MESSAGE FROM THE MIXED GENERAL MEETING TO THE

BROTHERS AND SISTERS OF OUR CISTERCIAN COMMUNITIES

Lourdes has been given to the whole Church as a place of new life, healing and challenge. We ourselves have experienced this personally and as a group in our visits to the Grotto, in our work at the Chapter, in our reflection on the life of our communities.

Several sure signs of new life have marked our General Chapters this year: a climate of attentive respect and concern in the treatment of the house reports, a readiness to ask and extend assistance wherever it is needed in the Order, the revitalization of several communities that were passing through serious difficulties at the time of the last Chapter, the burgeoning of new foundations. It is especially through the conferences that we have seen how we realize our conformation to Christ as disciples in Cistercian schools of charity.

At the same time, in our deliberations in the mixed commissions and the plenary session, we have been confronted with a number of pressing questions: How can we respond with both generosity and prudence to the Church's continuing appeal for a cenobitic contemplative presence, even in non-Christian regions of the world? How can we, on the various levels of the Order, furnish aging communities with the resources required to carry on dynamically their Cistercian witness to Christ? How can we develop into more strongly integrating communities, clear in our identity, so as to enable those in formation to embrace the fullness of the Paschal Mystery - self-gift leading to resurrection - in a total, lifetime commitment?

Touched by what is holy, we yearn to become holy. This desire was solemnly expressed in the renewed consecration of the Order to Our Lady by the Abbot General at the close of the Mass of All Saints in the Grotto. May the grace and life flowing from the Chapter at Lourdes make ever more true the affirmation made in one of the conferences: "Our communities are places where heaven and earth touch, and God's healing presence comes alive in us and through us."