Instruction 
Instruction on the Rule by noteworthy modern day monastics or oblates
People who do not know God
People who know nothing of God and whose lives are centered on themselves, imagine that they can only find themselves by asserting their own desires and ambitions and appetites in a struggle with the rest of the world. They try to become real by imposing themselves on other people, by appropriating for themselves some share… Read More ›
On Daily Manual Work
There has been some discussion among the Oblates as to what is our calling when is comes to RB 48, On the Daily Manual Labor. It has been suggested by several that this should translate into volunteer service to the Monastery, doing some of the physical labor that is needed to be done. This might… Read More ›
Live our Lives
If we want to be spiritual, then, let us first of all live our lives. Let us not fear the responsibilities and the inevitable distractions of the work appointed for us by the will of God. Let us embrace reality and thus find ourselves immersed in the life-giving will and wisdom of God which surrounds… Read More ›
St. Bernard: Theology “must be nourished by contemplative prayer”
Vatican City, Nov 4, 2009 / 11:55 am (CNA).- Speaking to almost 15,000 people in St. Peter’s Square during the Wednesday General Audience, Pope Benedict XVI continued last week’s comparison of the monastic and scholastic theology in the twelfth century. In the area of theological discussion, the Holy Father cautioned against ethical relativism influencing the… Read More ›
Learning Ourselves
Life consists in learning to live on one’s own, spontaneous, freewheeling: to do this one must recognize what is one’s own — be familiar and at home with oneself. This means basically learning who one is, and learning what one has to offer to the contemporary world, and then learning how to make that offering… Read More ›
The Value of Submitting to Necessity
Any prolonged exercise of self-will injures our intrigrity, whether its purpose is the direct pursuit of pleasure or, more indirectly, the avoidance of pain. To the extent that our will is concerned principally with pleasing ourselves, we can anticipate trouble. On the other hand, learning to live with situations that cannot be changed is a… Read More ›
Making Peace Within Ourselves
It is useless to try to make peace with ourselves by being pleased with everything we have done. In order to settle down in the quiet of our own being we must learn to be detached from the results of our own activity. We must withdraw ourselves, to some extent, from effects that are beyond… Read More ›
Civil Society is Never Ideal
The illusions and fictions encouraged by the appetite for self-affirmation in certain restricted groups, have much to be said for them and much to be said against them. They do in practice free a man from his individual limitations and help him, in some measure, to transcend himself. And if every society were ideal, then… Read More ›
Deformity of Conscience
There are crimes which no one would commit as an individual which he willingly and bravely commits when acting in the name of his society, because he has been (too easily) convinced that evil is entirely different when it is done ‘for the common good.’ As an example, one might point to the way in… Read More ›
Love and a Fully Human Existence
But to love another as a person we must begin by granting him his own autonomy and identity as a person. We have to love him for what he is in himself, and not for what he is to us. We have to love him for his own good, not for the good we get… Read More ›