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The Lay Cistercian Review · Easter Season 2026 · Articles

New Seeds of Strength in the OCSO

Br. Gregory Escardo, OCSO Abbey of Gethsemani · Trappist, KY

In our current change of epoch, by God’s grace we can greet the unfolding future with hope—that ever-new seed of strength planted in our souls. It is as when our Lord God walked the earth and made everything new under the sun, rendering the present and the future welcoming and hopeful. It is the opposite of approaching the new with fear—that straggler in the battle long since won by our redemption.

We strengthen our Cistercian experience—both lay and monastic—by focusing on contemplation, which keeps it real; we live it less as dreamers than as doers. Into this mix, Dom Bernardus kickstarted his leadership as abbot general (AG) by addressing both our inner, dream nature and our hands-on, grounded side. His challenge to us was, in effect, to wake up and dream the OCSO into thriving mode and propose concrete ways to bring it about.

As a result, superiors quietly planted new seeds of strength throughout the Order, boosting our mutual collaboration, which was exactly a prescription for what ails communities, regions, and all of us, given at the latest general chapter. This intuitive, non-top-down approach inspires the grassroots to have their own say, starting by seeding their specific dreams as a preamble to charting the way ahead. It contrasts with more left-brain proposals from above, as pitched at the time by superiors, including revising our structures.

In a civil and religious world awash in war and fear, the type of bold, out-of-the-box leadership that emerged is a new seed of strength that edifies the membership and newcomers in search of direction. It also signals the end of a mindset heard at an official meeting, to the effect that we are monks, so we need no leadership—an outlook that may account in part for our having more monks’ than nuns’ houses without electable members, so superiors must be appointed ad nutum.

By contrast, leadership is central to the nature of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. Men entering monastic life have left behind the more explicit expectation for men to lead, which may complicate the issue for them as monks.

It is therefore no surprise that prime among the new seeds of strength in the OCSO is our Trappistine colleagues’ accelerating leadership role in houses of both monks and nuns—as effective visitors, formators, community rescuers, monastic commissaries, commission members, and, in the case of Vitorchiano abbey, as prodigious foundresses on a God-given mission to plant and spread the Cistercian light around the globe.

Given the Trappistines’ surpassing interest in life and the Trappists’ growing collaboration with them, we have an invaluable partnership as we plant the seeds of our future and nourish them to life. This teamwork is a major strength of the OCSO in our time—and one that is mostly unsung, amid the concern about fragility in other areas.

More recently, the AG raised the bar by inviting and inspiring us to face the current state of the Order as a crisis. To be sure, the new seeds of strength coexist with setbacks in other areas, so the crisis is not one of survival but of growing pains encompassing both flourishing and aging/maturity. For a leading lay Cistercian of Gethsemani, calling the present situation a crisis is useful for “foaming the runway” against unforeseen landings in the future. In a transitional time like ours, convulsive and swimming in misinformation, disinformation, and the resulting confusion, we tend to resist the focus on crisis as hyperbolic or fear-inducing. However, it can summon the energy and courage essential for creative initiatives.

A further source of OCSO strength tends to go under the radar because we are so immersed in it, like fish taking water for granted: it is our global reach. Centuries in the making, the Order is historically among the world’s first multinational organizations. More than a mere seed of strength, it is a fully sprouted forest cross-pollinating our regions and communities. Yet the vast intertwining of our cultures, for all its usual effectiveness, still constitutes a fence-sitter—as either asset or liability—depending on how we value it in concrete situations and whether we let it benefit us as individuals and communities.

Do we let it empower us and help us transcend our wonted silos, avoiding the easy provincialism that alienates and “others” those we want to exclude? Do intercultural relations enhance our conversatio, guiding us to walk our talk about hospitality vis-à-vis our neighbors and to practice selfless love without trivial distinctions or preconditions? It is something we all need to learn.

In fact, it may have been the Order’s search for intercultural unity that spurred it to address the subject by offering new superiors the recent course “Conflict as an Ally”—certainly a seed of growth, about resolving polarized impasses. Not that everyone welcomes the possible messiness of such endeavor and the transparency and humility it requires. In addition, it is not a traditional ascetic practice, so we easily dismiss it at our peril, as we dream the wrong dream of nostalgia for an ever-receding golden age. Unless our strict observance transcends superficial law and order, it remains a posture. Again, the sisters have a greater openness to dealing with conflict—a further seed of strength confirming that our collaboration is a godsend.

At the same time, where there are seeds of strength, we cannot escape weeds, which are often potential seeds of strength either neglected or not developed. We just need to plant them in good soil and care for them.

We often sow our greatest seeds of strength in the good earth of the church itself, by staying close to her in our vow of Obedience. For instance, if we do more than pay lip service to her post-conciliar opening to non-Catholics, then, when a visiting prelate of another denomination, such as an Archbishop of Canterbury emeritus, suggests that contemplative retreats for young adults are good for the church, we will not build a wall by asking, as we have done, “For which church exactly, would that be good?”

Likewise, to cultivate the seeds of strength the church has enjoined on us since Vatican II, we will foster reconciliation with other religions when the occasion arises, including with our Elder Brethren in the faith. Instead, we choose liturgical readings that openly accuse our Lord’s fellow Jews of deicide (1 Thess. 2:14–16, the same verse cited by a participant in a recent U.S. commission on religious liberty, before she was removed as disruptive). By such choices we keep unknown numbers of visitors and prospective newcomers away, shooting ourselves in the foot. If we care to thrive and respect our church, our community, and our visitors, we can simply make better choices—and make our Peace greeting more meaningful.

As we also seed greater generosity to serve up-and-coming generations undergoing great need, more than one house dialogue has voiced the need to learn from communities that are flourishing, such as Vitorchiano in Italy, which keeps making new foundations around the world at a time when it is unthinkable for many to do so.

At Gethsemani, we explored the mystery of Vitorchiano’s flourishing as part of the Experientia program. After contacting its superior emeritus M. Christiana, we included part of her “Living Wisdom” study in our contemporary readings for Experientia. A prime teaching of hers—and a true seed of strength—is that our mission today must go against our traditional grain, by opening the contemplative life to the world, which needs it more than ever. Thanks be to God, we are forging ahead in that direction, with the Lay Cistercian movement in full swing.

An initiative currently at the stage of prayer and hope in one of our groups is the potential sharing of the Lay Cistercian charism with a new generation of seekers after meaning and purpose. While it takes concerted discernment to discover if it will turn out to be another new seed of growth in the great Cistercian family, as we discuss it, we notice we are sharpening our ability to hold synodal conversations that can be challenging.

Another seed of potential growth refers to the Merton legacy and how guests to his abbey of Gethsemani, including the occasional superior general and visitors discerning a vocation, at times wonder how little we make of it, when so many acclaim him as a wisdom teacher. Might our reticence reflect a judgmental stance towards a brother with clay feet?

Others are intrigued by the predominance of masculine language in our readings and hymns at liturgy, which their parishes have long since made more inclusive. Still, notwithstanding modern developments, the issue can be more nuanced than we know, as when the Prologue of the gospel of John is said to have originated as a wisdom hymn to Sophia, Holy Wisdom, which allegedly got changed into the masculine Logos of “the Word was made flesh.”

A final seed of potential growth out of the crisis we considered is the study Monastic Visions for the 21^st Century, commissioned by Cistercian Publications as a wide-ranging guide for just this time; edited by our Brother Patrick Hart, with contributions by Michael Casey and other monastic and Lay notables.

In the context of praying for vocations, ora et labora is asking the Lord of the harvest for laborers, while working as his hands and feet on earth to prepare the ground and grow the seeds that make it holy.