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Originally uploaded by mystical_rose84
I spent last weekend in Fontgombaultwhich is the mother house of Clear Creek Monastery. Not only was it amazingly beautiful but it was like being home again for me. I have some more pictures posted on flickr.
I went to the vespers of Saturday and then the low mass and the high mass on Sunday. I bought two small plates in their pottery shop and some good monk beer and chocolate at the small monastery shop. We stayed in one of the little guest cottages (st Pierre I think).
My trip back to Paris was not the most pleasant experience - I missed the train in tours and ended up not getting to Paris till around 10pm. I made it home safe but very exhausted.
Here is a video about Fontgombault. The video footage is great but if you want to understand the narration I hope you understand french (lol)
3 comments:
Hey Michaela, isn't the very first monk in the Fontgambault video Fr. Bales?! That's funny!
Here, I translated the narration for your esteemed readers. Enjoy.
Fontgombault is an abbey of the Solesmes Congregation. The monks there devote themselves to living according to the rule of St. Benedict as it was understood and explained by Dom Guéranger, 19th century reformer of the Benedictine life in France, in the abbey of Solesme, and founder of the congregation of the same name. His second successor, Dom Paul Delattre, perfectly expressed the monastic ideal of Solesmes, which Fontgombault inherited: "The proper and distinctive work of the Benedictine," he wrote, "his lot, his mission, is the liturgy. All the other monastic works refer to it. It determines all of our schedule. It claims almost all, and the best, hours of our day."
So, seven times a day, the monks convene in the choir to celebrate the prayer of the Church.
At Fontgombault, the love of the Eucharist, the "source and summit" of the entire life of the Church, blossoms more particularly two times each day: the morning, whose silent celebration comprises a collection of low Masses on the altars of the crypt, and again in the chant of the conventual Mass celebrated by the assigned priest in the mid-morning.
thanks ganchi! you're the best!
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