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Our own Books and Film

- Books Written by our Sisters
  
  In the School of Love: An Anthology of Early Cistercian Texts
  
  By Sr Edith Scholl
  
  Words for the Journey: A Monastic Vocabulary
  
  By Sr Edith Scholl
  
  Inside the Psalms: Reflections for Novices
  
  By Mother Maureen McCabe
  
  I Am the Way: Stages of Prayer in Saint Bernard
  
  By Mother Maureen McCabe
  
  Light in the Shoe Shop: A Cobbler's Contemplations
  
  By Mother Agnes Day
- A House Built on Yes
- During our 75th Jubilee year (2024), Sisters Maureen McCabe and Jennifer Illig were delegated to write the history of our monastic community from its foundation in 1949 as the first house of Trappistine nuns in the US.
  
  "This beloved word “Yes” in the hearts of Jesus and Mary, so unselfish and so powerful, is the lens through which we would like to view our own history. Surely the foundational yes was the one that was born in the hearts of our Brothers of Spencer, then in Valley Falls, Rhode Island, in response to the Holy Spirit’s call for Cistercian nuns in the United States. ...
  The second yes sprang from the heart of our founding house of Glencairn in County Waterford, Ireland, even though they were only fifteen years old at the time. They opened their doors to the Americans who wished to enter and gave them a very fine formation. Once here, the Irish foundresses gave to our community their gifts of loving kindness, easy approachability and joyful docility, gifts that turned out to be a very solid foundation for years to come.
  The third yes, a very jubilant one, was that of Cardinal Cushing, the Archbishop of Boston. He was delighted to receive the Cistercians from Glencairn into his diocese not only because Boston was strongly Irish but also because his own mother was born in Waterford!"
  
  This book is available in our Abbey Gift Shop and soon on our Candy website.
- Jesus Christ whom we proclaimed among you was not “Yes and No;” with him it was always “Yes.”
  
  - 2 Corinthians 1:19
- Our Lady said yes. She said yes for us all. It was as if the human race were a little dark house, without light or air, locked and latched. The wind of the Spirit had beaten on the door, rattled the windows, tapped on the dark glass with the tiny hands of flowers, flung golden seed against it, even, in the hours of storm, lashed it with the boughs of a great tree---the prophecy of the Cross---and yet the Spirit was outside. But one day, a girl opened the door, and the little house was swept pure and sweet by the wind. Seas of light swept through it, and the light remained in it; and in that little house a child was born and the Child was God. Our Lady said yes for the human race. Each one of us must echo that yes for our own lives.
  - Caryll Houselander
- I want us to be a community of love—strong, ready to make sacrifices for one another.
  I want my life to be a total yes.
  - Mother Angela Norton, ocso
- During the Church's year of celebration of Consecrated Life (2015-16), we thought the best way we could share our life was to have a film made, showing our simple consecrated life of prayer as lived in the heart of the Church for all our brothers and sisters in the world.
  
  "These Trappistine Sisters live their lives in obscurity, hidden from the world in a life as mysterious as it is genuine. And all for only one reason – God! They embrace a rhythm of life rooted in prayer, Lectio Divina and work in their state-of-the-art candy factory. All of it is steeped in a deep, contemplative tradition of silence and solitude. Life inside their cloistered monastery is all about preferring nothing but Jesus Christ. They live in what the Sisters call a school of mutual love, trying to find Christ in every moment of every day."
  
  This DVD is available in our Abbey Gift Shop or on our Candy website.
  The film can be viewed below.
- “The desire to be with God! There would be no other reason to leave everything. I wanted to know God and He provided me with this vocation.”
  - Sr Francesca Molino, ocso
- “Only if the Sisters prefer nothing whatever to Christ will they be happy to persevere in a life that is ordinary, obscure and laborious. And I knew when I heard that, that I wanted nothing more than Christ. And that this was a place where I could pursue that.”
  - Sr Sofia Millican, ocso
- “I ask myself why did you come? It’s Him. What do you seek? It’s Him. Why do you stay? I can’t live without Him.”
  - Sr Karla Goncalves, ocso