How we are called to be...

We are now in the heart of Chapter 4: Tools of Good Works.  I pray I am ready.  The Christian call is a simple one--but how so hard to live by.  Benedict writes

"Do not repay one bad turn with another" (1 Thessalonians 5;15; 1 Peter 3:9).  Do not injure anyone but bear injuries patiently.  "Love your enemies" (Matthew 5:44; Luke 6:27).  If people curse you, do not curse them back but bless them instead.  "Endure persecution for the sake of justice" (Matthew 5:10).

We are to stay gentle even with those who are not gentle with us.  The Gospels, Sr Joan reminds us, don't talk about winning; they talk about loving.  

We must be prepared  to bear whatever blows it takes for the sake of justice, quietly, gently, even lovingly, with never a blow in return.

 

 

Our call...

Benedict reminds us frequently that we are called to love God with our whole heart and our neighbor as our self.  Most importantly, we are called to set out every day to see the Christ in the other and to treat the other as Christ.

What a challenge this is for most of us!  And then Sr Joan raises the bar, reminding us we are called to engage in the great Christian enterprise of acting for others in the place of God--every day, in every moment.  St. Teresa of Avila made this clear....

 Christ has no body but mine. He prays in me, works in me, looks through my eyes, speaks through my words, works through my hands, walks with my feet, and loves with my heart.   

If we can embrace this truth, .... allowing that transformative love to permeate all of our work, we will not only build the Kingdom of Heaven,  but we will also find eternal rest and peace for ourselves.

 Reading now from Sr Joan....

The monastic heart is not just to be a good heart.  It is to be engaged in the great Christian enterprise of acting for others in the place of God.

Sr Joan Chittister 

Our role....

Sister Joan recently talked to us about the role of the abbot or prioress, saying...  

The role of the abbot or prioress is to direct their energies to bringing the community to the white heat of the spiritual life....

I invite you to consider if this might be our role in our community--not so much by preaching, but by the way we live out our lives in our community.  We are called to care for each other.  You are teaching me this every day.  And, we are called above all else, to persist; to never lose hope!

Benedict knows there is a spark of the divine in all of us.  We are called to see it in each other and to help it grow.

The Jubilee Medal of Saint Benedict

 

For more on the medal please click here.

Today's challenge....

There are times in our lives when we are confronted by ideas that don't seem to belong where we live.  I believe, in those moments, we are called to listen even more carefully and seek the word of God in the voice of the other.  For some, the following may be one of those moments.  For others, it is where they live. 

The Time to Embrace

What we need to develop in our time is a spirituality of embrace, the sanctification of feeling. We have been told that the greatest of these is love, but we do not really believe it. Not on the rational level. We have been told to be willing to repeatedly turn the other cheek but we do not risk it. Not on the social level. And yet, until we have the grace to regurgitate at the sight of brutality anywhere, what hope can we possibly have for the success of divinity's great experiment––the mind of God in the human heart.

Santayana writes: "The young person who has not wept is a savage and the old person who will not laugh is a fool." The spirituality of embrace depends on our willingness to put down the trappings of false intellectualism, of rationalism, of patriarchy so that both men and women alike can draw on their emotions without shame and be directed by their noblest feelings without fear.

Human community and globalism hang in the balance. The values we bring to decision making in the modern world are no longer a matter of purely private or personal importance. We cannot pretend to humanity and continue to deprive ourselves of half our way of perceiving at the highest levels of function. 

To embrace the other, to take the stranger into our lives, to trust that the other is motivated by the same cares and loves as we are, redesigns the human race. It is the ability to allow human feeling to become a reputable foundation for decision-making at the highest levels that engenders the necessary antidote to a depraved rationalism. For too long have we allowed a false masculinity to guide the judgments of the church and justify the character of the corporate world and engorge a suicidal militarism and direct the policies of governments and reduce humanity to the rationalization of objectivity and deny the people of the world the validity of the feminine, of the feelings, in both women and men.

Reason has become the human sin; independence and individualism our pathology. Facts we have aplenty. It is feelings we lack.

The time to embrace is now, before autonomy destroys community and leaves us less human at the end of our evolutionary process than when we began. Adoration of the rational has not worked. Only embrace can save us now.
                  ––from For Everything A Season, by Joan Chittister (Orbis)

The Spiritual LIfe....

The spiritual life is a way of being -- open to God and open to the other!

It is difficult for me to chose which of the chapters is the most important.  Chapter 7 on Humility is surely a prime candidate.  However, I believe the Prologue surely sets the stage--preparing us for what is to come.  St. Benedict's writing and Sr. Joan's September 3rd commentary are full of very simple and so very rich life wisdom.  Take a moment and see just how many pearls you can find.

Seriously....  Go....  Now.....

Read it again....

To become what we hate...

 Benedict makes it clear that the desire for good

is not an excuse for the exercise of evil in its behalf.

This reading is important, then, for people whose 

high ideals lead them to the basest of means

in the name of achieving good. To become what 

we hate — as mean as the killers, as obsessed as the haters

is neither the goal nor the greatness of the spiritual life.

The Rule of Benedict, Sr Joan Chittister        

I was rightly reminded today by a dear friend, that context IS important.  And so it is that Sister Joan reminds us that the end does not justify the means....

Chapter 64

 If in the course of life, you find yourself in a position of leadership--read Chapter 64 and Chapter 65 closely. 

They were written for you.

The Spark of the Divine

Benedictine spirituality reverence for the other based on the spark of the divine that is in us all is a gift to be given to a century alive with distinctions it will not admit and an insight into the sacred, scarred and bleeding, that it does not see.  

The Rule of Benedict, Sr. Joan Chittister

 

Dear Lord, forgive me for self-centered blindness.  Help me open my eyes to see and server your world.  Amen

 

God's Call to Us

Be still and know that I am God

Be still and know that I am

Be still and know

Be still

Be 

Benedictine Spirituality

Spirituality is a way of life.

We are called to be what we say we are.

Simple.

Centered in God.

To be a Christian is a full-time identify.

We are called to heed the Gospel call

whomever we are with and wherever we are.

It is a never-ending pursuit of faith

and through His abiding Grace

we will prevail.