GIFT OF PLACE
Our founders were called lovers of the place, and so, eminently, are we.
These are our acres, our landscape, and our home. Cistercians take a vow that binds them to a place and a particular community. Our full name is the Monastery of Our Lady of the Santa Rita Mountains. According to Cistercian tradition, a community is dedicated to the Mother of God under the title of its place. Our place is a Southwestern mesa, horizoned by mountains and their graceful foothills.
A place teaches. Our mountain landscape speaks of a stripped and simple and utterly beautiful God.
A place contains. It keeps us faithful to the inner work for which we have come.
A place expands. Our hearts grow wider as the months and years push apart the confining walls of self-interest.
The particular place into which the call of God has inserted us is important. Daily relationship to our land crafts the journey and the person. The Santa Rita Cistercians live their vocation under the wide sky of the American Southwest.
