I. Preface

Open to the Spirit. As a description of the actual life of the monks of the Monastery of the Holy Spirit, such a title would be pretentious; as an expression of the nature of their call it is beautifully accurate. To be open to the Spirit is what monastic life is all about.

(#1) Monks celebrating the Liturgy of the Mass in the Abbey Chapel

The same Spirit who has called the sixty monks of this community to a life of prayerful solitude also brings a constant flow of visitors to the church and the retreat house of the monastery. Most of them desire to know more about the place and the life of those who live here. This book will tell them not only how this community came into existence, but how it is part of a much larger community, the Cistercian Order, and how it is rooted in a tradition going back to the very first Christian generations.

Some of our visitors are more than only visitors. Sharing often, or even regularly, the prayer of the monks, they somehow form with them a kind of "larger community" which is no less real for not being an official canonical community. Dewey Kramer, the author of this history, and her husband, Victor, belong to this last group. Therefore her book is not a cold enumeration of historical data but manifests an authentic understanding of the invisible realities that give a meaning to the place and to the life of its inhabitants.

(#2) Inside view of the monastery Church Sanctuary