Art and Study
Christians pursue Beauty and Truth as intrinsically valuable, not because they are useful. Because all Beauty comes from God and all Truth descends from the knowledge of the Holy, when Christians lend their creativity to join the art and the song, they express their Maker's image. When they study, they take seriously the admonition that, while it is God's glory to conceal a matter, it is humans' glory to search it out. At the abbey, we cultivate places to study, to reflect, to pursue wisdom. We patronize artists and artisans whose work fires our imagination and reminds us of truths we once knew but have forgotten.
The artist accepts the invitation to help us perceive the unknowable. Perhaps, like wind, the Spirit carries our work between heaven and earth, lets it live as a bridge between threads of that thin veil. Thus, we translate between glory and glory: both seen and unseen.
Abbeys were of significant importance in medieval society. They were centers of learning, storehouses or repositories of cultural and literary treasures, economic engines, innovative centers of agriculture, places of refuge, solace and pilgrimage, and they performed a significant civic function of providing social safety nets in the form of food, shelter and clothing to the poor.
“A stone does not meet its full potential until it is used for a church; a flower never reaches its full potential until it adorns and altar.” - Raphael Morales
We must adorn and cultivate our property in ways that reflect its created glory and its inherent worth as a place worth redeeming. We must refuse to surrender to the tyranny of utility, functionality, productivity, and pragmatism.