Jacki Talk

On March 30, 2005, Jacki Rychlicki spoke to South Florida Lay Cistercians who were making their annual retreat at our monastery. She shared with them the process (or formation) which one goes through to become a professed member of the Lay Cistercians of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery.

Jacki Rychlicki Talks about the
Lay Cistercians of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery
Talk given on Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Audio (34.9 MB / 21:47 minutes / mp3 format)

Jacki Rychlicki

       My name is Jacki Rychlicki, and I am the antique Lay Cistercian.
       Our Lay Cistercian community began here at Holy Spirit in 1987. For ten years previous to that some few folks had speculated about what we could learn from the Cistercian and the monastic tradition that would help us in our own journey. And it began with five of us who didn’t actually know each other but were introduced to one another by Dom Augustine [Moore]. At the time, he had heard in us something similar about our desire not only to know God but for intimacy with the one true God and to find that intimacy through Jesus and him present in Eucharist and in community.
       We knew little (if anything) about Saint Bernard and the Cistercian tradition or even the Rule of Saint Benedict. We just had this sense of being attracted to the steps of the monastery to say, “Can you feed me?”
       We were received with the kind of heart that I think Benedict had in mind when he wrote the Holy Rule for the reception of guests and pilgrims who are seeking God. And as a result of that kind of wholehearted embrace of our hunger for God, we were allowed to begin a process that we called being treated like novices.
       The five of us in our own way and personalities said the same thing to the abbot: “Please teach us the way that you would teach the novices, and then allow us spiritual direction to make sure that we apply that appropriately to our own state of life.” Because we didn’t want to pretend to be something that we weren’t. We wanted to be authentically who were are, and we needed to find a way to express that. And so that expression now is called being a Lay Cistercian.
       Very quickly after the original five began to be able to articulate together what we were searching for and how we were going to interact, more people began to show up. The virtue of charity required that we find some way to feed those who were coming along after us.
       I thought I would say to you today—to describe what we’ve developed to help ourselves and others to grow in information about Cistercian spirituality and grow in formation in a spirit of Cistercian fraternal charity. Those two things work together to strengthen us in our individual lives as well as strengthen the bond. The bond of charity that links individual monasteries together but would link us as individuals together—this kind of shared charity. So what developed for us in order to immerse ourselves in this ongoing conversion to a Cistercian way of life and the kind stability that’s the other hand of the way of life. We developed a formation process that we hoped would serve both the interior and exterior need to belong.
       What we have developed over past years has developed in increments. As we saw a need, we added an element to meet a new perceived need. The initial need that we saw when people were coming to us was to explain to them who we are striving to be. People are generally attracted by something about the Cistercian charism. They’ve been on retreat at a monastery or a monk has heard their first confession in twenty years. There’s been some sort of exchange of grace that has already happened with Cistercian monastics that continues to call that person to look at it more deeply.
       That having happened to most of these people, we said the next thing we thought that was necessary was for them to understand who we as a small group of laity actually are. Because if you’re asking to come, you’re not asking to come to be a monastic within the enclosure. You’re asking to come to belong to us. And so we needed to explain what belonging to Lay Cistercians who live outside the wall really means.

“It’s not just about knowing intellectually the principles of Cistercian life. It’s coming to know and love one another in the context of that.”

       We spend a period with them that we call inquiry. They come one Sunday a month for three months. On those Sundays, we go through our statutes—the rule of our own community—on how we integrate principles of monastic contemplative spirituality into our lives as Catholics, as people who have jobs, who have families, extended families, or those who may live alone. For those three months, we go through the segments of what it means to be asking to learn to live as a Lay Cistercian.
       That’s the first element that we offer them: the information that helps them understand that if they petition to come to us in the novitiate, they are asking to belong to us (and that we would expect to belong to them). They’re not asking to belong to the monastery. They have to want us as an expression of the Holy Spirit, not just an encounter with the monastic community.
       After those three months, we invite them to come and spend a Gathering Day with us to get the feel of what it is like to be amongst people who are attracted to a spirituality that’s historically very silent and we are a very gregarious group of people. And to look at that contradiction and find out where the grace is.
       Actually inquirers have about five months over which time they can think about and pray about whether they feel called to enter into this kind of structure. We take people in only on a two year cycle as a small group. Experienced members of the community facilitate the discussion with them about the statutes, and other members of the community will come into visit with them—two or three at a time. They meet a few of the professed Lay Cistercians but they don’t get overwhelmed by a flock of 40. They begin to know, at least, each other and two or three of the larger group around them.
       Then the inquirers come for the day in which they encounter everyone and the general flow of what we do first, second, and third. Our statutes require that we provide a special retreat weekend for them as a final step of their discernment process. They have several conferences: introduction to the Holy Rule, to the Liturgy of the Hours, lectio divina, the basic elements that we consider the core elements that will be integrated into their lives. At the end of that retreat, with help in spiritual discernment, they can then make a request either to be received as novices or thank us for our efforts but they feel called somewhere else. That’s the end of the initial discernment process.
       We try to encourage them with some spiritual reading even during that period of time in which a person is making an inquiry into the Lay Cistercians. There’s always the Holy Rule of Saint Benedict. I think that Father Anthony’s book, What Makes a Cistercian Monk?, is good reading for them. It does two things. It builds on their sense of their attraction to Cistercian monastic rhythm of life and the monastics that they have known already. And it begins to talk about application in their own life.
       Having been received into the community as novices, they begin to come on the one Sunday a month that everyone comes together for what we call the Gathering Day. And they participate in the entire day with all of us. There’s an hour set aside in the daily schedule for formation classes. So the novices will go to their formation class.
       The novitiate period for us is two years. And the first year they have a particular professed Lay Cistercian that facilitates their class. The textbook used for their discussions together is Dom [Abbot] Andre Louf’s The Cistercian Way. We’ve used that from the beginning, and we do not lose our enthusiasm for how helpful a text it is for them to read and then to come back and to dialogue with each other. Our novice directors generally invite one other professed Lay Cistercian—a different one each month—to come in and dialogue with them. So they begin to hear not just the monastic principles but the lay application. Sometimes that application talks about the success and joy that they have with that principle. Sometimes the discussion is about “How really hard this is for me and my personality or in my circumstance to deal with this particular element.” It’s about the reality of the ongoing conversion process of how we use time, our energy, our opportunities to focus on the spiritual path that we’ve been called to.
       In the second year of their novitiate, there is another teacher. These two teachers don’t function independently; they’re a team. During the first year, Malika is our first year teacher. She’s primarily responsible for facilitating that year’s worth of classes. The second year teacher, Frances Coale, goes to all of those classes, too. She can serve as a substitute if Malika can’t come, but Frances is there to help with the whole flow in the sense of knowing one another.
       It’s not just about knowing intellectually the principles of Cistercian life. It’s coming to know and love one another in the context of that.
       When they move to their second year, Frances is the primary teacher, while Malika becomes her assistant and helper.
       For the second year, they use the book by Dom Augustine Roberts, Centered on Christ. We chose this as the second year book because the content is presented to help you look at the Cistercian vows and the virtues inherent in living that. It has discussion questions that are very helpful. At the end of the second year, our novices would then be preparing to make their simple (or first) promises as Lay Cistercians. Looking at the Cistercian vows is a way of helping them to begin to evaluate whether they want to ask to be received for making their first promises.
       After the two-year novitiate, novices may petition for simple promises which are renewed annually for three years before making lifetime promises. This three-year period is called the juniorate (which is also a part of formation of monastics). It focuses on the ongoing conversion that we’re asking for when we ask for the Cistercian spirituality. A dialogue continues amongst members about the Cistercian spirituality and their own journey, but the focus during this time is preparation for a lifetime commitment to the Lay Cistercians of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery.

Rocky Thomas with Fr. Anthony with the portrait of Dom Augustine in the background.

Rocky Thomas recently made simple promises as a Lay Cistercian. Fr. Anthony and Dom Augustine (in the portrait) were the spiritual fathers for the group at its inception in 1987.
Photo by Haven Sweet

       The juniorate for us now has developed into a three-year program, and it’s divided into segments. At this time, I am the first year junior teacher.
       The first year we use the book Saint Benedict: A Rule for Beginners (New City Press, 1994). We focus during that first year on the Rule of Saint Benedict. I chose this particular book because it was of a useable size to facilitate dialogue amongst us. This book looks at the person of Benedict. That was really important for me to begin the overview of how the spirit has worked beginning with Benedict up to today. It is important to me to ask the Holy Spirit to help me enter into a sense of the heart of this man of wisdom. I felt like this text helped me to look at Benedict, the holy man, and then to look with him at the Rule. We use this in that first year, but it’s actually a little longer than a year, closer to a year and a half.
       After that point, they then transfer to the second junior teacher who is Susan. They continue where Benedict leaves off and begin a study of the beginnings of the Cistercian order. Booklets were put out a few years ago by Fr. Michael Casey (of Tarrawara Abbey in Australia) that dealt with the historical context of the founding of Citeaux—the early documents of the Cistercian order.
       We follow the time sequence from Benedict to the early Cistercians and begin to integrate that by looking at the current applications as is described in the OCSO Constitutions. We examine how Cistercians today look at the Holy Rule and holy scripture and live their life in community together. So the next step is “Cistercians today.”
       In the last year, actually probably the last six months, it shifts. All the time that we’ve been doing this it has more and more shifted to the people in formation taking more responsibility for the own study and being self motivated rather than everything being fed to them by those who have more experience. The simple professed begin to take more responsibility for their own study and preparation.
       In the last six months, what we are asking them to do is to select a particular Cistercian source: the 12th century women; the writings of William of St. Thierry; or, our newer beatified Cistercians—Joseph Cassant or Raphael or Michael Tansi. They select anyone that they want to from the Cistercian patrimony and spend at least six months praying and reading and studying on their own. When they will come to their formation group once a month, each one will have their turn to present the Cistercian of their choice and introduce him or her to the rest of the group.
       That takes us basically to a little bit more than a five-year period. We try to do a logical spectrum of information. The abbot who helped in the beginning, Dom Armand [Veilleux], said it was very important to him that if he sort of sponsored having such a group that it was a group that really strove to live the Cistercian charism in the aspect of what it means to live as a community. That it was not to be a mailing list. It was not to be just an intellectual study group. It was that we studied and we prayed in order to learn how to live a spirit of community. Even though we only gather once a month, that sense of belonging is a basic human need, but that human need is to be fed by the soul and by the love and the motivation of the community around us. We were really commissioned not to just learn about the Cistercian spirituality, but to learn how to live a specific aspect of fraternal charity.

“We come to know each other by a real sort of humble honesty about the graces and the struggles that it takes to be available for the intimacy that we want with God.”
2005 group photo by Haven Sweet

       We just finished an inquiry session with new people coming in and we recently received them as novices. One of the women in the group said, after these four or five months, “I think I’m a little different than the rest.” We took her aside and said, “We’re all a little different from the rest. It’s par for the charism here. There is no sameness.” There’s a common call among us, but there is no stereotype of the personality style, or background education. There’s nothing we hold in common except this mysterious call to this spiritual path. That really supersedes any kind of employment, education, housing situation. It supersedes everything. It allows us to just simply help each other follow the lead of grace.
       The way that we come to know each other is not by dinner parties at each other’s houses, but we come to know each other by a real sort of humble honesty about the graces and the struggles that it takes to be available for the intimacy that we want with God. And that’s how we come to know each other. Other things fill-in thereafter.
       It seems to me that beginning on a level that the world calls social, it’s very hard to rise above that and come to know the interior and to accept the strengths and the weaknesses of each other. But if we begin to try to know and love each from that place of belonging to one another, then the other things naturally fill-in and take their appropriate place rather than blocking the way for us learning to be people of one heart and one spirit.
       There’s several things in the Constitutions that I am very fond of. One of them is the description of what silence provides, but there’s another section (C. 4.3) on the character of the community:

Following The Charter of Charity, Cistercians of the Strict Observance live by one charity, one rule and similar observances. It is for each community, in dialogue with other communities, to find new ways in which the patrimony of the Order can be expressed dynamically in its own culture according to particular circumstances, observing always the norms established by the General Chapter.

       The first time I read that paragraph I recognized us as the Holy Spirit writing between the lines. That one charity that we have that is given to our families, our own community, our monastic community, our Church, and the world, is the charity of God. We seek to love each other and our monastics in ways that are appropriate to each state of life. It’s very important to us to have appropriate interaction so that our own discipline is a support to the discipline of the monastic life and that our life as a Lay Cistercian community or as individual Lay Cistercian is not a distraction to the monastics and their way of life.
       The Constitution also says that in sharing the same Rule we can have similar but not necessarily identical observances. Our observance of the Holy Rule—the practices, the Liturgy of the House, lectio divina, periods of silence and solitude—are similar, but they’re not the same as monastics. But they’re still full of grace for us and the entire Body of Christ.
       To us, it’s very important (not that we put ourselves on a pedestal) that we reverence the fact that we’re called to the same spiritual journey and charisms take it seriously and to take our responsibility to one another very seriously. To be honest. To be nurturing. And to sometimes be demanding of one another about what kinds of daily conversions are necessary in order for us to belong to Christ in his Body—the Church—and we do that by belonging to each other.