr. Maria and the community when he was nearby, visiting relatives in Bristol. It turns out that Fr. Ted has numerous relatives and friends in the area, including a cousin in the village! We are very grateful to have Mass each day, and Fr. Ted has made friends quickly among those who come to Mass here on a Sunday. We wish him well in his new ministry as Chaplain to a monastic community after his decades of service as a missionary in West Africa.

Fr. Ted returns to his own community in London for 6 days each month, and we thank all the priests who have come to supply cover in his absence. Among them was Fr. Joseph Whisstock, who came in September, giving Sr. Maria the twin pleasures of having a priest to say Mass and her brother’s company to enjoy.

Our General Chapter of 2022 was like no other. Normally Sisters from each community of the Order meet at our Generalate House in Lille, France. In 2022 the capitulants stayed at home and met virtually, between 8 am and 12 noon GMT –afternoon meetings were impossible because for our Sisters in VietNam it would have been the middle of the night! Normally the process of electing the Prioress General and the four members of her Council takes a few days. In 2022 it took 4 months! Elections were by postal vote from our 6 communities on 3 continents, and 4 of the five elections required a second round of voting. One other, more welcome, change was that the whole Order participated in two preliminary conferences, given by Dom Mauro Guiseppe, Abbot General of the OCist. Order. This was very enriching and it brought us together in a way that we could not have foreseen at the last General Chapter in 2014. A most welcome return resulting from the General Chapter, was that of Sr. Mary Helen Jackson to England after 14 years as Prioress General. She is now Prioress of the Monastery of Our Lady of Hyning in Lancashire.

Another return was that of each member of the community to the GP’s surgery 2 or 3 times over the course of the year to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Unfortunately, this did not make us totally immune and in June we succumbed to the virus. No one of us was seriously ill, but we did have to close the guesthouse and cancel bookings. Sr. Maria was not able to go to Hyning, as planned, to help out while Sr. Elizabeth Mary made her first visit to France as Prioress General to begin to settle in.

A sad return for us, was that of Sr. Mary Gabriel (Julia Schroeder) to Germany at the end of August. She discerned that the Bernardine life, and indeed religious life, is not what God has planned for her. The decision came after months of serious reflection. As she left us, she was looking forward to being closer to her family and using her professional skills in catering and house-management in a children’s home. We thank Julia for all that she contributed to our community and to our Order, and we know that you would like to join us in wishing her every blessing in her new life.

The biggest, and most final return was that of Sr. Mary Lucy to the Lord, whom she served so faithfully for 65 years as a Bernardine. She had been increasingly frail, but the end was very rapid, and somehow almost perfectly co-ordinated and timed. Sr. Elizabeth Mary, by September resident in Lille, was visiting England with two French Sisters, who are part of our community in VietNam. One of them, Sr. Christine Marie, made profession with Sr. Mary Lucy and Sr. Mary Anthony Levi. Sr. Mary Lucy found photographs of their profession to show to us just days before she was taken ill during the night of 28th September. She died between Lauds and Mass on Saturday 1st October, surrounded by her Bernardine Sisters. Sr. Mary Lucy knew what she wanted. She wanted to die at home and she never liked to make a fuss. The community is very grateful for the excellent care she received from her GP and District Nurses, and to each one who sent messages of condolence and shared memories of her.

Sr. Mary Lucy was greatly loved, and it was no surprise that so many people came to her funeral on 20th October. Three generations of her family were represented and they almost filled our Chapel. Fortunately, the video-link to the conference room allowed us to double the number of people at her Requiem Mass. Bishop Declan presided and Fr. Peter gave the homily, despite being prevented, at the last minute, from coming in person. Sr. Mary Philippa read out his text. Most of the Brownshill community with Sr. Elizabeth Mary, as well as Sr. Mary Lucy’s nieces Melda and Maura, great nephew James and great nephew Steven with his family, travelled to Hyning for the burial in our cemetery on Friday 21st October. They were the first guests in Hyning’s newly refurbished guesthouse. Several members of Sr. Mary Lucy’s family had enjoyed visits to Brownshill earlier in the year, which gives us all much comfort.

Sr. Mary Lucy was the second former Prioress General of our Order to die in 2022. On February 16th Sr. Josephine Mary died of the cancer, with which she had lived so bravely for 5 years. Sr. Michelle Marie who had known her since childhood, Sr. Mary Philippa, who was her companion in novitiate days, and Sr. Maria, who had Sr. Josephine Mary as her first novice mistress, and later served as her Assistant for 12 years, with Sr. Mary Gabriel, for whom Sr. Josephine Mary was an important influence in her Bernardine life, went to Hyning for her funeral. The whole Order mourns the loss of this most gifted and wise Sister, who served as Prioress General for 18 years. She was a member of the General Chapter of 2022 and gave valuable contributions in pre-Chapter meetings. Her presence was greatly missed at the Chapter itself.

Our first in-person community retreat since 2019 began on Ash Wednesday. This was only 2 days after Sr. Josephine Mary’s funeral. The experience of her illness and death coloured the retreat, especially for our Sisters from Hyning, who had shared those last months and weeks with her. Fr. Luke Jolly OSB, who gave the retreat, was sensitive to this and gave a series of insightful and spiritually nourishing talks.

Fr. Luke is a monk of Worth Abbey in Sussex, which was instrumental in the beginnings of the Wellspring Community in Brighton. Two women, who are considering making a commitment as consecrated members of the Wellspring Community, had been asked by their Bishop to spend a year of formation with a contemplative, monastic community. Thus, Jo Gilbert and MaryAnn Enriquez went to live at Hyning in June 2021. Jo spent the last four months of this formation at Brownshill, beginning at the time of our annual retreat. We appreciated her prayerful, practical and pleasant presence among us. At the end of June she returned to Brighton. Now we look forward to welcoming her back and continuing our association with Wellspring.

Unfortunately, Sr. Audrey had to go to France as the community retreat began, in order to renew her passport. Appointments for renewals in England were impossible to obtain before her passport expired. It seemed best for her to be in France, to speed up the process. However, what should have been a 3 week wait turned into six weeks, because her first application got lost. It is not only UK bureaucracy that goes awry! Our community of Notre Dame de la Plaine in Lille appreciated her lively and generous spirit and got her involved in activities with groups of young people.

Sr. Mary Philippa and Sr. Audrey together had planned a Lent retreat for our guests. Being in a different country was not going to stop Sr. Audrey from playing her part. She joined the participants to give her input by Zoom! Sr. Audrey was back with us just in time for the Paschal Triduum.

A very welcome return was that of in-person “Junior courses” for monks and nuns in initial formation. In October Sr. Audrey went to Roscrea Abbey in Ireland for a week-long course given by Margaret Daley Denton, entitled “Listening with the Ear of an Earth-Caring Heart: Reading the Gospel of St. John in the Context of the Ecological Crisis”. It was transferred at the last minute from Mellifont Abbey due to an outbreak of COVID in that community. These occasions provide an opportunity to witness the life of a different Cistercian community, to study and reflect with others at a similar stage in their monastic life, and to relax together.

Meanwhile Sr. Hilda was in Hertfordshire at the conference of the Association of Provincial Bursars, enjoying the opportunity to meet other Religious bursars and learn about current trends and pit-falls in finance and administration.  

We celebrated with our community in Goma at the solemn professions of Sisters Marie Cecile and Marie Denise on the feast of St. Benedict (11th July) and with our community in Bafor in Burkina Faso at the first profession of Sister Lucie on 8th September.

Encouraging and supporting those in initial formation, and those who are discerning a vocation, is very important for us and for the Church. Sr. Maria is active in vocations ministry. She is a member of the Diocesan Vocations Group, and she stays in touch with national initiatives. We can be sure that Sr. Mary Lucy, who has always prayed particularly hard for Bernardine vocations, will be continuing these efforts in heaven.

Our Oblates enjoyed days of formation and fellowship at Brownshill in May and October. New enquiries about being a Bernardine Oblate keep Sr. Catherine pleasantly occupied. Sr. Catherine had visits also from her sisters and their children and grandchildren. In November she met the youngest member of the family for the first time, 1-year old Heather, with big brother Joel, now 3. Earlier in the year, nephew David brought his fiancée Sarah to meet auntie Catherine. They are to be married in the Holy Land in January 2023. We wish them every blessing.

Each year Sisters at Brownshill and Hyning are allocated a class of “prayer partners” from St. Bernard’s Preparatory School in Slough, which was run by the Bernardines until 2019. Letters and news are exchanged throughout the year. On 27th May the oldest pupils spent a day at the Monastery, to find out more about our life and to meet the Sisters. We were particularly pleased to welcome the new headteacher, Mrs Asha Verma, whose induction Mass Sr. Maria attended on 5th May 2022.

At the beginning of this newsletter we mentioned the Synodal Process, “Journeying Together”, in which we have tried to play our part. We contributed to the submission of the Conference for Religious and Sr. Maria facilitated a meeting of our regular Mass-attenders, for them to share their joys and sorrows, and to feed into the Diocesan report. Sr. Hilda and Sr. Audrey went to Clifton Cathedral for the launch of the diocesan report, which Bishop Declan read out in a liturgical celebration.

In September Sr. Maria and Sr. Michelle Marie went by double decker bus to Clifton Cathedral. Fr. Gary Brassington, Parish Priest of the Church of  the Immaculate Conception in Stroud, had invited us to go with the Parish to lead the rosary during the veneration of the relics of St. Bernadette. It was a memorable and moving experience for the numerous faithful, who filled the Cathedral, and our Sisters felt privileged to have been there.

We extend our heartfelt thanks to our volunteers. Vicki helps with varied administrative tasks and she seems to have a season ticket at the recycling centre (formerly known as the tip) on our behalf! Mary and Robert render all sorts of services with great sensitivity, simplicity and generosity. They were among our Easter guests, and Robert produced a splendid Paschal Fire. Sr. Maria, Sr. Audrey and Sr. Michelle Marie continue to tend and beautify the gardens, but Robert and Mary do a great deal too to keep the place in good condition, not forgetting Tim Ruggles, on whom we rely for all sorts of maintenance jobs.

We are very grateful for all that the Lord has given us this year, a year of change for our community and for the world, and we invite you to pray with us that the Lord may come and be born in us anew this Christmas, and that we may cherish the life He entrusts to our care.

 Sr. Maria, Sr. Catherine, Sr. Michelle Marie, Sr. Mary Philippa, Sr. Hilda, Sr. Audrey

Gaudete Snow!

There was a little snow on the ground before Lauds. It kept falling.

During breakfast there was a merry dance of large snow flakes. Within an hour six inches of snow had fallen.

Before Mass we cleared a path up to the Chapel door. But, no one ventured from the village to join us for Mass. Nonetheless, we Bernardines and Fr. Ted rejoiced on this Gaudete Sunday!

Wishing you all the joy of this beautiful season of Advent, as we pray for those who are struggling in this icy weather, and for the safety of all travellers.

Homily for Sr. Mary Lucy's Funeral

20th October 2022 

We have had the privilege of knowing, and, for some of us, living with someone special - in the best sense of that word.   She has now slipped over to our true homeland and did so in her usual way – quietly slipping away, no fuss, just doing it.  And while we know it is utterly right, and she is where she belongs, we miss her deeply.   And so it must be.   If we care for someone, then we feel it deeply when they are no longer present in our lives in the way we have known and valued for so long. 

  For some death is an ultimate challenge.   But I don’t think that death itself is the challenge, because we know what death is – plants die, animals die, we are familiar with that and it does not trouble us that cabbages and carrots die.    What troubles us above all is the idea that this person we have known has ‘ceased to exist’.   And it is not just that it is some unpleasant truth we find difficult to accept, rather there is an awareness deep within, and we see it in all the older cultures, that there is a reality beyond the merely physical, material, world into which we pass.   For the Christian this is utterly certain.    For the first disciples of Jesus, it was utterly certain.    Jesus had died and grown cold in the tomb, but now some days later as they gathered, bewildered and lost, Jesus stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you’.   And they knew He had not ‘ceased to exist’, He was alive, and He was not some spectre or ghost, He was physically present, in some new mode, and talked and ate with them.   Death was not an end but a beginning, a wondrous beginning into the fulness of life for which we were created. 

  When we celebrate a Christian funeral, we make a journey.   We meet in our grief and loss, very aware of our loss;  but then we move beyond our loss, to give thanks for the life of the person who has died and all they meant to us and all we have received from them.  Finally, our eyes are lifted from ourselves as we pray for the person who has died.   They are, we pray, on a journey to the fulness of life in God for which they were created and desired.   And as we pray for them, we accompany them on the journey they are making and our eyes are lifted to the great destination to which we too are called.   In our grieving we are very aware of our loss, but, now, in our prayer we are taken beyond ourselves and deeper into the awareness that death is not and end but a beginning.     For a Christian, death is not ‘Good-bye’ but ‘Au Revoir’.   A Christian funeral is a journey and when we emerge at the end, we are not in the same place we were when we came in. 

   We are gathered here for Sr M Lucy’s funeral, and I want you to stop and reflect.   Are we a group gathered here with a sense of a great void in the middle of us where Sr M Lucy used to be, or are we a group with a very real sense that she is very much present here with us, with that gentle and slightly impish smile – and perhaps saying to the preacher – ‘come on, get on with it’?    She is very much present here with us, even more so, in a way, than when she was physically present.   She is very much present with us and, in her caring way, is putting before us some of what mattered to her above all, desiring that we grasp how valuable it is.   The readings we heard are an eloquent expression of this. 

  These readings are taken from the ones she chose for her various jubilees.   She chose them because they expressed, as she looked back at her life on her jubilees, what mattered most – not just to her but for any life.  The prayer in our first reading is very eloquent.

‘This, then, I pray, kneeling before the Father, from whom every family, whether spiritual or natural, takes its name:      Out of His infinite glory, may He give you the power through His Spirit for your hidden self to grow strong, so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith, and then, planted in love and built on love, you will with all the saints have the strength to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and the depth; until knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond all knowledge, you are filled with the utter fullness of God. 

  For her, knowing the love of Christ for her, and responding to that love through her love of Him, had come to be the centre of her life.   It was the only thing that could give meaning to her life – indeed to any life.   And the passage from the Gospel of John, gave fuller expression of what this means in practice.   ‘As the Father has loved me, so I have love you.  Remain in my love.’   And then,  ‘Love one another as I have loved you’.    Jesus loves us with the same love that flows between Him and His Father;  and He has made it possible for us to love one another with the same love that flows between Him and His Father.    When I love someone, it is not something I ‘do’, rather to love someone is to allow the Holy Spirit to flow through me to that person.    And when they respond to that love, the Holy Spirit flows from them through me and to Jesus and the Father.   It all flows from the Father, and returns to its source in Father and Son.   This is the reality which came to be at the centre of Sr M Lucy’s life. 

   Sr M Lucy in her time as Prioress of different communities, and in her time as Prioress General gave many talks.    I have never heard or read any of them but I learned a great deal from her – from her example, from the way she lived, the way she related to others; the values embodied in her response to situations.   And if I had asked her for any of her talks, I have no doubt I would have got that ‘don’t be silly’ look, and I am certain she would never have produced any talk for me to read.    To her, far better sources were available – books others had written, and she would recommend the writings of others, and most of all the Scriptures.   She knew full well that if we have something of value to say, then if it is not embodied in the way we live and relate, then it is not really worth our uttering it. 

  Sr M Lucy spoke to so many through who she was.   And she continues to do so, because as, with Faith and Hope, we pray and remember, not only is she very much present with us, but she is also making a gift to us; she is still a life-bearer; yes, through the life she lived and through these readings she has shared with us today, but also most importantly now through the journey she is making.   For in this journey, she points us to life – to the true and eternal life for which we were created and which alone can give meaning to our life here on earth.   And as we pray for her, we are with her in the journey she is making;  but, in her love for us, she is still very much with us in the journey we are still making.   We have not lost her, but moved into a different mode in our relationship.  A relationship which will come to its fulness when, please God, after our death we are reunited in glory in Christ Jesus Our Lord.   

  In her life Sr M Lucy gave us so much; in her death she continues to give us so much; and we show our respects to her by being open to her gifts to us today.   May she come swiftly to the fullness of life and glory she desires, and may our desire for that life and glory be deepened through our prayer together on this day.    Sr M Lucy, “Thank you”, and in Faith we say, “Au Revoir”.

Fr. Peter Craddy OCSO

Sister Mary Lucy's funeral

Many of you have been asking about the arrangements for Sister Mary Lucy’s funeral.

The Requiem Mass will take place on Thursday 20th October at 11.00 at Brownshill Monastery.

A vigil service of prayer and thanksgiving for her life will be celebrated the day before, Wednesday 19th at 19.30. 

Sister Mary Lucy will then be buried at our cemetery in Lancashire at the Monastery of Our Lady of Hyning, Warton, Carnforth LA5 9SE the following day, Friday 21st October after Mass beginning at 9.30.

If you wish to join us for any of these services, please contact us to help us organise seating and catering. 

Thank you to all who have sent their condolences and please continue to pray for Sister Mary Lucy and for us.

Sister Mary Lucy

The community asks your prayers for Sister Mary Lucy, whom the Lord called to Himself early on Saturday morning (1st October). She simply ‘slid’ very gently and peacefully into His eternal Love, surrounded by all the Community, Sr. Elizabeth Mary and two of our French Sisters, one of whom was her sister of Profession.

S Mary’s Lucy’s health changed dramatically in the early hours of Thursday 29th September, the feast of the Archangels. We are grateful that she was able to receive excellent palliative care here in her last 48 hours, rather than being transferred to hospital.

Please pray for S M Lucy, for her family, for the Community of the Monastery of Our Lady and St. Bernard and for our Bernardine Cistercian Order, which she served generously and faithfully over so many years. She will surely be praying for us all!

Details of the funeral Mass will be posted on our website.

Welcoming our Cistercian Brothers and Sisters

Last week we had the pleasure of hosting Cistercian superiors from the Region of the Isles. You might guess that the Isles include England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales. You might not guess that two communities from Norway are also part of this region! Adding to the international mix was the new Abbot General of the Cistercian Order of the Strict Observance (OCSO), Dom Bernardus Peeters. He is now based in Rome, but comes from the Netherlands. His secretary, a monk of Citeaux in France, travelled with him to Brownshill.

Thus Brownshill hosted the first meeting of our two Generals, our Bernardine Cistercian Prioress General, Sr. Elizabeth Mary and Dom Bernardus.

The superiors of our Bernardine communities in England join our OCSO brothers and sisters for these times of pastoral sharing each year. It was a great joy for them to meet in person after the COVID-years of isolation. The guesthouse was completely full for the first time since the end of lockdown and rooms in community were pressed into action also!

Among the participants was the newly elected superior of Mount St. Bernard Abbey in Leicestershire, Fr. Peter Craddy. He had left his role as Chaplain to our community less than a month before!

The OCSO is preparing for their General Chapter., as we continue preparations for ours. Please keep us all in your prayers.

Dom Daniel of Caldey Abbey in Wales celebrated the first Mass for the group

This was Sr. Elizabeth Mary’s first visit to Brownshill in her new rôle. After a short ceremony for each Sister to promise her obedience to our new Prioress General, we enjoyed one another’s company over tea and cake!

A Spiritual Home in Clifton Diocese

YouCAN is a network for young Catholic Adults in the UK. The community at the Monastery of Our Lady and St. Bernard was delighted to be asked to become a spiritual home for the Clifton group of YouCAN.

The steering group spent a day at the Monastery in May planning for the coming months. See the fruit of their labours on the YouCAN website.

We look forward to welcoming members of YouCAN for a retreat in early 2023.

New Prioress General

Sr. Elizabeth Mary Mann has been elected Prioress General of our Order for a six year term. Many of you know Sr. Elizabeth Mary as a foundress, and the first superior of the Monastery of Our Lady and St. Bernard, here at Brownshill. It is a great joy for us to begin a new stage of our Order’s history. We ask you to join us in praying for Sr. Elizabeth Mary, as she takes up her new ministry in our Order and in the Church. May we all deepen our faith and strengthen our hope in the Risen Lord, as we seek to discern His will for us and for the world.

Sr. Elizabeth Mary at the Monastery of Our Lady and St. Bernard

The work of the General Chapter continues, as they elect members of the General Council, who will work with Sr. Elizabeth Mary.

Easter Sunday

1st Reading:    Acts 10:34,37-43

Response:  Ps 117:1-2,16-17,22-23 ”This day was made by the Lord: we rejoice and are glad.”

2nd Reading:   Colossians 3:1-4

Gospel:   John 20:1-9

  Christ has Risen from the Dead!  He is Alive!   We rejoice and sing, ‘Alleluia’.    But what does it mean when we say that ‘Christ is Alive’?

   We must start with what is does not mean.   The Risen Jesus was not a resuscitated corpse.   He had not been brought back to life in the way Lazarus was brought back to life.   Nor is Jesus a spectre or ghost.  He explicitly says he isn’t.  In St Luke’s account, (Lk 24: 36ff) when he appeared to the disciples, they thought they were seeing a ghost and Jesus says to them, ‘A ghost has no flesh and bones as you see I have… … Touch me and see for yourselves’.   He ate with them.   Jesus is alive with a physical body, but a body not subject to the limitations we know.   Jesus has Risen to a New Life; an eternal Life which death cannot touch.  

   But doesn’t this imply that a different ‘Mode of Physical Existence’?   Yes, it does.   Jesus is alive now in mode of existence which far transcends our limited material universe, but in which he can be physically present in our material world.  It is the mode of existence which pertains to the Kingdom he has inaugurated.   And immediately we have a problem, because many people immediately want to ask, ‘What is this new mode of being?  Explain it; we want to know everything about it.’     And they focus on the mechanics of this new mode of being and miss the essential point entirely.  Namely, that Jesus is alive.  In all the post-Resurrection appearances the disciples are clear.  It is Jesus; He is alive; and physically present.  But getting obsessed with the mechanics is not a new issue.  St Paul addresses aspects of these questions in 1 Cor 15:35ff, and calls them stupid questions.  Because, how Jesus’ risen body functions and how Jesus appeared is secondary and of no importance for the central reality being revealed to us.   Namely - that Christ is Alive and present with us, and in us, now.   

   When St Paul encountered Christ on the road to Damascus and heard the voice, he knew with utter certainty that Christ was alive and present and had spoken to him.   This certainty was so complete that the whole of his life after this was devoted to proclaiming this fact that Christ had died and Risen and is alive and present now.  The disciples too knew with an utter certainty that Jesus was alive and present with them, and their lives were devoted to proclaiming this Good News.  So certain were they that they were even willing to die rather than deny it.

  At this point I am going to quote a former non-believer who expresses more eloquently than I can what St Paul knew.    When this man was in his teens, he had no time for God.   He heard a priest speaking and found what was said profoundly repulsive; and he set out to disprove what he had heard.  He borrowed a copy of the Gospels and picked St Mark’s Gospel because it was the shortest, and started reading.   He said, ‘…before I reached the third chapter, I suddenly became aware that on the other side of my desk there was a presence.  And the certainty was so strong that it was Christ standing there that it has never left me.   Because Christ was alive, and I had been in His presence, I could say with certainty that what the Gospel said about the crucifixion of the prophet of Galilee was true… …It was in the light of the Resurrection that I could read with certainty the story of the Gospel, knowing that everything was true in it, because the impossible event of the Resurrection was to me more certain than any event of history.   History I had to believe; the Resurrection I knew for a fact.’    The writer became Metropolitan Anthony Bloom.

  A person can be brought up a Christian and go to church and keep the rules, can also learn a lot of theology and intellectually be committed but it can remain something coming to them from outside themselves.    When Jesus said, ‘Come, follow me’ he was not a learned teacher inviting people to follow a school of thought; it was a personal invitation to a relationship with Him.    When our relationship with Jesus deepens and we truly come to know Him, then we experience and know the certainty which Metropolitan Anthony Bloom expresses so well.   Christ is Alive, and the impossible event of the Resurrection is more certain than any event of history.

  In our Western Society, knowledge is considered to be something in the intellect.  But there are other modes of knowledge which are as certain, and in some cases more certain.   If two people love each other – especially if it is a love what has deepened over many years – they know with utter certainty that they love this other person.  And it is not an intellectual knowing.  If asked where in their body this knowing is centred it will be the heart centre and not in the head, in the intellect.  And if someone tried to prove to them intellectually that their love was an emotional delusion; they would know their interlocutor was talking rubbish; had no idea what love means.  It is on this level we know with utter certainty that Christ is Alive and present with us now.   And this is what the Saints and mystics have spoken about over the centuries.  It is expressed so well by the author of ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’ who said, ‘By love may He be gotten and holden; but by thought never.’

   When Jesus appeared to the disciples in the room where the doors were locked, He did not come in some mysterious way through the locked doors.  He was fully present in that room all the time and then chose to be manifest in His Resurrected body.  He is fully present here, now, with us.   And when in a few minutes time we do what He commanded us to do in commemoration of Him, He will be as truly physically present with us here, as He was with the disciples in that locked room, but now under the outward form of bread and wine.  ‘This is my Body. This is my Blood.’

   Christ is Alive.  But we are not just rejoicing for Jesus’s sake; as if to say, he has been through a dreadful time but we are pleased He is now safely back home with His Father.  We rejoice because He Suffered and Died and Rose to new life for our sakes.  He gave His Body for us.   He poured out His Blood for our sakes.  It was all done for us.   He has given us a full share in this new eternal life and desires to lead us to the fulness of this new life with Him and His Father forever.

  Incidentally, when we speak of the resurrection of our body, (as we will in the Creed in a few minutes) we are not speaking of our corpse being resuscitated, we are speaking of the body we will have in the mode of being in which we will exist in the Kingdom.   And when we receive communion, we are receiving the Risen Body of Christ under the form of bread and wine.  So we receive and share in the life and mode of being of the Kingdom already through Christ’s gift of Himself in the Eucharist.  Such is the gift and reality won for us by Christ in His Passion, Death and Resurrection.

    Christ is Alive, and present now.  Present here with us; present in us, for we are temples of the Holy Spirit; and we are present in Him as members of His Body of which He is the head.   We rejoice and give thanks.  But we are also aware that we can refuse or ignore the gift of Life He is offering us.  Satan will do all he can to sow lies and draw us away from Our Loving Saviour.   St Paul is clear, ‘Since you have been brought back to true life with Christ, you must look for the things that are in heaven, where Christ is.’   We must fix our eyes on the Lord.  He is Risen – that is utterly certain.  He is with us now – that is utterly certain.   United in Him we can come to the fullness of life and glory for ever – that too is utterly certain.   Rightly do we sing, ‘Alleluia’.

Fr Peter Craddy OCSO

Happy Easter

The community wishes you a happy Easter, filled with the new life of Christ’s resurrection!

We are delighted to have had guests staying in our guesthouse this Easter. Many of our local friends joined us also for the liturgy of the Sacred Triduum. We appreciate their participation and prayerfulness among us.

With all the joy of Easter comes a sad note for us because Easter Sunday is Fr. Peter’s last Sunday at Brownshill. He leaves us after 16 years serving our community as Chaplain and being “all things to all” - to those who come here, to the wider Church. We owe him a great debt of gratitude and we will miss him. Now begins a new stage of life for him and for us.

Amidst all the uncertainties and fear in our world, we know that Jesus Christ died and that He is risen from the dead for our sakes.

Let the ‘Alleluia’s ring out, for the ends of the earth to hear!

The Lord is Risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia!

The Sacred Triduum

Maundy Thursday

Good Friday

Holy Saturday

Paschal Vigil

Holy Week

As we enter this most holy time of the Christian year we walk with Jesus as he enters his Passion and goes to his death for our sakes. May all Christians be united in prayer for those suffering today at the hands of others.

The community assures you of our prayers for your intentions. We ask you to continue to pray for our General Chapter.

General Chapter Begins Tomorrow

After waiting for nearly two years, the General Chapter of our Order will begin tomorrow, 9th April.

Sisters from each of our communities in 5 countries will participate by video-conference. Today is a special day of prayer, silence and fasting to help us all to prepare.

Please join us in prayer, as we approach this important ecclesial event, and enter into Holy Week.

See the post of 11th February for more information.

Prayer for General Chapter Lord God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and our Father, Send on us your Holy Spirit of power, love and wisdom, so that during our days of meetings we will faithfully accomplish your will, for your glory and the service of your church.

Enlighten us by your light. Give us a humble, peaceful and simple heart. Place within us an intelligence that understands your designs and a will that submits to yours. Keep us one in unity and fraternal communion, so that we will know how to listen to each other and help each other to discern the truth that is in Jesus Christ.

Watch over our words, bless our work, Direct our deliberations, inspire our decisions. Help us to imitate the Blessed Virgin Mary, ever faithful to your word and actions. Help us to recognise you, we pray, as Lord, living among us, through Jesus-Christ, our Lord.  Amen

General Chapter 2022

We invite you to pray with our community as we prepare for the General Chapter of our Order, the Bernardines of Esquermes (Bernardine Cistercians). This is the meeting of Sisters from our communities throughout the world, who are elected to form the highest governing authority of the Order.

“The General Chapter is a spiritual and ecclesial event which should be lived by the whole Order, in a sincere attitude of conversion, and whole-hearted search for the will of God. It is carried out in a climate of prayer and fraternal charity filled with the hope of a renewal in the Spirit.” Constitutions 169

These meetings normally take place every 6 years, but this one has been postponed since 2020 due to travel restrictions and difficulties of obtaining visas, caused by COVID-19. Last month the members of the General Chapter agreed to hold their assembly by video conference. The Church is allowing this exceptionally, due to the pandemic. Meetings will begin in April.

Prayer for General Chapter Lord God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and our Father, Send on us your Holy Spirit of power, love and wisdom, so that during our days of meetings we will faithfully accomplish your will, for your glory and the service of your church.

Enlighten us by your light. Give us a humble, peaceful and simple heart. Place within us an intelligence that understands your designs and a will that submits to yours. Keep us one in unity and fraternal communion, so that we will know how to listen to each other and help each other to discern the truth that is in Jesus Christ.

Watch over our words, bless our work, Direct our deliberations, inspire our decisions. Help us to imitate the Blessed Virgin Mary, ever faithful to your word and actions. Help us to recognise you, we pray, as Lord, living among us, through Jesus-Christ, our Lord.  Amen

News at Christmas

Brownshill Christmas Newsletter 2021 As we begin this newsletter we are celebrating the feast of all the Saints who lived according to the Rule of St. Benedict. You will know that one of the important elements of Benedictine life is hospitality. One of the nicest things about this year is to see the guest house reopen. We have been fortunate to see our families and friends. Sr Marie Emmanuelle who had contributed so much in the guest house was named back to La Plaine, in August, where she is continuing to work with guests. You will remember her cheerful and warm welcome. And I’m sure you will join us in thanking her for her contribution while she was among us. We started quite gradually with both our past guests and friends coming back but we were also delighted to welcome quite a lot of new faces. Among these were the seminarians who joined us from Oscott College for their pre-diaconate retreat with their spiritual director. Vocation ministry is very much at the heart of our service to the church and there have been opportunities for some of the sisters to connect with young adults and school students via virtual platforms. It is always lovely to see young people and less young people seeking to serve the Lord. We want to mention too St. Bernard’s Prep School at Slough. For many years we and the children have been Prayer Partners and we help each other to deepen our faith and grow in love and service. On the solemnity of the Assumption, our patronal feast, we met with the whole Order on Zoom for Reverend Mother General’s address from the Mother House. A few days later on the feast of St Bernard we were delighted to have a virtual meeting with all those in initial formation in our own Order. This gave sisters the opportunity to meet our young sisters from Africa, Vietnam and Europe. A special joy for us was the Solemn Profession of Sr Reina at Hyning many of you will remember her from her years here. Some of us were able to join the community at Hyning for the celebration. Her profession was live-streamed so that her family and friends in Indonesia as well as the rest of the community at Brownshill could participate virtually. For us here at Brownshill, 1st October was a very special day with the first profession of Sr. Audrey. As many of you will know, Sr. Audrey comes from Réunion Island, a French Department, but has lived in England for many years. Due to the distance and the restrictions of COVID Sr. Audrey was sadly not able to have her family present but thanks to livestreaming, they were able to follow the celebration from home. Sr Audrey’s booklet was in English and French. Several of her friends from Sheffield were able to celebrate with us. Sr Mary Gabriel, who joined our community from Hyning in August, made a beautiful profession cake decorated with a map of Réunion Island, with its motto, very appropriately ‘I will flourish where I am rooted.’ We rounded off this year of celebration with the final commitment of Kathleen Shaw as an Oblate of the Order during the oblates retreat day Mass.

Another form of our commitment has been the sense of responsibility for the care of the earth. As a community we are trying to do our part both following Pope Francis’ very inspiring encouragement (Laudato Si and Fratelli Tutti) and of course the impetus of COP26. It’s going to be a very long and challenging journey but they say that the longest journey starts with the first step. During the year we have had help from a local ecological group supporting and sustaining wildlife in the area. Several times they have come to support us in our work in the garden which has been appreciated. We are also investigating the possibility of buying more food products from our local market in Stroud. As ever there is plenty of maintenance work to be done and this year we have continued the work on the roofs as well as replacing the guttering and improving the loft insulation. It’s been a busy year for Fr Peter who is always on hand with his advice and practical skills. One significant impact for us from the pandemic has been the accessibility of online formation in all sorts of areas. Some of us have followed courses on Scripture, prayer, many of us on the care of the earth. There were some interesting sessions on different aspects of faith in conjunction with the media, music, art and creation. We have also made our own contribution of talks on Zoom and we have continued to send out our morning prayer which several of you are joining in with.

General Chapters for Religious Orders which involve the government of the Order, usually take place at regular intervals. Ours was due to take place in 2020. As it was impossible to hold our General Chapter in France, the elected members are currently involved in a series of pre-Chapter meetings on Zoom in the hope of meeting together as soon as we can. This has been quite a challenge with different time zones and fine tuning the technical problems. We ask you to join us in prayer that we are able to come together for the General Chapter. Nothing replaces the opportunity to meet our sisters face to face.

As ever we are grateful to our growing group of volunteers, those who support us regularly and those who come occasionally. A special mention for a group who arrived one morning to relocate the greenhouse to the opposite side of the building providing it with a sheltered environment and easier access for the community. Some of you will be aware that Sr M Lucy manages the very important work of the archives and in the course of the year both Sr. Mary Helen and Sr. Elizabeth Mary came to work with her on these. We very much appreciate their hard work. We send our special love to Sr. Mary Lucy who celebrates a significant birthday. As this Christmas approaches we know that many of you will be saddened by the loss of loved ones. We remember particularly Sr. Mary Helen’s mother Mrs. Patricia Jackson who died in the autumn. Our community in Goma also lost two of their sisters, Sr. Marie Bernard and Sr. Marie Remi. You can all count on our love, sympathy and prayers. In this season of hope may we find peace and joy in the birth of the Saviour. With our love and prayers,

Sr. Maria, Sr. Mary Lucy, Sr. Catherine, Sr. Michelle Marie, Sr. Mary Philippa, Sr. Hilda, Sr. Mary Gabriel, Sr. Audrey

Happy Christmas from the Community at Brownshill

We wish all our friends, near and far, all the blessings and peace of this Christmas season!

It is wonderful to share Christmas with a few guests this year, as well as our local friends, who regularly attend Mass here. The great seasons of Christmas and Easter are the high points of our life in the Church, and it is so important to celebrate them together. After two Easters and one Christmas without guests, the community appreciates the presence of others who share our faith in the Word made Flesh, who was born, lived and died for us all.

Our community news for 2021 will be posted in the next day or two, hopefully with some pictures - watch this space! Fr. Peter’s sermons for Midnight Mass and Christmas Day Mass are in the preceding two posts.

Happy Feast of the Holy Family!

Advent Retreats

As the limitations imposed on us all by COVID-19 ease, we are delighted that our guesthouse is open. To mark the beginning of Advent we will be offering a residential retreat at the Monastery. In addition we are offering a virtual retreat, for those who are unable to be with us in person. Please see the programme page for details and to book your place.