‘Each community of the order and all the monks are dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother and Symbol of the Church in the order of faith, love and perfect union with Christ’

– The Constitutions and Statutes C.3.4

The brothers seek to imitate Mary in doing God’s will by offering their own unique “Yes” to the Lord. No one was more faithful to Jesus than Mary. That is why the brothers have a particular dedication to her. Mary has been an integral part of the Church since her beginning and she has guided the Cistercian Order for over 900 years.

Mary, joy and hope of religious life

It is especially in Mary, Mother of God and Mother of the Church, that religious life comes to understand itself most deeply and finds its sign of certain hope (cf. LG 68). She, who was… called from among God’s people to bear God himself most intimately and to give him to the world, was consecrated totally by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. She was the Ark of the new covenant itself. The handmaid of the Lord in the poverty of the anawim, the Mother of fair love from Bethlehem to Calvary and beyond, the obedient Virgin whose “yes” to God changed our history, the missionary hurrying to Hebron, the one who was sensitive to needs at Cana, the steadfast witness at the foot of the cross, the center of unity which held the young Church together in its expectation of the Holy Spirit, Mary showed throughout her life all those values to which religious consecration is directed. She is the Mother of religious in being Mother of him who was consecrated and sent, and in her fiat and magnificat religious life finds the totality of its surrender to and the thrill of its joy in the consecratory action of God. – from the Church document ‘Essential elements in the Church’s teaching on religious life’