Programmes

Fidelity to the demands of monastic conversion requires some form of ongoing formation that will last during the whole monastic life, and that can be adapted to each one's needs and potentials. — Ratio Institutionis, 47

Three programmes to assist in ongoing community formation, structured around the history and heritage of the Order, have been developed.

Exordium

In 1998 the Order celebrated the 900^th^ anniversary of the foundation of Cîteaux. The General Chapter of 1996 had requested that a programme of reflection and study be prepared which could be followed in each community of the Order. The aim of the programme was to encourage each monk and nun to a greater familiarity with the primitive texts of our Order and to make it possible for communities to enter into dialogue with our Founders with a view to discerning God’s will made manifest in the signs of the times.

The programme that was offered to the communities was called Exordium: A Program of Reflection and Study on the Values of the Cistercian Reform. Each monk and nun of the Order was to receive a personal copy of the primitive texts: the Exordium Parvum, the Charter of Charity and the Exordium Cistercii. Together with the Rule of St Benedict and our Constitutions and Statutes, these texts, which are the fundamental expressions of our Cistercian patrimony, formed the basis of the programme which appeared in ten monthly units, beginning in January 1998.

Exordium programme

Observantiae

In 1999 the Abbot General suggested that another programme might be developed and offered to the whole Order as a continuation of Exordium, this time focussing on the movements of reform in the Cistercian Order up to 1892. Originally a project of the FSO region, the programme Observantiae was prepared by a group of monks and nuns belonging to different branches of the Cistercian Family, under the direction of the Central Secretary for Formation and published in 2002.

The programme studies the various stages of reform in the Cistercian Order up to the creation of the OCSO at the end of the nineteenth century. It comprises a prologue and three parts:

  • Prologue : the link between the “Observances” and the origin of Cîteaux

  • First part (13^th^ to 16^th^ centuries): Necessary adaptations in a wished-for continuation.

  • Second part (17^th^ to 18^th^ centuries): Reformers searching an authentic renewal.

  • Third part (18^th^ to 19^th^ centuries): Growing diversity in an often heroic fidelity.

Each unity offers doctrinal contents, to which is added a questionnaire to help reflection and interior development of the values which are presented.

Observantiae programme

Experientia

This programme began as an initiative of the Central Secretary for Formation in response to a question posed at the General Chapter of 2014: “How can we promote an ‘integral mystical formation’”? It was proposed to devise a simple programme for the ongoing formation of sisters and brothers of all ages that would provide an opportunity to return to our Cistercian roots, to deepen our sense of identity, and to encourage individual study and lectio.

The Central Commission of 2016 encouraged the project and proposed that Father Michael Casey of Tarrawarra Abbey be given responsibility for developing the programme with the assistance of a working group. The Experientia programme was approved at the General Chapter of 2017 as a project for the communities of the Order, aimed at enabling monks and nuns of today to reflect on their lived experience of monastic life and then to confront that experience with texts chosen from the Cistercian and monastic tradition.

Experientia programme