The Faber Institute is committed to the “awakening” of souls in an age when the existence of the soul and its particular capacities and formidable powers is being overlooked.
We do this by teaching.
We do this by activating in people an interest in discovering their depth and vision within themselves, becoming aware of their inner life, and who learn to test what they find therein against the proven wisdom of those who are greater than they are.
We do this by introducing them to, and then teaching them how, to read profound texts and by this to grow in friendship with the authors, the profound people of our articulate human past. We emphasize a care for words; we highlight disciplined and eloquent ways of expressing truth; we revere those who are wise.
We do this by opening the holy Scriptures, showing how these texts when attentively read, over time, reveal the divine life and activities of the holy Trinity. We want familiarity with God. We further pursue this end by reading the works of theologians and philosophers, of mystics and the saints, and of the poets and painters and novelists and songwriters.
We do this through the central habits of the Institute: Spiritual Direction, spiritual conversation (in person; texts; written letters), wise counsel, the Notes from the Wayside, the Advent and Lenten Meditations, through the demanding intellectual and affective formation of The Night School and The Faber Sessions, and through Retreats (half-day or full-day or multiple days).
We do this through the Director’s extensive research into the artifacts of the Great Tradition (the Scriptures; literature; hymns; paintings; etc.), sharing the fruits of his research in the monthly publication of the Letters to Peregrinus; in classes taught; in talks given; in books written; and in retreats conceived, built, and directed. We make available the fruit of our works through the Faber podcasts and by publishing them to the Faber Institute’s website.
We do the hard work of friendship among those we go. We prioritize this, because we know that truth can be received without distortion only when it is revealed in a context of friendship, which we have established with those whom we teach. Truth and trust are linked.
We do this by a daily habit of going out to seek friendship, establishing it artfully with people religious or nonreligious or formerly religious, with people of all ages, with people from all Christian denominations, and with people of different cultures. We know that the goal is not knowing a lot but becoming, through time, more widely related to people and to the created world in all of its diversity.
We do this within the horizon of the “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic” Church (what has been called “mere Christianity”), and for the sake of serving God’s deepest hopes for the common good of all (seen clearest in the biblical texts and in the life and work of Jesus Christ our Exemplar).
We do this by awakening people as God has shown us how. We train people how to intensify and to sustain their inner alertness (the virtues) and how to fight for the highest good of persons, all of us who find and develop our lives within the natural world (creation) and the human world (society and culture). We do this by training people to become quicker to recognize and to distinguish (discernment) the false modes of being a person, persuading them to choose, and to trust, the long-tested and true paths to becoming fully alive, so that they joyfully accept their responsibilities for the common good of all – becoming fully human after the pattern of Jesus Christ.
All of this so that our joy may be complete.
produced in 2016 by Brother PDX
