Those seeking to deepen their spiritual life are increasingly being drawn to monasteries and the monastic round of prayer and reflection. Yet rarely do temporary visitors have enough time to absorb as much as they would like about the spiritual life. In this book an experience spiritual master, a monk of Sept-Fons abbey in France, provides an intensive directed retreat which relies heavily on the rich Cistercian Spiritual tradition. Readers are at liberty to read and digest at their own pace, while savoring the author's contagious enthusiasm for the values and attitudes he learned from the monastic way and the Cistercian Fathers he studied throughout his long life.
Extensive quotations from early Cistercian writers also make the book an excellent introduction to the thought of these medieval monks and the tradition they created and bequeathed to generation of monks and nuns. Quotations are grouped by topic, making it easy to compare the thoughts of various Fathers on a single subject, and an index of citations is provided.
Robert Thomas, OCSO, (1911-2002), was born in Paris and entered the monastery of Sept-Fons in 1928. He studied at the Gregorian University in Rome and was ordained priest in 1937. In addition to serving as prior of his monastery, professor of theology and of Sacred Scripture, and chaplain to Cistercian nuns, he was instrumental in publishing translations, into French, of the early Cistercian Fathers in the pioneering series, Pain de Citeaux. The author of numerous books, Fr. Robert Thomas died in 2002 at the age of ninety-one, a student of the Cistercian tradition to the end.