III. Author Dom Hubert Van Zeller bio
Father in military service stationed in Alexandria Egypt while the country was a British protectorate
Born 1905 privately educated until nine
9 – 18 yrs Benedictine Abbey at Downside, England
“The Benedictine order was one of the biggest in Britain before the Reformation and the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII from 1536 onwards. After they returned to England in the 19th century and the English Benedictine Congregation was refounded, the monks’ focus turned to parish work and founding schools. The English Benedictines have had a history since then of educating the children of England’s most influential and wealthiest Catholic families…”[1]
Worked for a year at a Liverpool cotton firm gap year
1924 Entered novitiate of Benedictines
Struggled with his vocation, leaving briefly in the 1930’s for a stricter Carthusian Monastery at Parkminister.
He returned to the Benedictine Monastery[2] devoted his time to retreats and writing on spiritual matters
Talented sculptor (eye for detail)
Friend of Oxford educated Ronald Knox & Evelyn Waugh
Died 1984
TS for his corpus of writing, Zeller described his own writing about the Faith as an effort to use the “idiom of every day to urge people of every day to embark upon the spirituality of every day.”[3]
Education so far removed, an excellent Benedictine order to educate in the faith, is gone.
Order of monks teach the children, lost so much, behooves mothers home life, interior spiritual, reconquer intuitions, eye detail, dearth of authentic catholic presence
Catholic Church has left education, police force, nursing, hospitals. All of these institutions of sound founding of civil society. Church abdicated these places.
Begin again in homes, sound instruction to make homes fortresses of spirituality.
Patrimony spiritual has been so depleted, even if did not have formation.
Don’t necessarily need a majority of the people understanding of truths of things, those who do not reap the benefit the life witness conversation.
So impoverished, the ability for those more susceptible or weaker in some fashion, the guardrail, those people are in a tough.
Another high school girl, Catholic school suicide. Not shocked anymore. Tragic.
Upside BXVI, spoke of true power of creative minority bring about a revival.
Our Lord never works with Goliath, but David, in the home small things. Absolute faith what we do is not trivial.
Motherhood is under constant attack, Satan hates mothers.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/12/benedictine-christopher-jamison-abbot-president-order-faces-sex-abuse-inquiry accessed April 13, 2023
[2] https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/another-monastery-closes-but-it-doesnt-have-to-be-this-way/ accessed April 13, 2023 for current statuss of the Abbey
[3] Zeller 94