Dear friends, guests, and those of you who accompany us from afar,

this letter, which comes to you in the proximity of Christmas, would like to express to you our affection and also to transmit to you something of ours, of our life, of our expectations. So, to make you a part not only of our daily living, but also of the meaning of the vocation that we seek to live in response to the Lord’s call, of the yearning that ought to animate our activities, we want to share with you the event that almost every year marks a stage of our monastic journey: the feast of the Transfiguration, during which the brothers and sisters who have finished their course of discernment and trial make their solemn and definitive profession.

The words of our prior, br Enzo, express well what for us remains constant in the progression of seasons and of years, that search of the love of God lived in community that one day called us to Bose and that we have recognized as our truth a simple Christians.

 The brothers and sisters of Bose

DOWNLOAD THE LETTER TO OUR FRIENDS - QIQAJON n°49 (in Italian)

This night more than ever we live our vocation and become aware of it. We monks do not have a particular mission or function in the Church: we are simply men and women together, from a human point of view almost by chance. We are here, we are there, in deserts or in forests, on mountains or in valleys, for what? To stand together before God, in common life, nothing else. We do nothing in particular except remaining before God and with God, listening to God, seeking God and allowing ourselves to be found by God, in expectation of the coming of Jesus Christ, with whom we wish to be forever (cf. 1Thess 4:17). All this we do praying and working, praying like Christians and working like all men: ora et labora, two absolute and closely connected dimensions that make up the life of the monk.

When we speak of the monastic life, immediately there comes to mind a word, stabilitas, to which the Rule of Benedict dedicates a great deal of attention and of space (cf. RB 4:78; 58:9.17; 60:8; 61:5). It is indeed true monks live the stabilitas, and for this constancy, this “standing” are, as Benedict says, the genus fortissimum coenobitarum (RB 1:13). But there is a stability in movement: in the pilgrim Church on earth, a Church made up of caravans that cross cities and deserts with a goal, a precise orient, the meeting with the Savior coming in glory, monks too are present. They travel in a group, they are a caravan: their name is koinonía, community, communion. I don’t know whether they are in the front, or at the heart, or whether they follow, nevertheless, wherever they are in the Church, monks ought to know how to keep their face turned towards the goal that is the Lord, they ought to be like signs that can be read about the direction of the entire caravan. I repeat, monks do not have particular tasks, particular missions: if they are faithful to the vocation they received they are a signal, they are like road signs, nothing more…