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
Traditionis custodes and faithful opportunities
The Extraordinary Form of the Mass can offer a beautiful combination of silence and reverent song that conveys a strong sense of divine mystery, especially in such a frenetic and noisy culture as our own.
Nourished Among the Mountains
May we all live “among the mountains” with our hearts fixed on the summit — God himself, as he invites us to continual conversion, to continual ascent, casting down every false peak as an idol and staying hungry for the glorious view we hope to enjoy with him in heaven.
Edith Stein — philosopher, convert, martyr, saint
The extraordinary but relatively unknown philosopher and martyr also known by her religious name of Theresa Benedicta of the Cross.
St. Joseph and Father’s Day
On Father’s Day in this year dedicated to St. Joseph, let’s pray for the men in our lives, that every day they might grow more like St. Joseph.
A Word to Enkindle: Social justice
I’ve come to realize that the phrase “social justice” provokes very different reactions in Catholics, often according to their knowledge of the Catholic tradition and to their political sympathies. My sense is that some Catholics are very frightened by it. So, what should we think when our schools and parishes use this phrase? What could it mean?
A Word to Enkindle: The path of life in Psalm 16
The first Christian Bible study was held Easter Sunday on the road to Emmaus. Cleopas and his anonymous traveling companion are wallowing in despair about the death of Jesus, to such an extent that they are fleeing Jerusalem moments after hearing reports that the tomb was empty. Jesus, unrecognized on the road, joins the conversation and steers it toward a specific goal: teaching his downtrodden disciples, then as now, how to read the Bible.
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