General Chapter Part 2

From September 2nd to the 24th, the abbots and abbesses of our Order met in Assisi for the second part of the General Chapter.  There were over 150 capitulants, monks and nuns from monasteries in six continents, all gathered for a time of discernment, prayer and fellowship.

Having eleced our new Abbot General, Dom Bernardus Peeters, in the first part of the Chapter in February, we focused during this second part on identifying the challenges facing us today and on searching for creative and collaborative solutions for monasteries in difficulty and for the Order as a whole.  It was noted that recognizing our vulnerability, whether in the realm of economics, aging, vocational promotion and discernment or in the face of growing secularization, opens us up to collaboration, to synergy.


We also able to celebrate together the vitality evident in the raising to the status of Abbey of three monasteries and of one Foundation to a Simple Priory. 


Dom Bernardus opened the Chapter with a conference drawing on the manifold dreams of the Superiors, which he had elicited during the Regional Meetings preceding the Chapter.  What follows is a synthesis of the gleanings of this synodal encounter, written by two capitulants: Mother Mariela of Quilvo, Chile and Brother Clément of Kokoubou, Benin.

"Starting from the beautiful image of the Christocentric, synodal and four-windowed tower of St. Benedict, the Abbot General wove the threads of the dreams of all of us into one single dream with four parts: a dream of communion and participation, of mission and formation, which had its resonance in the discourse that Pope Francis addressed to us on September 16. This four-part dream depicts various directions in which we must move forward, with an attentive ear to what the Holy Spirit wants to say to our Order. And it is of such importance that it deserves to be recalled in this report, which we will carry in our luggage as a vade mecum.



The first dream is that of communion. According to this dream, communion is not uniformity, but consists in our common relationship with Christ and, in Him, with the Father in the Spirit. We are all coresponsible for communion with God and with others. We must cultivate the courage of dialogue that we sometimes lack. We must not be afraid of diversity, of difference. For, under the action of the Holy Spirit, diversity becomes a symphony of mutual relationships. We are different, but we have a common strength: our Cistercian charism. We are all a gift to each other, in all dimensions of our Cistercian life. If this is the case, monastic synergies cannot be reduced to exchanges where each party brings to the other, materially or spiritually, something "which the other does not have". For in truth, we build each other up spiritually through our experience of Christ.



The second dream is that of participation. A fraternal community, where all participate on the basis of a common filiation with the Father and as brothers or sisters and disciples of Jesus, a filiation rooted in the vow of monastic obedience. We all have the right and the duty to participate in the life of the Order in all its dimensions. The structures are there to serve the life of God in people. It is a matter of living a creative fidelity to tradition, of continuing to seek new forms that make the structures of government of the Order more open and flexible, ever more inclusive in every sense. Starting from a mutual listening among real and concrete people who, with their limitations, choose every day, trusting in the grace of Christ, to live together discerning and acting according to the voice of the Holy Spirit.

The third dream is that of mission. All the charisms given to the Church are missionary, for the evangelization of the people of God. In virtue of a "hidden apostolic fruitfulness", the monk or nun who prays in the monastery does his or her part to bring the Gospel to the ends of the earth and to the whole of creation. As our Constitutions say, our way of participating in the mission of Christ and his Church and of inserting ourselves into the local Church is our contemplative life itself (Cst. 31). And it is in striving to be faithful to the demands of this life that we answer the question the Pope has asked us: "How can one be a Cistercian of the Strict Observance and be part of a 'Church on the move'?" (Evangelii Gaudium, 20)



The fourth dream is that of formation. Echoing this fourth dream of Dom Bernardus, Pope Francis links it to the virtue of humility. The icon of formation that he proposes to us is that of the washing of the feet (Jn 13,15), which is a path of humility and service, never finished and always in progress, where the great formator is the Holy Spirit (Jn 16,12-13). In this perspective, formation would be an antidote to the excesses of authority, excesses that are increasingly denounced in relation to the problem of abuse, a matter which did not fail to gain the attention of this General Chapter. If we are formed and conformed to the gentle and humble Christ, we are safe from any temptation to see our brothers and sisters as “things”, or to manipulate them. The dream of formation in the Heart of the Lord is the dream of "holiness" which is the renewed fruit of the grace of Baptism through the action of the Holy Spirit. To deepen integral formation, the role of the community, the Region and the Order is to help each brother and sister to assimilate "the essential elements of the Cistercian way" (Cst. 45.3). We must be ready to offer generous mutual help and make available all the resources necessary to make this formation a reality for all. ...

...This Chapter was like a workshop of synodality which is called to influence our respective communities.  May this be so, through the intercession of our holy Founders, that under the action of the Holy Spirit our Order may acquire a new vitality within the Church."