Publications
The Continuum: Cistercian’s bi-annual magazine for family, friends and alumni of Cistercian
When The Continuum was first published as the newsletter for Cistercian alumni, the editors wanted to indicate by the title that continuity links the life of a student with his life after Cistercian. Alumni were still interested in the school, its faculty and its programs, and they wanted to keep up with the lives of their fellow alums. Every student was marked forever by the people they knew at Cistercian.
Today, the need for connection has grown. We want to connect the school’s current families and students with Cistercian students who have already graduated and their families. Likewise, we want alumni to maintain ties, not only with their former teachers and classmates, but also with the new generation of devoted Cistercian faculty and students.
As with all relationships, we must work at preserving and building the bond. We can lose touch with even our dearest friends when we no longer share activities, interests, concerns, and goals. Alumni go to their various colleges, pursue their chosen degrees and professions, and raise their own families. Families once so close because they chaperoned a party together after a football game or cheered the Hawks on during a basketball game can find themselves searching for the occasion to keep friendships going once their sons graduate from Cistercian. The Continuum, we hope, will be one such ‘occasion’ for the entire Cistercian family.
Visit the Continuum Archives to read more.
Reflections
Cistercian’s award-winning literary magazine is produced by a club of students who are passionate about creative expression. This extra-curricular group meets twice a week to gather creative projects from the entire school—from the imaginative tales and drawings of Middle Schoolers to the sophisticated poetry and artwork of upperclassmen. Our tradition is to encourage every student to submit work for publication in Reflections, and every student gets a copy of the printed magazine in August. This year, however, we’re starting a new tradition: posting a digital copy of the magazine online.
For our graduating seniors who might otherwise miss seeing their literary or artistic talents showcased, and for any student who may want to share a published story with distant relatives, we hope you enjoy this online version of Reflections.
A Word to Enkindle
A Word to Enkindle: Spiritual Direction
"Spiritual Direction" by Fr. John for The Texas Catholic. A healthy spiritual life is like a docile and trusting child happy to grow under a mother and father. In this image, we all need “spiritual direction” like we all need mothers and fathers, men and women ready...
A Word to Enkindle: Psychology and Care of the Soul
I am not a psychologist in the modern technical sense of the term. I have no training in matters dealing with the brain or nervous system, and I possess only a rudimentary knowledge of human biochemistry. But I do love uncovering the etymologies of words, and therefore I can say that I aim to be a psychologist in the original sense of the Greek word psyche: the animating principle of the whole person, which we translate as “soul.” Saint Gregory the Great emphatically declares, in his influential “Pastoral Rule,” that the proper nurturing, challenging, and encouraging of souls is the great duty of priests, since “the care of souls is the art of arts.”
A Word to Enkindle: The way of nature
Children are increasingly growing up among adults in politics, entertainment and academia who encourage them, even well before puberty, to adopt sexual profiles that conflict with Church teaching, such as transgenderism. This is confusing for those who trust the Biblical understanding of God’s design for human sexuality, according to which the only normative sexual relationship is the one between a husband and a wife who lovingly unite their complementary identities for lasting friendship, collaboration and new life.
A Word to Enkindle: True Enlightenment about the End
by Fr. Thomas for the Texas Catholic
A Word to Enkindle: Can the Church Save Marriage?
Marriage is not a private achievement but an adventure unfolding under God.
A Word to Enkindle: Grace at Work in Infant Baptism
The Church regularly commemorates the baptism of Jesus in the heart of the Christmas season, just three weeks after his birth.
A Word to Enkindle: Judgment
In Advent we meditate on the coming of Christ. Traditionally, we contemplate not only his coming at Christmas, but also his second coming at the end of time – his coming “in glory to judge the living and the dead” (as we say in the Nicene Creed).
A Word to Enkindle: The Noble Truth of Advent
Christians look to the light of Christ, the true light that knows no darkness or extinguishing, to irradiate the gloom of their own suffering.
A Word to Enkindle: Stacy Trasancos: Chemist, Mother and Synthesizer of Faith and Science
I recently read a great book about Catholicism and science, “Particles of Faith” by Stacy A. Trasancos. It seems suited for anyone interested in the topic.
A Word to Enkindle: Cyrus and the Lord of History
If Cyrus the pagan could be an unknowing evangelist for the Lord, the ultimate sovereign of history, then we must trust that Jesus can lead us, exiles in this valley of tears, to a beautiful end and ultimate triumph beyond anything we could imagine at present.