Spencer Trappist Abbey

St. Joseph's Abbey, Spencer

The Trappist Spencer Abbey (Latin Abbatia Beatae Mariae de Sancto Joseph apud Spencer , English St. Joseph's Abbey ) is an American monastery ( St. Joseph's Abbey ) in Spencer, Worcester County (Massachusetts) , Diocese of Worcester . From 1901 to 1950 the monastery was under the name Our Lady of the Valley in Valley Falls, Rhode Island .

history

Petit Clairvaux, a Canadian monastery in Tracadie, Nova Scotia , had suffered so many setbacks (primarily from fire) by the end of the 19th century that it decided to give up the place and start over in the United States. So it came in Lonsdale, Cumberland (Rhode Island) , Providence County , Diocese of Providence , the foundation of the priory Our Lady of the Valley ("Maria Tal", the valley of the Blackstone River is meant ), which in 1945 was elevated to an abbey. When this monastery was also destroyed by fire in 1950, 80 monks moved to Alta Crest Farms in Spencer, Massachusetts , and St. Joseph's Abbey was founded there , which (under the energetic Abbot Edmund Futterer, 1901-1984) until 1957 grew to 186 heads. In 1969, the monks who died in Our Lady of the Valley were reburied after Spencer, thus strengthening the continuity and identity of both monasteries. From Spencer and his abbot Thomas Keating (together with Basil Pennington ) the meditation form of the centering prayer (prayer of the collection) went out.