General Chapter 2025
[Editor’s Note: This post was written to be published on 9/20, but our website has been down for the past several days.
The General Chapter concluded on Tuesday, 9/24.]
For over 900 years, our Order has absolutely prioritized mutual support between our many monasteries, and the General Chapter is a quintessential expression of our interconnectedness.
Every three years, the superiors of our communities gather together from all over the world, monks and nuns alike, to work through matters of both practical and pastoral significance. They improve our organizational structures, rally around communities in particular need, and, most essentially, they listen together to “what the Spirit is saying to the churches” (Revelation 2:29).
And now, the General Chapter of 2025 is currently underway! While we won’t hear about our superiors’ labors of love in great detail until our Abbess returns home from Assisi, we’ve already heard some bits and pieces from across the pond, and it sure sounds like the Holy Spirit is hovering close.
For example, we’ve learned that the Chapter is incorporating moving excerpts from the writings of our Trappist Father Armand Jean de Rancé into their daily observance of Tierce, that is, Mid-morning Prayer.
Ask God to give you confidence in his mercy and kindness. His mercy is the channel through which we receive all the help we need; his kindness keeps us at peace and calm in the midst of suffering; it banishes those troubles which cause us, after failing in the Charity we owe to ourselves, to wound the Charity we should have for those we live with.
-A. J. de Rancé, October 2, 1664
We also received a letter from one of the “Regional Delegates” to the Chapter, a sister from our daughter house in Norway, Tautra Mariakloster. She reports that the Chapter, though characteristically intense, is ringing with joy and hope!
And so, we gratefully rejoice with her and all present there, bonded as Cistercians in Christ, in His charity and prayer.
Bless the Lord!
[For snapshots, news posts, and the delegates’ blog reflections on the General Chapter, keep an eye on our Order’s website: https://ocso.org/ .]