Eastertide

 








Dom Bruno & Dom Elias send their greetings from the garden.






 

 

 


Traditionally Pussy Willows take the place of palms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 


Dom Bruno, Dom Lukas and Dom Josef

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


        The Mandatum - the washing of the feet
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 




The wall conceals the renovation of the choir.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Dom Josef and Dom Rudolf receive the ministry of lector.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dom Josef receives the Lectionary




 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Propst Bernhard blesses Dom Lukas and Dom Hugo as part of their installation as acolytes.

 

 

 

 




The new acolytes

 

 

 

 






Behold, the Lamb of God.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 




Propst Bernhard und Dom Reinhard distribute Holy Communion.




 

 

 

 

 



St. Paul's Catholic Church on a sunny day.
 

The return of the Augustinian Canons to Norway is well underway.  Since last fall, Dom Alois and Dom Clemens have been working hard last fall to organize our residence, located in the neighborhood of the University of Bergen and across from the Nygårdsparken, and to lead St. Paul's parish, where Dom Markus, our Novice Master was pastor, Dom Matthias a curate and Dom Simon, an altar server and parishioner.   


The townhouse sits on a ridge, which gives it a spectacular view of Bergen. At night, the hills glitter with the lights of this city of 230,000 inhabitants.  Formerly an eye clinic, run by religious sisters, it now serves as the center of the canons in Norway.
 


The Chapel at the residence of the canons.

 

 

Bergen is well suited for our first undertaking abroad.  It is the second largest  Norwegian city, offering numerous opportunities for cultural and educational enrichment as well as abundant pastoral work.  The fortunes of this city have long been tied to the sea.  On account of the Gulf Stream, Bergen enjoys a relatively mild, if rainy, climate for it northern latitude (take a look on your map, it is really far north!  Juneau, Alaska is located further south than Bergen!).  The ocean teams with fish, especially cod.  Plentiful fish drew the merchants of the Hanseatic League, an international trade association, to Bergen in the Middle Ages.  They established their own German speaking enclave, the Bryggen, which played an important role in the life of Bergen for centuries.

 

Bergen also had a royal residence, which one may visit to this day, and was home to bishops, priests and religious.  The canons had a house in Bergen up until the 15th Century, when it disappeared, leaving behind no explanation for its demise.  When the Danish king adopted Lutheranism, he imposed it on his Norwegian subjects in 1537.  However, in spite of severe punishments for Catholic practices, the faith continued to survive until about 1700.

 

A splendid exhibition on the Christian art of Norway can be visited at the Art History Museum, just a few minutes from St. Paul's.  This collection has some of the finest explanations of the interplay between art and the Catholic faith anywhere in the world.  The collection in particular celebrates the genius of the Norwegian people's expression of their Catholic faith, especially in wood carvings and church architecture.  The exhibition chronicles the evangelization of Norway, the struggle against paganism and the triumph and life of the Catholic Church up to Protestant Reformation.  There are also by way of contrast interesting examples of Lutheran and Pietist art as well as a noted collection of Russian icons.
 

Norway to this day remains a overwhelmingly Lutheran country.  The state church is still the Lutheran Church.  The Catholic faith was illegal until 1843, when a parish in Oslo was finally permitted.  Shortly thereafter parishes were established in Alta, Tromsø and Bergen.  The Catholic Church in Norway, then as now, is largely a church of immigrants, and foreigners.  It was therefore through the good works of many religious sisters, who ran hospitals and schools, the prominence of certainly Catholic Norwegian writers, e.g. Sigrid Undset and Hallvard Rieber-Mohn, O.P., and the common cause Catholics and Protestants made against the Quisling regime during World War Two that has earned Catholics a place in Norwegian society.

The Catholic Church in Norway is still quite small, numbering some 44,000 registered members and consisting of 31 parishes.  Foreign born Catholics amount to 62% of the faithful in Norway.  This gives the Church in Norway both challenges and possibilities.
 


Sunday Mass at St. Paul's.

 

These challenges and possibilities are embodied by the parishioners of St. Paul's in Bergen, Norway's third largest parish.  In addition to Norwegians, many of whom are themselves converts or children of converts, there are Catholics from Vietnam, Chile, Sri Lanka, Poland, the Philippine, indeed from every continent of the earth.  Currently Mass is celebrated in Norwegian, English, Vietnamese, Spanish and Tamil.  Additionally a very successful parish school shares the parish grounds and mission of forming a new generation of Catholics.  The clergy of St. Paul's, who reflect the diversity of the parish, are likewise responsible for Masses elsewhere in this geographically expansive parish.  Masses are celebrated for Catholics in more remote areas, like Voss, a hour or so to the east by car, and the students at the United World College, which lays a good three hours north of Bergen.

 


Dom Clemens and the Catholic students of the United World College.

 

The pastoral opportunities in Norway are enormous.  The Catholic Church has again been given the chance to preach the Gospel.  Much good work needs to be done there so that Norwegians may know the joy and peace of the Risen Lord.  There are of course challenges, but these beckon us to go beyond our self-imposed boundaries and to risk all for love.

 

Let us pray for the success of our new house in Norway, for further vocations from Norway and for a growth in fervor and zeal for the faithful of St. Paul's and the Church in Norway.

 

St. Olav pray for us!

St. Leopold pray for us!

 

 

 
The choir stalls of Stift Klosterneuburg
 

The openness to the world and the internationality of the Augustinian canons has marked Stift Klosterneuburg in many ways.  The old historical records and chronicles demonstrate that Klosterneuburg possesses a rich tradition as a meeting place for Europe.  Today that continues in the composition of the community as well as the architectural and artistic patrimony of the Stift.

This European dimension of the Stift finds expression in an exemplary and especially striking manner in the resigned imperial oratory and choir stalls of Emperor Charles VI.  Begun in 1723, these were not part of the monarch's grand vision to build an imperial residence along the lines of the Escorial.  Nevertheless they clearly indicate the link between the patron saint of Austria and its ruling house.  This link was given visible definition in the execution of this ambitious program by imperial engineer, Matthias Steinl.

In the choir and the imperial oratory, prayers for the entire empire were offered.  As reminders of this task, the coats of arms of the numerous cities, provinces and lands of the empire were displayed.  These crests included not only those of the Austrian heartland, but also those lands which came under the rule of the Habsburgs down the centuries.  After all, this empire had not grown as a state, but rather as a collection of lands united by the Habsburg family, who acquired these territories by marriage, inheritance and war.  The result was a political structure of many peoples, languages, religions and cultures, which reflected the diversity of Europe.  Under Emperor Charles VI, the empire reached the zenith of its power.

 


A Multinational Stift in a Multinational State

Almost as international as the Habsburg empire was Stift Klosterneuburg itself.  While many Propsts of the Stift did come from Vienna and Lower Austria (Niederösterreich), it is likewise true that a good portion also came from Germany and the provinces of the Bohemian crown (Bohemia and Moravia).  The latter includes Floridus Johannes Leeb of Nikolsburg/Mikulov,  after whom the district "Floridsdorf" is named on account of his commitment to social development. 

With the canons themselves, this internationality was even more strongly evident.  For a long time many members came to Klosterneuburg from Bohemian crown lands and this fact earned the Stift in former times the disparaging title "the Bohemian Stift."

Even more international were the artists, who worked in or for the Stift: the creator of the Verdun Altar come from what is today France; the baroque renovation of the Stift was designed by Donato Felice d'Allio of Milan; the fresco of the Assumption of Our Lady in the church were painted by Johann Michael Rottmayr of Salzburg, which in those days was not part of the empire; the painter Rueland Frueauf d. j. was a Bavarian; the mighty figures located in the unfinished sala terrena were made by Lorenzo Mattielli of Vicenza; among the collection of the ivory carvings there are Byzantine works and the so-called writing set of St. Leopold comes from Egypt...

This list could easily be expanded.  The manuscripts of the library alone bear witness to the ties between the Stift and the rest of Europe, especially between the Stift and Italy, France and England, which have continued since the Middle Ages.

 



One of Lorenzo Mattielli's Titans from the Sala Terrena

 


The "International" Stift in the New Millennium

Moreover today the community includes members from different countries.  Besides the Austrians and Sudeten Germans, there are Dutch, Norwegian, Vietnamese and American members living in the Stift and serving in the parishes.  Also the approximate 200 employees of the Stift and its business enterprises make up a great international team.

Through the Austrian Congregation, the community has contacts with South Tyrol and through the Lateran Congregation its reach is worldwide.  International contacts are likewise fostered on both the economic and cultural levels.  The Stift likewise maintains inter-religious contacts.  The Protestant pastor of Klosterneuburg spoke at the opening of the heating plant; the Vienna mosque is built on land which formerly belonged to the Stift; as a result the Stift's charitable efforts to assist Romanian street children a relationship with the Orthodox monks of Sambata abbey has been established; and the Lead Cantor of the Israeli cultural association of Vienna sang at the opening of a photo exhibition on Jewish life in Austria, hosted by the Stift's wine shop.

Propst Bernhard emphasized at this occasion that the Stift has always understood itself as a place of encounter and it still does so today.  A look through the guestbook of the Prelature shows this clearly: whether the Queen of England or the President of the United States, whether ambassadors of the former East-bloc countries, Nobel prize winners or delegations of government officials, all were welcome guests.  In the final analysis, this tradition of encounter and dialogue is not just one task among many, but one rightly suited for the future of a new Europe.