Monday, August 01, 2005
MONASTERY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
Ted Meisner lists his ministry address as Macon, Georgia and indicates this ministry of La Ermita was inaugurated on December 27, 1994, when he rededicated his life to Sophia, the Holy Spirit, before the Abbot of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery.
Approximately 75 miles away in Conyers, Georgia is Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery, a monastery of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (O.C.S.O.) more commonly known as Trappists. This facility is associated with Gethsemene Abbey, Thomas Merton's Kentucky monastery. According to its website, it is "wholly orientated to a contemplative life of prayer." Fr. Basil Pennington was the sixth abbot of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit, who served from 2000 to 2002, before retiring to St. Joseph Abbey. He died on June 3, 2005. Fr. Basil is best known for his Centering Prayer workshops and retreats. (Source: Monastic Interreligious Dialogue website) His is one of the endorsements on the cover of MEDITATIONS ON THE TAROT.
There are Lay Cistercians at Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery. I wondered if Ted Meisner might be one of them and emailed the Abbey to inquire. Fr. Thomas Francis responded, saying
I am a personal friend of Ted's for over 20 some years. NO, he is NOT associated with this monastery in any formal way. He only came here to make his dedication, and I was one of those attending. All I know of his past was that he was a member of the Resurrection Fathers, a Polish community, and had been a missionary in Bolivia.
Fr. Francis is the author of ANGELS: FROM BODY-GUARDS TO SPIRIT-DIRECTORS. According to this linked article at the Trappist.net website, Fr. Francis "named" his "own angel, about two years ago, after studying Chapter 7 of the Book of Wisdom in the Catholic Bible. It contains 21 adjectives for the Wisdom of God. When I heard a voice say, 'all these describe me, your Guiding Angel', I named her Sophia from the Greek word for wisdom."
The article also contains a brief bio. of Fr. Francis which indicates:
In 1951, Br. Francis entered the Monastery of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Georgia and went on to Solemn Profession and Ordination to the priesthood in 1958....
Fr. Francis' interest in the angels really picked up in 1992 when he had an "angelic experience" while reading Chapters 6 through 9 of the Book of Wisdom. From that experience finally came his recent booklet on angels.
The following website ALSO gives Fr. Thomas Francis' biography. At the bottom of the website is a link for another page in the website, Maria Rosa Mystica, where you can see the dancing roses above the head of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Also in this website you can read a message from Fr. Thomas Francis about the weeping statue of the Blessed Mother which he authenticated in the home of Ken and Joan Holland.
Joan Holland is a seer. Her story can be read here where she indicates that Fr. Tom Francis at the Holy Spirit Monastery is her spiritual director. There is also a letter there from Fr. Thomas Francis confirming this.
Since Fr. Francis indicated in his email to me that Ted Meisner "was a member of the Resurrection Fathers, a Polish community", I found a history of this order at the St. Jerome's University in the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario. There you can read:
The Congregation of the Resurrection traces its origins to February 17, 1836 when a small group of men took up residence on rue Notre Dame de Champs, 11 in Paris where they began to live a common life. Their leader and "elder brother" was Bogdan Janski. Janski had come to Paris from Poland on a government scholarship to study law and economics. He quickly became convinced of the need for social reform but he also fell away from his faith and into a life of licentious debauchery.
In 1830 rebellion broke out in Poland against the Russian tsarist regime but was quickly crushed and Janski found himself inundated by a flood of Polish emigrés among whom were Peter Semenenko and Jerome Kajsiewicz who were destined to become his closest disciples and collaborators.
Encouraged by the examples of Fr. John Lacordaire, Fr. Felicité Lammenais and the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz, Janski struggled to regain his faith which he finally did, making his confession and receiving communion in January 1835.
George Weigel also mentions this order in his book WITNESS TO HOPE:
In the weeks after his inaugural Mass, John Paul II regularly broke out of the gilded cage that was now his home and office. On October 29, he went by helicopter to the Marian shrine at Mentorella, cared for by the Resurrectionist Fathers, a group of priests whose nineteenth-century founding was inspired by Adam Mickiewicz. As word of the Pope's visit spread, thousands of people flocked to the shrine from the neighboring areas, John Paul II apologized to the local authorities for causing such trouble, and then explained why he had come. Mentorella, he said, was a place that had "helped me a great deal to pray" during his visits to Rome. Now that he was a Roman, he wanted to come back, because "prayer...[is] the first task and almost the first signal of the Pope, just as it is the first condition of his service in the Church and in the world."(p. 271)
Thus the investigation that opened with Adam Mickiewicz and the Sabbatian/Frankist influence on Mickiewicz, and Mickiewicz's influence on Pope John Paul II, now comes full circle with Adam Mickiewicz's founding of the order that Ted Meisner at one time (currently?) belonged to. Meisner has developed a Sophiology which he is passing along to immigrant farm workers. Is it the same Sophiology that Vladimir Soloviev, who was influenced by Mickiewicz, also espoused? Is it the theology of MEDITATIONS ON THE TAROT which Basil Pennington sanctioned as did Hans Uhrs von Balthasar? Is it the theology of the Gnostic Cathar-Albigensian church... the theology of Jules Doinel's Gnostic Catholic Church with its dedication to the "New Age of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit"? Questions that are begging for an answer.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
