28/02/07 week of 1st Sunday in Lent
[Please remember this is a sort of "menu" from which to select. No one has to pray it all]
If you would like these meditations to come directly to your in box, please click here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/KnitternunMeditation/
Collect
Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan: Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
++++++++++
Today's Scripture http://www.satucket.com/lectionary/
Psalm 119:49-72; Psalm 49, [53] ; Deut. 9:13-21; Heb. 3:12-19; John 2:23-3:15
++++++++++
From Forward Day by Day: http://www.forwardmovement.org/todaysreading.cfm
John 2:23-3:15. Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
"Oh, he's a Born-Again," someone says, and everyone at the table rolls his eyes. Something very like scorn has pulled up a chair and sat down with us. This is unworthy of us. Jesus wasn't setting up a pecking order of people whose faith is truer than other peoples' faith, or of people who are theologically more sophisticated than their neighbors. This is not the opening of a debate whether a person should or should not identify himself as "born again." It's a statement about what it will take for each of us to see God.
We're not equipped to experience God directly. "Humankind cannot bear very much reality," T. S. Eliot said, and it is so. God is indirect with us--or, rather, God is direct: it is our limitations that ensure that we will always experience God indirectly. As long as we are here in the flesh, it is so. Faith isn't the same thing as knowledge, but it is what we have while we are here.
Born again or not born again is not our choice: it is God's. God is revealed to each of us as we are able to respond, and it is never too late to look and listen for your new life.
++++++++++
Today we remember: http://satucket.com/lectionary/Calendar.htm
Anna Cooper
Psalm 119:33-40; Proverbs 9:1-6; Luke 4:14-21
Almighty God, you inspired your servant Anna Julia Heyward Cooper with the love of learning and the skill of teaching: Enlighten us more and more through the discipline of learning, and deepen our commitment to the education of all your children; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
++++++++++
Today in the Anglican Cycle of Prayer we pray for the Diocese of Minna (Prov. III, Nigeria)
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acp/index.cfm
++++++++++
40 Ideas for Lent: A Lenten calendar http://ship-of-fools.com/lent/index.html
7. BAKE A CAKE
WED 28 FEB
Bake a cake for your colleagues. (But only if you're good at baking – otherwise they might think you hate them.)
Idea by: Hazey Jane
"Often it seems that we get what little we have asked for and not the abundance of what was being offered. Many times when my own children were younger, they asked for much less that they could have had. And I withheld what I wished for them until another opportunity came along." – Arlo Guthrie
++++++++++
Carmelite.com: Reflections http://www.carmelite.com/spirituality/reflection.php
For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and faith.
St. Therese of the Child Jesus
Story of a Soul.
++++++++++
Reading from the Desert Christians http://www.cin.org/dsrtftin.html
Abba Abraham told of a man of Scetis who was a scribe and did not eat bread. A brother came to beg him to copy a book. The old man whose spirit was engaged in contemplation, wrote, omitting some phrases and with no punctuation. The brother, taking the book and wishing to punctuate it, noticed that words were missing. So he said to the old man, 'Abba, there are some phrases missing.' The old man said to him, 'Go, and practise first that which is written, then come back and I will write the rest.'
++++++++++
Daily Meditation (Henri Nouwen) http://www.henrinouwen.org/home/free_eletters/
Letting Go of Our Fear of God
We are afraid of emptiness. Spinoza speaks about our "horror vacui," our horrendous fear of vacancy. We like to occupy-fill up-every empty time and space. We want to be occupied. And if we are not occupied we easily become preoccupied; that is, we fill the empty spaces before we have even reached them. We fill them with our worries, saying, "But what if ..."
It is very hard to allow emptiness to exist in our lives. Emptiness requires a willingness not to be in control, a willingness to let something new and unexpected happen. It requires trust, surrender, and openness to guidance. God wants to dwell in our emptiness. But as long as we are afraid of God and God's actions in our lives, it is unlikely that we will offer our emptiness to God. Let's pray that we can let go of our fear of God and embrace God as the source of all love.
Weekly Meditation from Henri Nouwen Society
On the Journey to Having a Heart of Flesh
written by SUSAN M. S. BROWN
One of the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai's books is called Even a Fist Was Once an Open Palm with Fingers. Somehow that image reminds me of my heart. I feel my heart clench like a fist, or feel my chest go hard and blank, as if a thick barrier had descended in front of it. And yet, at other times, my heart opens like a palm, or a flower spilling out light.
Sometimes my closed, stony-feeling heart is giving me helpful information-empathetic insight into the state of the person I'm with, or an intuition of the genuine need for self-protection. But openheartedness is a great spiritual aspiration and gift. I imagine we've all experienced the attractiveness of someone with an open, transparent, "fleshy" heart. And when people are engaged in a difficult interaction, even just one open heart can transform the dynamic.
It's so much easier to see what is needed in a situation, to respond directly and compassionately, to accept healing, when the heart is open, when the mind, ego, and other aspects of our being are in proper balance with it. Perhaps that is why the Shema mentions the heart first when it enjoins us to "love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength" (Dt 6:5). And why in the opening of the Eucharistic prayer we are asked to "lift up your hearts." What might the world be like if more of us could follow those invitations more of the time?
SUSAN M. S. BROWN is an Episcopalian laywoman and a freelance editor who lives near Boston, Massachusetts.
++++++++++
From the Principles of the Third Society of St. Francis:
Day Twenty-Eight - The Third Note: Joy
Tertiaries, rejoicing in the Lord always, show in our lives the grace and
beauty of diving joy. We remember that we follow the Son of Man, who came
eating and drinking, who loved the birds and the flowers, who blessed little
children, who was a friend to tax collectors and sinners and who sat at the
tables of both the rich and the poor. We delight in fun and laughter,
rejoicing in God's world, its beauty and its living creatures, calling
nothing common or unclean. We mix freely with all people, ready to bind up
the broken-hearted and to bring joy into the lives of others. We carry
within us an inner peace and happiness, which others perceive, even if they
do not know its source.
God, you have made your church rich through the poverty of blessed Francis:
help us, like him, not to trust in earthly things, but to seek your heavenly
gifts; through Jesus Christ our Lord
++++++++++
Upper Room Daily Reflection http://www.upperroom.org/reflections/
IMMEDIACY, vivid immediacy in that Life of the Universe, is what we seek. Not in the earthquake, not in the whirlwind, not in the fire, but in a still small voice that we all have heard within us is God most immediately to be found. …
It is this Inner Witness, this Inner Light, that grows brighter, in fellowship with Scripture writers, in fellowship with nature, in fellowship with service and suffering.
- Thomas Kelly
The Sanctuary of the Soul
From page 42 of The Sanctuary of the Soul: Selected Writings of Thomas Kelly, edited by Keith Beasley-Topliffe. Copyright © 1997 by Upper Room Books.
+++++++++++
Richard Rohr's Daily Reflection
http://cacradicalgrace.org/getconnected/getconnected_index.html
"Sin"
Liberation theology has largely come from the Third World. One of its first recognitions is that the real sin of the world is not, first of all, the little things that human beings do. Sin is, first of all, a total reality we get trapped in, "institutionalized evil." Pope John Paul II speaks of "structural sin." Even original sin is not a sin we committed, but one that was committed against us, in spite of ourselves. The classic sources of evil are the world, the flesh, and the devil - in that order! We became preoccupied with guilt. We had to know who was bad, who should feel shame. Many people were made to feel bad as children. The Church and the world have both used shame to control the people. It usually works, and it emphasizes the flesh (personal fault) instead of a social critique of the world. But the original notion of sin is not to impute guilt; it's to name reality. That's what I see the spirituality of Alcoholics Anonymous doing, trying to name what's happening. What is going on in our lives, in our society that is so blinding, so addictive? What is trapping people from loving God and neighbor and being truly alive? It's self-evident to me after twenty years of ministry that most people are victims, not malicious.
from Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the 12 Steps
++++++++++
From John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., Tradition Day by Day: Readings from Church Writers. Augustinian Press. Villanova, PA, 1994.
http://www.artsci.villanova.edu/dsteelman/tradition/sources.htm
You are a borrower
Make light of the world and of yourself and of all earthly pleasures. Hold your kingdom as something lent to you, not as if it were your own. For you know well that life, health, wealth, honor, status, dominion—none of these belongs to you. If they did, you could own them in your own way. But just when we want to be healthy we are sick; just when we want to be alive we die; just when we want to be rich we are poor; just when we want to be in power we are made servants. And all this because these things are not ours, and we can keep them only as much and as long as it pleases the One who has lent them to us. So it is really foolish to hold as if it were our own what belongs to another: it is, in fact, a thievery worthy of death. This is why I am asking you to act wisely, as a good steward, holding everything as lent to you who have been made God's steward.
Catherine of Siena, (1347 - 1380) served the people of Siena with her good works and the Church at large with her peacemaking.
++++++++++
Daily Readings From "My Utmost for His Highest", Oswald Chambers
http://www.myutmost.org/
DO YE NOW BELIEVE?
"By this we believe . . . Jesus answered, Do ye now believe?" John 16:30-31
Now we believe. Jesus says - Do you? The time is coming when you will leave Me alone. Many a Christian worker has left Jesus Christ alone and gone into work from a sense of duty, or from a sense of need arising out of his own particular discernment. The reason for this is the absence of the resurrection life of Jesus. The soul has got out of intimate contact with God by leaning to its own religious understanding. There is no sin in it, and no punishment attached to it; but when the soul realizes how he has hindered his understanding of Jesus Christ, and produced for himself perplexities and sorrows and difficulties, it is with shame and contrition he has to come back.
We need to rely on the resurrection life of Jesus much deeper down than we do, to get into the habit of steadily referring everything back to Him; instead of this we make our common - sense decisions and ask God to bless them. He cannot, it is not in His domain, it is severed from reality. If we do a thing from a sense of duty, we are putting up a standard in competition with Jesus Christ. We become a "superior person," and say - "Now in this matter I must do this and that." We have put our sense of duty on the throne instead of the resurrection life of Jesus. We are not told to walk in the light of conscience or of a sense of duty, but to walk in the light as God is in the light. When we do anything from a sense of duty, we can back it up by argument; when we do anything in obedience to the Lord, there is no argument possible; that is why a saint can be easily ridiculed.
++++++++++
Today's reading from the Rule of St. Benedict http://www.osb.org/rb/
Chapter 22: How the Sisters Are to Sleep
Let each one sleep in a separate bed.
Let them receive bedding suitable to their manner of life,
according to the Abbess's directions.
If possible let all sleep in one place;
but if the number does not allow this,
let them take their rest by tens or twenties
with the seniors who have charge of them.
A candle shall be kept burning in the room until morning.
Let them sleep clothed and girded with belts or cords --
but not with their knives at their sides,
lest they cut themselves in their sleep --
and thus be always ready to rise without delay
when the signal is given
and hasten to be before one another at the Work of God,
yet with all gravity and decorum.
The younger shall not have beds next to one another,
but among those of the older ones.
When they rise for the Work of God
let them gently encourage one another,
that the drowsy may have no excuse.
Commentary: http://www.eriebenedictines.org/Pages/INSPIRATION/insights.html
At first glance, the paragraph seems pathetically mundane for anything so exalted as "the most influential monastic Rule of all time." It is, on the contrary, exactly paragraphs like this that make the Rule so influential.
In a culture of peasants who came out of clans where whole families slept in one room--and still do in many poorer areas of the world--Benedict proclaims a policy of at least limited privacy and simplicity and adaptation. Benedict wants an atmosphere of self-sacrifice, true, but he also wants people to have opportunity for reflection. He wants no living situation to be so austere that both sleep and thinking become impossible in the cold of winter. In Benedictine spirituality people get what they need, both beds and bedding, both privacy and personal care.
The lesson is a good one when we are tempted to think that extremism is a virtue. As far as Benedictine spirituality is concerned, there is a very limited spiritual value in denying the body to the point where the soul is too agitated to concentrate on the things of the spirit.
If possible, all are to sleep in one place, but should the size of the community preclude this, they will sleep in groups of ten or twenty under the watchful care of elders. A lamp must be kept burning in the room until morning.
The dormitory is of ancient origin in the monastic tradition. It carried the concept of community living from the chapel to the dining room to bedtime itself. The common life was indeed a common life for twenty-four hours out of every day, with all the difficulty and all the virtue that implied. Nevertheless, the sleeping arrangements present in monastic communities of the sixth century were not all that different from family circumstances of the same period. Nor were bedrooms in communities of manual laborers the study centers they were to become as monastics of later centuries became more engaged in intellectual labors.
What is important in the paragraph is not so much the sleeping arrangement itself as the underlying caution it presents to an era in which independence, individualism and personal space have become values of such magnitude that they threaten the communal quality of the globe itself. The question becomes: What part of our lives do we really practice with others? Has our claim to the private and the personal evicted the world from our space, from our hearts?
They sleep clothed, and girded with belts or cords; but they should remove their knives, lest they accidentally cut themselves in their sleep. Thus the members will always be ready to arise without delay when the signal is given; each will hasten to arrive at the Opus Dei before the others, yet with all dignity and decorum. The younger members should not have their beds next to each other, but interspersed among those of the elders. On arising for the Opus Dei, they will quietly encourage each other, for the sleepy like to make excuses.
In this instruction, monastics are formed to be modest--dressed even in bed, unlike a good proportion of the population of the time, and simple--willing to wear the same thing at night that they did during the day, and ready--quick to respond to the will of God at the first sound of the call. They are trained, too, to "quietly encourage each other" in the daily effort of rousing the soul when the body is in revolt.
Personal modesty, simplicity, readiness and encouragement in life may well be the staples of community living, of family life, or decent society even today. What, after all, can shatter any group faster than the one person who is dedicated to being conspicuous, overdone, resistant or self-centered?
++++++++++
Church Fathers Lenten Reading Plan
Read Excerpts from the Church Fathers during Lent
http://www.churchyear.net/lentfathers.html
St. Ignatius of Antioch: Letter to the Trallians
++++++++++
If you would like these meditations to come directly to your in box, please click here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/KnitternunMeditation/
Collect
Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan: Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
++++++++++
Today's Scripture http://www.satucket.com/lectionary/
Psalm 119:49-72; Psalm 49, [53] ; Deut. 9:13-21; Heb. 3:12-19; John 2:23-3:15
++++++++++
From Forward Day by Day: http://www.forwardmovement.org/todaysreading.cfm
John 2:23-3:15. Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
"Oh, he's a Born-Again," someone says, and everyone at the table rolls his eyes. Something very like scorn has pulled up a chair and sat down with us. This is unworthy of us. Jesus wasn't setting up a pecking order of people whose faith is truer than other peoples' faith, or of people who are theologically more sophisticated than their neighbors. This is not the opening of a debate whether a person should or should not identify himself as "born again." It's a statement about what it will take for each of us to see God.
We're not equipped to experience God directly. "Humankind cannot bear very much reality," T. S. Eliot said, and it is so. God is indirect with us--or, rather, God is direct: it is our limitations that ensure that we will always experience God indirectly. As long as we are here in the flesh, it is so. Faith isn't the same thing as knowledge, but it is what we have while we are here.
Born again or not born again is not our choice: it is God's. God is revealed to each of us as we are able to respond, and it is never too late to look and listen for your new life.
++++++++++
Today we remember: http://satucket.com/lectionary/Calendar.htm
Anna Cooper
Psalm 119:33-40; Proverbs 9:1-6; Luke 4:14-21
Almighty God, you inspired your servant Anna Julia Heyward Cooper with the love of learning and the skill of teaching: Enlighten us more and more through the discipline of learning, and deepen our commitment to the education of all your children; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
++++++++++
Today in the Anglican Cycle of Prayer we pray for the Diocese of Minna (Prov. III, Nigeria)
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acp/index.cfm
++++++++++
40 Ideas for Lent: A Lenten calendar http://ship-of-fools.com/lent/index.html
7. BAKE A CAKE
WED 28 FEB
Bake a cake for your colleagues. (But only if you're good at baking – otherwise they might think you hate them.)
Idea by: Hazey Jane
"Often it seems that we get what little we have asked for and not the abundance of what was being offered. Many times when my own children were younger, they asked for much less that they could have had. And I withheld what I wished for them until another opportunity came along." – Arlo Guthrie
++++++++++
Carmelite.com: Reflections http://www.carmelite.com/spirituality/reflection.php
For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and faith.
St. Therese of the Child Jesus
Story of a Soul.
++++++++++
Reading from the Desert Christians http://www.cin.org/dsrtftin.html
Abba Abraham told of a man of Scetis who was a scribe and did not eat bread. A brother came to beg him to copy a book. The old man whose spirit was engaged in contemplation, wrote, omitting some phrases and with no punctuation. The brother, taking the book and wishing to punctuate it, noticed that words were missing. So he said to the old man, 'Abba, there are some phrases missing.' The old man said to him, 'Go, and practise first that which is written, then come back and I will write the rest.'
++++++++++
Daily Meditation (Henri Nouwen) http://www.henrinouwen.org/home/free_eletters/
Letting Go of Our Fear of God
We are afraid of emptiness. Spinoza speaks about our "horror vacui," our horrendous fear of vacancy. We like to occupy-fill up-every empty time and space. We want to be occupied. And if we are not occupied we easily become preoccupied; that is, we fill the empty spaces before we have even reached them. We fill them with our worries, saying, "But what if ..."
It is very hard to allow emptiness to exist in our lives. Emptiness requires a willingness not to be in control, a willingness to let something new and unexpected happen. It requires trust, surrender, and openness to guidance. God wants to dwell in our emptiness. But as long as we are afraid of God and God's actions in our lives, it is unlikely that we will offer our emptiness to God. Let's pray that we can let go of our fear of God and embrace God as the source of all love.
Weekly Meditation from Henri Nouwen Society
On the Journey to Having a Heart of Flesh
written by SUSAN M. S. BROWN
One of the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai's books is called Even a Fist Was Once an Open Palm with Fingers. Somehow that image reminds me of my heart. I feel my heart clench like a fist, or feel my chest go hard and blank, as if a thick barrier had descended in front of it. And yet, at other times, my heart opens like a palm, or a flower spilling out light.
Sometimes my closed, stony-feeling heart is giving me helpful information-empathetic insight into the state of the person I'm with, or an intuition of the genuine need for self-protection. But openheartedness is a great spiritual aspiration and gift. I imagine we've all experienced the attractiveness of someone with an open, transparent, "fleshy" heart. And when people are engaged in a difficult interaction, even just one open heart can transform the dynamic.
It's so much easier to see what is needed in a situation, to respond directly and compassionately, to accept healing, when the heart is open, when the mind, ego, and other aspects of our being are in proper balance with it. Perhaps that is why the Shema mentions the heart first when it enjoins us to "love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength" (Dt 6:5). And why in the opening of the Eucharistic prayer we are asked to "lift up your hearts." What might the world be like if more of us could follow those invitations more of the time?
SUSAN M. S. BROWN is an Episcopalian laywoman and a freelance editor who lives near Boston, Massachusetts.
++++++++++
From the Principles of the Third Society of St. Francis:
Day Twenty-Eight - The Third Note: Joy
Tertiaries, rejoicing in the Lord always, show in our lives the grace and
beauty of diving joy. We remember that we follow the Son of Man, who came
eating and drinking, who loved the birds and the flowers, who blessed little
children, who was a friend to tax collectors and sinners and who sat at the
tables of both the rich and the poor. We delight in fun and laughter,
rejoicing in God's world, its beauty and its living creatures, calling
nothing common or unclean. We mix freely with all people, ready to bind up
the broken-hearted and to bring joy into the lives of others. We carry
within us an inner peace and happiness, which others perceive, even if they
do not know its source.
God, you have made your church rich through the poverty of blessed Francis:
help us, like him, not to trust in earthly things, but to seek your heavenly
gifts; through Jesus Christ our Lord
++++++++++
Upper Room Daily Reflection http://www.upperroom.org/reflections/
IMMEDIACY, vivid immediacy in that Life of the Universe, is what we seek. Not in the earthquake, not in the whirlwind, not in the fire, but in a still small voice that we all have heard within us is God most immediately to be found. …
It is this Inner Witness, this Inner Light, that grows brighter, in fellowship with Scripture writers, in fellowship with nature, in fellowship with service and suffering.
- Thomas Kelly
The Sanctuary of the Soul
From page 42 of The Sanctuary of the Soul: Selected Writings of Thomas Kelly, edited by Keith Beasley-Topliffe. Copyright © 1997 by Upper Room Books.
+++++++++++
Richard Rohr's Daily Reflection
http://cacradicalgrace.org/getconnected/getconnected_index.html
"Sin"
Liberation theology has largely come from the Third World. One of its first recognitions is that the real sin of the world is not, first of all, the little things that human beings do. Sin is, first of all, a total reality we get trapped in, "institutionalized evil." Pope John Paul II speaks of "structural sin." Even original sin is not a sin we committed, but one that was committed against us, in spite of ourselves. The classic sources of evil are the world, the flesh, and the devil - in that order! We became preoccupied with guilt. We had to know who was bad, who should feel shame. Many people were made to feel bad as children. The Church and the world have both used shame to control the people. It usually works, and it emphasizes the flesh (personal fault) instead of a social critique of the world. But the original notion of sin is not to impute guilt; it's to name reality. That's what I see the spirituality of Alcoholics Anonymous doing, trying to name what's happening. What is going on in our lives, in our society that is so blinding, so addictive? What is trapping people from loving God and neighbor and being truly alive? It's self-evident to me after twenty years of ministry that most people are victims, not malicious.
from Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the 12 Steps
++++++++++
From John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., Tradition Day by Day: Readings from Church Writers. Augustinian Press. Villanova, PA, 1994.
http://www.artsci.villanova.edu/dsteelman/tradition/sources.htm
You are a borrower
Make light of the world and of yourself and of all earthly pleasures. Hold your kingdom as something lent to you, not as if it were your own. For you know well that life, health, wealth, honor, status, dominion—none of these belongs to you. If they did, you could own them in your own way. But just when we want to be healthy we are sick; just when we want to be alive we die; just when we want to be rich we are poor; just when we want to be in power we are made servants. And all this because these things are not ours, and we can keep them only as much and as long as it pleases the One who has lent them to us. So it is really foolish to hold as if it were our own what belongs to another: it is, in fact, a thievery worthy of death. This is why I am asking you to act wisely, as a good steward, holding everything as lent to you who have been made God's steward.
Catherine of Siena, (1347 - 1380) served the people of Siena with her good works and the Church at large with her peacemaking.
++++++++++
Daily Readings From "My Utmost for His Highest", Oswald Chambers
http://www.myutmost.org/
DO YE NOW BELIEVE?
"By this we believe . . . Jesus answered, Do ye now believe?" John 16:30-31
Now we believe. Jesus says - Do you? The time is coming when you will leave Me alone. Many a Christian worker has left Jesus Christ alone and gone into work from a sense of duty, or from a sense of need arising out of his own particular discernment. The reason for this is the absence of the resurrection life of Jesus. The soul has got out of intimate contact with God by leaning to its own religious understanding. There is no sin in it, and no punishment attached to it; but when the soul realizes how he has hindered his understanding of Jesus Christ, and produced for himself perplexities and sorrows and difficulties, it is with shame and contrition he has to come back.
We need to rely on the resurrection life of Jesus much deeper down than we do, to get into the habit of steadily referring everything back to Him; instead of this we make our common - sense decisions and ask God to bless them. He cannot, it is not in His domain, it is severed from reality. If we do a thing from a sense of duty, we are putting up a standard in competition with Jesus Christ. We become a "superior person," and say - "Now in this matter I must do this and that." We have put our sense of duty on the throne instead of the resurrection life of Jesus. We are not told to walk in the light of conscience or of a sense of duty, but to walk in the light as God is in the light. When we do anything from a sense of duty, we can back it up by argument; when we do anything in obedience to the Lord, there is no argument possible; that is why a saint can be easily ridiculed.
++++++++++
Today's reading from the Rule of St. Benedict http://www.osb.org/rb/
Chapter 22: How the Sisters Are to Sleep
Let each one sleep in a separate bed.
Let them receive bedding suitable to their manner of life,
according to the Abbess's directions.
If possible let all sleep in one place;
but if the number does not allow this,
let them take their rest by tens or twenties
with the seniors who have charge of them.
A candle shall be kept burning in the room until morning.
Let them sleep clothed and girded with belts or cords --
but not with their knives at their sides,
lest they cut themselves in their sleep --
and thus be always ready to rise without delay
when the signal is given
and hasten to be before one another at the Work of God,
yet with all gravity and decorum.
The younger shall not have beds next to one another,
but among those of the older ones.
When they rise for the Work of God
let them gently encourage one another,
that the drowsy may have no excuse.
Commentary: http://www.eriebenedictines.org/Pages/INSPIRATION/insights.html
At first glance, the paragraph seems pathetically mundane for anything so exalted as "the most influential monastic Rule of all time." It is, on the contrary, exactly paragraphs like this that make the Rule so influential.
In a culture of peasants who came out of clans where whole families slept in one room--and still do in many poorer areas of the world--Benedict proclaims a policy of at least limited privacy and simplicity and adaptation. Benedict wants an atmosphere of self-sacrifice, true, but he also wants people to have opportunity for reflection. He wants no living situation to be so austere that both sleep and thinking become impossible in the cold of winter. In Benedictine spirituality people get what they need, both beds and bedding, both privacy and personal care.
The lesson is a good one when we are tempted to think that extremism is a virtue. As far as Benedictine spirituality is concerned, there is a very limited spiritual value in denying the body to the point where the soul is too agitated to concentrate on the things of the spirit.
If possible, all are to sleep in one place, but should the size of the community preclude this, they will sleep in groups of ten or twenty under the watchful care of elders. A lamp must be kept burning in the room until morning.
The dormitory is of ancient origin in the monastic tradition. It carried the concept of community living from the chapel to the dining room to bedtime itself. The common life was indeed a common life for twenty-four hours out of every day, with all the difficulty and all the virtue that implied. Nevertheless, the sleeping arrangements present in monastic communities of the sixth century were not all that different from family circumstances of the same period. Nor were bedrooms in communities of manual laborers the study centers they were to become as monastics of later centuries became more engaged in intellectual labors.
What is important in the paragraph is not so much the sleeping arrangement itself as the underlying caution it presents to an era in which independence, individualism and personal space have become values of such magnitude that they threaten the communal quality of the globe itself. The question becomes: What part of our lives do we really practice with others? Has our claim to the private and the personal evicted the world from our space, from our hearts?
They sleep clothed, and girded with belts or cords; but they should remove their knives, lest they accidentally cut themselves in their sleep. Thus the members will always be ready to arise without delay when the signal is given; each will hasten to arrive at the Opus Dei before the others, yet with all dignity and decorum. The younger members should not have their beds next to each other, but interspersed among those of the elders. On arising for the Opus Dei, they will quietly encourage each other, for the sleepy like to make excuses.
In this instruction, monastics are formed to be modest--dressed even in bed, unlike a good proportion of the population of the time, and simple--willing to wear the same thing at night that they did during the day, and ready--quick to respond to the will of God at the first sound of the call. They are trained, too, to "quietly encourage each other" in the daily effort of rousing the soul when the body is in revolt.
Personal modesty, simplicity, readiness and encouragement in life may well be the staples of community living, of family life, or decent society even today. What, after all, can shatter any group faster than the one person who is dedicated to being conspicuous, overdone, resistant or self-centered?
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Church Fathers Lenten Reading Plan
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St. Ignatius of Antioch: Letter to the Trallians
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posted by Gloriamarie Amalfitano @ 7:11 AM
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