Clear Creek Monastery

Watching EWTN yesterday morning I caught a programme about the Monastery of Our Lady of the Annunciation in Clear Creek, Oklahoma. What a wonderful place, where the Benedictine life is lived out in all its rich fullness. They are a contemplative community with over thirty members and growing all the time. They chant the traditional Office and Mass is in the Extraordinary Form. In the interviews their way of life is clearly expressed and spoken of very beautifully. Its rigours and its tradition don't seem to put people off - far from it, the community is thriving. Are they odd-balls and old men - not at all, as the photo above indicates.

It certainly seems that in Religious Life the only communities that are thriving and growing are the traditional ones, those that have re-dedicated themselves to their original charism instead of trying to change it or run away from it. Didn't the Second Vatican Council call for Religious to get back to their roots, their original charism? Religious Communities that have accommodated themselves to the ways of the world, in their dress and manner of life don't seem to be getting any vocations. As ever, making ourselves "acceptable" doesn't work - standing out for radically alternative values and ways of living does work. Sadly, I know from my own experience, we don't really have enough faith to go the whole way. Faith is frightening but it works.

According to the EWTN schedule, the programme will be repeated and afterwards will be available on You-Tube: http://www.ewtn.com/wings/2010/08202010Feature.htm

Perhaps also of interest is a blogsite that lists some of these thriving communities, for both men and women:
http://tradvocations.blogspot.com/

Cleer Creek Monastery can be viewed here:
http://www.clearcreekmonks.org/aboutcc.htm