From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   Jesus carries our burdens with us   
      
   Jesus also says his "burden is light". There's a story of a man who   
   once met a boy carrying a smaller crippled lad on his back. "That's a   
   heavy load you are carrying there," exclaimed the man. "He ain't   
   heavy; he's my brother!" responded the boy. No burden is too heavy   
   when it's given in love and carried in love. When we yoke our lives   
   with Jesus, he also carries our burdens with us and gives us his   
   strength to follow in his way of love. Do you know the joy of resting   
   in Jesus' presence and walking daily with him along the path he has   
   for you?   
      
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   April 17th - St. Stephen Harding, Abbot of Citeaux,   
      
   d. 1134   
   ST STEPHEN HARDING, the Englishman who helped to found the monastery   
   of Citeaux, and who actually framed the Cistercian constitution, was   
   educated at the abbey of Sherborne in Dorsetshire. Nothing is known of   
   his parentage or family. He seems to have left the abbey without any   
   very definite idea of becoming a monk, and went first to Scotland and   
   then to Paris, probably to study and to see something of the world.   
   With a friend, he made a journey to Rome which was, in the true sense,   
   a pilgrimage, for we are told that the two young men used every day to   
   recite the whole psalter together. On the way back, as they passed   
   through a forest in Burgundy, they came upon a collection of rough   
   huts, inhabited by monks who were living a life of poverty, their time   
   being divided between prayer and the hard manual work which provided   
   them with vegetables. Their self-abnegation and austerity made an   
   immediate appeal to Stephen, and, leaving his friend to continue his   
   journey alone, he remained at Molesmes and threw in his lot with the   
   monks. In St. Robert the abbot and St. Alberic the prior he found   
   kindred spirit and all rejoiced in their holy fellowship of prayer and   
   mortification as well as in a poverty which sometimes amounted to   
   absolute want. After some years, however, it seemed to Stephen and to   
   some of the others that the spirit of the place had departed; and in   
   1098 Abbot Robert accompanied by Alberic, Stephen and four others,   
   went to Lyons and, in an interview with Archbishop Hugh, who was also   
   the papal legate in France, the applied for permission to leave   
   Molesmes. He at once appreciated their aims and gave them the   
   authorization in a document the terms of which have been preserved.   
   St. Robert released the brethren from their vows of obedience to him,   
   and he and 20 of the monks left Molesmes.   
      
   It is not certain whether they allowed themselves to be led by chance,   
   or whether they had already selected as their future home the   
   loneliest and most uncultivated spot they knew. In any case they found   
   their way to Citeaux, then a gloomy place in the heart of the forest,   
   far removed from any human habitation. Rainald, the lord of Beaune,   
   willingly gave them the site, and Odo, Duke of Burgundy, who had heard   
   of them from Archbishop Hugh, sent some workmen to assist them in   
   building their monastery.   
      
   On March 21, 1098, the new abbey was inaugurated, with Robert as   
   abbot, Alberic as prior, and Stephen as sub-prior, but the following   
   year the monks of Molesmes, finding that they fared very badly without   
   their former abbot, petitioned Rome that Robert should be sent back to   
   them. He had never really been a leader in the migration to Citeaux   
   and he seems to have been glad to return to Molesmes, to judge from an   
   allusion in a contemporary letter to Robert’s “wonted fickleness”.   
      
   Alberic now became abbot of Citeaux with Stephen as prior, but the   
   troubles of the new foundation were only beginning. It took time to   
   convert the virgin forest into arable land, and the brethren were   
   often reduced to great straits. Nevertheless they kept a good heart   
   and continued to serve God according to the strict rule of St.   
   Benedict, reinforced by usages of their own.   
      
   In 1109 Bl. Alberic died and Stephen was elected abbot in his place.   
   His first act was to decree that magnates should no longer be   
   permitted to hold their courts at Citeaux--thus apparently cutting off   
   the abbey’s greatest earthly support and alienating for a time Odo’s   
   successor, Duke Hugh. His 2nd measure was even more severe. He forbade   
   the use of anything costly in the service of God: there must be   
   nothing which tended to pomp. Chalices were to be silver gilt,   
   chasubles of good common stuff, and so forth. But the immediate result   
   of these regulations was to discourage visitors and to dry up still   
   further the supply of novices--already a source of anxiety. The day   
   came when starvation stared them in the face, but the monks remained   
   loyal. Then the abbot made a great venture of faith. He bade one of   
   the brethren go to the market of Vézelay and there buy three horses   
   and three wagons, which he was to bring back laden with the   
   necessaries of life. When the monk asked for the money required, the   
   abbot replied he had only threepence. The brother obediently started   
   forth, and upon his arrival in Vézelay told his errand to a friend who   
   lived there. The good man immediately rushed to the bedside of a rich   
   neighbour who was dying, and induced him to give a sum which covered   
   all the purchases required.   
      
   But their numbers still diminished. A mysterious disease appeased   
   amongst them which carried off one monk after another, until even   
   Stephen’s stout heart quailed before the prospect of the future, and   
   he began to wonder if he were really doing the will of God. Addressing   
   a dying monk the abbot asked him to bring back word from beyond the   
   grave to let him know the divine will--if God would allow it. Soon   
   after his death the monk appeared to Stephen as he was out in the   
   fields, and assured him not only that his way of life was pleasing to   
   God but that recruits would soon come who, “like bees swarming in   
   haste and overflowing the hive, would fly away and spread themselves   
   through many parts of the world.”   
      
   Thus assured, Stephen was satisfied to wait for the fulfilment of the   
   prophecy. Certainly no one could have foreseen how dramatically that   
   answer would come.   
      
   At the monastery gates appeared one day a troop of 30 men, who   
   announced to the astonished porter that they had come to crave   
   admittance and to offer themselves to the religious life. They were   
   all of noble lineage, mostly also in their early prime, and they had   
   as their leader and spokesman a young man of singular beauty whose   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)