"...Escape from your everyday business for a short while..."

Yesterday at the Office of Readings the second selection was chosen in honor of the saint of the day St. Francis Xavier, great Jesuit missionary to India and Japan in the 16th century. Had it not been his feast we would have heard one of the most beautiful readings of the Advent season, a selection from the Proslogion by St. Anselm,  12th century bishop of Canterbury. This is a message for all of us not just communities of contemplative nuns.

Insignificant mortal, escape from your everyday business for a short while, hide yourself, for a time, from your disturbing thoughts. Cast aside, now, your burdensome cares, and be less concerned about your tasks and labors. Yield room for some little time to God; and rest for a little time in him. Enter the inner chamber of your mind; shut out all thoughts save that of God, and such as can aid you in seeking him; close your door and seek him. Speak now, my whole heart! speak now to God, saying, I seek your face; your face, Lord, will I seek (Psalms xxvii. 8). And come you now, O Lord my God, teach my heart where and how it may seek you, where and how it may find you...

But alas! wretched that I am, one of the sons of Eve, far removed from God! What have I undertaken? What have I accomplished? Whither was I striving? How far have I come? To what did I aspire? Amid what thoughts am I sighing? I sought blessings, and lo! confusion. I strove toward God, and I stumbled on myself. I sought calm in privacy, and I found tribulation and grief, in my inmost thoughts. I wished to smile in the joy of my mind, and I am compelled to frown by the sorrow of my heart. Gladness was hoped for, and lo! a source of frequent sighs!

And you too, O Lord, how long? How long, O Lord, do you forget us; how long do you turn your face from us? When will you look upon us, and hear us? When will you enlighten our eyes, and show us your face? When will you restore yourself to us? Look upon us, Lord; hear us, enlighten us, reveal yourself to us. Restore yourself to us, that it may be well with us, --yourself, without whom it is so ill with us. Pity our toilings and strivings toward you since we can do nothing without you. You do invite us; do you help us. I beseech you, O Lord, that I may not lose hope in sighs, but may breathe anew in hope...

Lord, in hunger I began to seek you; I beseech you that I may not cease to hunger for you. In hunger I have come to you; let me not go unfed. I have come in poverty to the Rich, in misery to the Compassionate; let me not return empty and despised...

Be it mine to look up to your light, even from afar, even from the depths. Teach me to seek you, and reveal yourself to me, when I seek you, for I cannot seek you, except you teach me, nor find you, except you reveal yourself. Let me seek you in desiring you and desire you in seeking you, find you in loving you and love you in finding you...

Perhaps there will a moment today for that desiring, that seeking, that loving. Remember, all of that flows both ways. God desires, seeks, and loves. Can we find the time to be at God's disposal?

Comfort in the Monastic Horarium

Joy in the Morning!

It is always good to get back home. How many vacationers, however much their time away was enjoyed, will say with gusto, "It is so good to be home"? As much as we may beg for respite from routine, there is something we find comforting in the familiar.

In the last month or so we have enjoyed some time for community recreation in which the regular monastic horarium or daily schedule was somewhat abbreviated. We also experienced our annual ten-day community retreat. This year the time was given to five days of hermit retreat within the monastery for all the sisters, followed by five days of directed retreat with a Jesuit priest. Those ten days were a special time. My mother always asks why contemplative nuns should need a retreat. "Aren't you always in retreat?" The monastic tradition encourages times of withdrawal from ordinary community life. The customs of our house provide for one day of retreat per month for each sister. Each of us also has an annual ten-day personal retreat. And then there is the community retreat. The abbreviated community schedule and fewer work hours provide opportunity for more and deeper silence and solitude. Every sister would say that these times of retreat are most welcome.

Yet, as special as these times are, we all agree that returning to regular community life feels so good and right - a sort of grand reunion with each other and as a community before our Loving God. Time apart is a blessing but our time together is a blessing too, especially as we pray the Divine Office and share in the Eucharistic banquet. There is a dignity in fulfilling our vocation to be a prayerful presence before God for the needs of the world. There is always joy in the morning when we come together again.

"Is multitasking good for the spiritual life?"

Savor the Moment

A few days ago the intrepid blogger Sr. Julie Viera, IHM, co-creator of the site "A Nun's Life" dedicated to exploring the full spectrum of religious life for women in the service of vocation discernment, posed this question: "Is multitasking good for your spiritual life?" Check the blog to see her original essay. The question struck a cord because I am a multitasker from way back. Afterall, I raised three sons and taught second grade. You don't survive in those roles without developing  highly refined skills for multitasking! I see it as part of my organizational skill set, allowing me to get a lot more done in a given period of time then would be expected. It can be very efficient and productive if only you don't put your brain on overload and just fry the circuitry. One of the things I miss here in the monastery is the ability to wash dishes and cook while carrying on a telephone conversation. Such a waste of precious time!

Since I entered the monastery ten years ago the explosion in communications technology has only complicated the matter by making multitasking increasingly possible. For example, cell phones allow folks to communicate with each other daily or many times daily no matter what they are doing or where they may be. As a result, we have seen that it is very hard for women exploring this life to imagine not speaking to their grown children every day.

So what is the concern about this great technique for being efficient and staying in touch?

One of the guidelines for cultivating human relationships is attentiveness and presence. Awake and aware attentiveness and presence is also necessary for developing relationship with God. Our skills at multitasking can become so highly habituated in us that the effort to move to attentiveness and presence becomes very challenging. It can demand a real effort of will to stop and smell the roses.

Creating a conscious, thoughtful balance in our lives seems to be the answer. We cannot become Luddites, rejecting all modern innovation. But we cannot become so enslaved the range of stimuli before us that we lose an esthetic and spiritual sensivity to our environment, our relationships and the action of God in our lives. The author Stephen Mitchell defines prayer as "a quality of attention that makes so much space for the given that it can appear as gift." How does one cultivate that "quality of attention"? The answer for me has been to put multi-tasking in its proper place and to know when it is time to stop and smell the roses. This is a devotion to conscious living, conscious suffering, conscious awareness, also expressed as "the practice of the presence of God".

A Lenten Reflection

The Tapestry of Life:

A Contemplative Reflection on Asceticism

for the Season of Lent

The quilt detail shown here is my personal effort at creating a tapestry - a wall hanging featuring fabric and color in pleasing balanced design. A tapestry  image was the gift I received in meditation a few days ago. The thought was framed by the notion of creating something beautiful for God out of the mystery of my life. It would be varied, bright and pleasing to the eye.

But yesterday, as  we prayed a version of the 'morning offering' that is part of our Office prayers, I was blessed with another understanding. The prayer reads: Lord Jesus Christ, I offer to your loving heart all the little annoyances, inconveniences, joys and pleasures, sufferings and trials which may come to me today. Change them into mighty graces, apply them to the spread of your kingdom, to the work of our missionaries, to the salvation of the most abandoned souls, (to which I add) and for family and friends most in need of prayer today.

In reading those words and speaking them in my heart, I was given another understanding of the tapestry image. I realized that my bright and colorful tapestry would not be created by holy, heroic, pre-planned devotional offerings and great acts. Rather, it would be a creation of the uneven and messy, not necessarily color coordinated, "little annoyances, inconveniences, joys and pleasure, sufferings and trials" of my life. This is what is real; this is what creates the tapestry. That may be the truth but it is not what my ego so much prefers, the bright, pleasingly designed and colored tapestry of my first image. Surely, only that perfection could be a fitting gift to present to God. However, I was graced with the realization that the highly idealized vision is merely the creation of a controlling ego. To allow the tapestry to take its own shape; to fall into place in the random fashion that is God's design; and to freely accept the colors and tones left behind only by the Spirit's grace, is to require a degree of surrender and letting go which continues to elude me. This is the central illusion; the illusion of personal control, of mastery, of perfection. To be truthful, letting go does not so much elude me as much as I remain resistant to it because my ego stubbornly clings to its own plan, its own vision, its singular perception of the way things ought to be. Perhaps the grace of these meditative experiences, this light of grace, is to accept the inspiration offered for Lenten asceticism; an acseticism of acceptance. It would be a surrender to the "little annoyances, inconveniences, joys and pleasures, sufferings and trials" of each day, just as they come. In surrender, acceptance and letting go they would be transformed into the materials of my tapestry in hues and tones, texture and weight expressly chosen for me by God alone. The finished product, truth be told, will be worn and threadbare in spots, even faded by the light of grace sought time and again in moments of human frailty; a testimony to perseverance.

Advent Time

On this day of the liturgical year, every first Friday of Advent, the Office of Readings of the Liturgy of the Hours offers a selection from St. Anselm's Proslogion. This is a favorite of mine. It begins:

Insignificant mortal, escape from your everyday business for a short while, hide for a moment from your restless thoughts. Break off from your cares and troubles and be less concerned about your tasks and labors. Make a little time for God and rest a while in him.

The passage ends:

Teach me to seek you, and when I seek you show yourself to me, for I cannot seek you unless you teach me, nor can I find you unless you show yourself to me. Let me seek you in desiring you and desire you in seeking you, find you in loving you and love you in finding you.

Today, however, the sister giving the second reading at the Office chose, as is an option, another reading. Her choice was taken from a very fine book written by a friend of ours Brother Victor-Antoine d'Avila-Latourrette. Cooks may recognize Twleve Months of Monastery Soups as one of his recipe books. Todays reading was taken from his Blessings of the Daily - A Monastic Book of Days. It is a wonderful collection of daily readings. Todays' was titled "Fostering the Spirit of Advent" which offered some hint for keeping the season. Here is a summary.

1. Cultivate an attitude of stillness, silence and peace within you that will, in turn, foster prayer and recollection.

2. Place an icon of the Annunciation in a relevant spot at home to remind of Mary's presence.

3. Make time for Bible reading (Lectio Divina).

4. Listen to inspired music - Bach Advent Cantatas, Handel's Messiah.

5. Participate in the Liturgies of the Church.

6. Don't rush the season with a tree. Use and Advent wreath and pray with it. lighting candles at meal time.

7. Place a small creche in your dining area. Leave the crib empty and light a candle beside it when you eat your meals.

8. Be faithful to the daily Angelus - the great prayer of the mystery of the Incarnation.

Thank you, Brother Victor

**********************************

Angelus

Leader: The Angel of the Lord declared to Mary:

Response: And she conceived of the Holy Spirit.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Leader: Behold the handmaid of the Lord:

Response: Be it done unto me according to Thy word.

Hail Mary

Leader: And the Word was made Flesh:

Response: And dwelt among us.

Hail Mary

Leader: Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God,

Response: that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Let us pray:

Pour forth, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy grace into our hearts; that we, to whom the incarnation of Christ, Thy Son, was made known by the message of an angel, may by His Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of His Resurrection, through the same Christ Our Lord. Amen.

Remarks on the Occasion of Profession of Monastic Vows

Romans 8: 18-27 Luke 11:9-13

The early twentieth century British writer W. Sommerset Maugham was a keen observer of human behavior. He was particularly astute concerning motivations of the mystical kind. “I have an idea,” he said, “ that some men are born out of their due place…they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not…this sense sends men far and wide in search of something permanent…sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs.” (1)

The great St. Paul and my friend seem to me to have had that nostalgia, that longing, for a place they knew not. Each began life with a sure desire for God. Each followed life’s circuitous and astonishing path – an exploration of longing and discovery – to an end surprising and yet familiar.

Paul did not know that his dual identity as an educated Greek-speaking Jew and citizen of Rome uniquely suited him to God’s purpose in the plan of salvation. Our friend did not know that the longing in his heart would best be satisfied not in the canyons of Wall Street but in the monastic cloister.

Our reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans spoke of “eager longing”, that desire of the heart to see the face of God. It is possible for the world to provide a trysting place for that desire. But the trick is to find the place, the best container for next stage of the journey to God; fertile ground for the process to which we are drawn, to find the home we long for but do not know.

To live out of that longing, to live out of the desire for God, demands the virtue of hope. All creation groans in its steadfast clinging to the hope of salvation in our brother, Jesus Christ.

In a few minutes, after the vows of stability, conversion to the ways of monastic life, and obedience to that life are made, we will hear an ancient and plaintive plea. It is a prayer rooted in Paul’s expression of longing and hope. “I have done what you asked, according to your promise, do not disappoint me in my hope.” How do we sustain such hope, hope in what cannot be seen?

Prayer sustains our hope. Paul sees it this way too but he knows his failures in courage and assumes that we will have ours. So he consoles himself and us. “The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.”

The vows we hear spoken today, the solemn promise to follow the monk’s path of interior silence and solitude lived in community; the promise to be available for conversion of heart and generosity in service; that promise is made public today. In its wisdom, the Church makes it public so that the promise is known to us. In this way his promise becomes a mirror for our promises, every promise represented here; fidelity in marriage and relationship, dedication to nurturing children, the promises of the sacrament of ordination, perseverance in religious vows, faithfulness in honoring the true self, the mundane obligations of earning a living, or the duties of citizenship and service.

Neither our friend’s pledge here at this altar nor the ones we have made are easy to keep. “But the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.”

And Jesus, our Savior, whose promise is the source of our hope today – our Jesus assures – “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” Oh, blessed assurance.

And before all things, the monk is a person of prayer – a praying presence before the throne of God. One who, in the words of Thomas Merton, is “like the trees which exist silently in the dark and by their vital presence purify the air.” (2)

Many today question the need for any life long promises. They find the promise of religious vows particularly confounding. They do not appreciate the transformation and the joyful liberation made possible by the promise and its fulfillment. Such freedom is what St. Paul described as “the liberty of the children of God.”

In that spirit of freedom, grounded in the love of Jesus - grounded in the Paschal Mystery of his life, death and resurrection - in that freedom, our friend, our brother, makes his pledge today.

Inspired by that love and with confidence in God’s Word, let us revisit our own promises. Let us enter into our deepest longing. Let us recommit to the journey on our way to a home we have not seen, trusting that the Holy Spirit will be our guide.

Today we can pray with the poet T.S. Eliot:


We shall not cease from exploration


And the end of all our exploring


Will be to arrive where we started


And know the place for the first time.


Through the unknown remembered gate


When the last of earth left to discover


Is that which was the beginning; ……..


Quick now, here, now, always –


A condition of complete simplicity


(Costing not less than everything)


And all shall be well and


All manner of thing shall be well


When the tongues of flame are in-folded


Into the crowned knot of fire.


And fire and the rose are one. (3)


Footnotes:
(1) W. Sommerset Maugham, The Moon and Six Pence
(2) Merton, Thomas, The Basics of Monastic Spirituality
(3) Eliot, T.S., “Little Gidding” in Four Quartets

Reading

for the

Discerning

Soul

These have been busy times at our monastery. One sister was hospitalized for a while but is home and on the mend. Two sisters had the joy of visiting their families. And now we have a sister with us who is considering a transfer to our community. Just like any family we have our busy and our quieter periods and also times when everyone has to pitch in more than usual. And, as in any family, these times reveal the strength of our bonds with each other and with our God, for whom, in an ultimate sense, we do it all.

But my work as Vocation Director continues; answering requests for information via, mail, phone and internet; corresponding with and talking to those who are wending their way through the discernment process. Lately, a few have asked about what they might be reading to further inform themselves. My recommendations come from the point of view of contemplative monastic life. Yet these books also hold wisdom for the broad spectrum of vowed religious life and interested laity.

Thomas Merton

- The Basic Principles of Monastic Spirituality

- New Seeds of Contemplation

- The Inner Experience

All of Merton's writing is powerful reading that withstands the test of time. He died in 1968. These three works speak not only a particular life style and its spirtuality but to the totality of the contemplative dimension and its call to live out of the true self.

Michael Casey, OCS

- Strangers to the City: Reflections on the Beliefs and Values of the Rule of St. Benedict

- A Guide to Living in the Truth: St. Benedict's Teachings on Humilty

- Fully Human and Fully Divine (Christology)

- Lectio Divina (Sacred Reading)

Michael Casey is a Trappist monk of Tarawarra Australia. His writing is total gift.

Barbara Fiand, SNDdeN

- Refocusing the Vision: Relgious Life into the Future

An experienced religious and writer of depth locating religious life in our time.

John Neafsey

- A Sacred Voice is Calling: Personal Vocation and Social Conscience

Wonderful comparatively new book concerned with the philosophy of discernment of vocation in general stressing the sacredness of personal call.

Sandra Schneiders, IHM

- Finding the Treasure: Locating Catholic Religious Life in a New Ecclesial and Cultural Context
- Selling All: Commitment, Consecrated Celibacy, and Community in Catholic Religious Life.

The third book in this series is eagerly awaited by those who read the first two. Sr. Sandra is a first class scholar whose writing makes demands on the reader. The first volume situates religious life in the context of its history and experience extending into our current time. The second volume concerns itself primarily with the vow of chastity. The third volume, yet to come, will focus on poverty and obedience.

HAPPY READING!

Lenten Contemplative Studies Series

The People's Office

That's what the documents of the Second Vatican Council tried to communicate to the faithful; that the Divine Office, now more commonly called the Liturgy of the Hours, was not the exclusive property of clerics, or even of religious but, as the official public prayer of the Church, it belongs to everyone.

These days that is being taken more and more to heart by many in the Church. Last evening, 18 earnest, faithful folks, ranging in age from early 20s to over 80, came to our monastery to be introduced to or to brush up on the Liturgy of the Hours. Their interest spurs us contemplative monastic nuns on in our own apostolate of prayer. And the group included seven men! That's over and third and it is hard to find such a ratio at most religious adult education.

Last night's presentation covered the theology of the Liturgy of the Hours, the trinitarian prayer of the Church to the Father, united with Jesus, and through the Holy Spirit. It is the prayer of the whole Church, sanctifying the hours of the day and fulling the priestly office of Jesus Christ in which we participate by virtue of our baptism.The seven sacraments, especially the Eucharist; the observance of the Liturgical year of the Church; and the Liturgy of the Hours comprise the official public worship of the Catholic Church.

Next week we will compare notes on using the Hours during this coming week - the trials, frustrations of using the book and, hopefully, the contribution made to our prayer lives. We will also cover the long history of the Liturgy of the Hours in our Chruch. The last week will also include more encouragement and how-to but also discussion of the Psalms as a particular prayer form.

If you would like to know more; if you would like to consider this time-honored prayer practice for yourself, here are some resources:

Church Documents
The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Vatican Council II)
General Instruction on the Liturgy of the Hours

Books
The Divine Office for Dodos - Nugent, Catholic Book Pub.
The Origins of the Divine Office and Its Meaning for Today by Taft, Collegeville 1986

Internet Sources
The Holy See on the Internet for all documents http://www.vatican.va/
****Daily Instructions and whole offices for the Liturgy of Hours http://www.blogger.com/www.universalis.com

Pure Attention:

A Form of Prayer

My friend of many years and now divinity student, Linda Miles, took one of my book recommendations to heart. After reading Waldron's "Thomas Merton: Master of Attention" she decided to use it with a small group at her church. She has given permission for reprint here of the quotations she used and the reflection questions offered. Perhaps you may find them stimulating.

REFLECTIONS FROM
Thomas Merton: Master of Attention
by Robert Waldron

Attention
(poem inspired by Simone Weil)

Lord,
Teach me to be attentive
To all your vestiges;
To the first light,
To the waking bird,
To the leaf’s rustle and to the rain’s drop,
To the scent of water and to the sky’s hue
And to the rise of the wind;
Lord,
Teach me to be so attentive that
I shall hear the first flakes of the snow’s fall.
Robert Waldron

The key to a Christian conception of studies is the realization that prayer consists of attention. It is the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable of toward God. The quality of the attention counts for much in the quality of the prayer. Warmth of the heart cannot make up for it. The highest part of the attention only makes contact with God, when prayer is intense and pure enough for such contact to be established; but the whole attention is turned toward God.
Simone Weil

How Merton had become a “spiritual master” ?

“Merton, of course, prayed in church while chanting the psalms, when attending and later celebrating Mass, and at set times in the day he meditated on biblical texts. But he also prayed while reading, studying, and writing, while sweeping and cleaning his hermitage, while watching the deer outside his door, while gazing upon the Kentucky hills or listening to the birds outside his window, while looking at a blazing fire in his hearth on cold winter days and nights.”(Waldron, p.3)

“Deep prayer is not an esoteric activity only for mystics and proficients: it is available to all of us if we would only pay attention.” (Waldron p. 7)

REFLECTION QUESTIONS

1 How is prayer like attention?
2. Which experience is more dominant in your prayer, you paying attention to God or God paying attention to you?
3. How satisfied are you by your prayer and what might you change to make it more attentive?
4. How is attention to nature, art, study, or scripture like prayer for you?

“The Hawk” in The Sign of Jonas by Thomas Merton

“The eagle attacked a tree of starlings but before he was near them the whole cloud of them left the tree and avoided him and he came nowhere near them. Then he went away and they all alighted on the ground. They were there moving about and singing for about five minutes. Then, like lightening, it happened. I saw a scare go into the cloud of birds and they opened their wings and began to rise off the ground, and in that split second from behind the house and from over my roof, a hawk came down like a bullet and shot straight into the starlings just as the were getting off the ground. They rose into the air and there was a slight scuffle on the ground as the hawk got his talons into the one bird he had nailed…..”

“It was a terrible and yet a beautiful thing, that lightening flight, straight as an arrow, that killed the slower starling….The hawk, all alone, in the pasture, possessed his prey. He did not fly away with it like a thief. He stayed in the field like a king with the killed bird and nothing came near him. He took his time.”

“I tried to pray, afterward. But the hawk was eating the bird. And I thought of that flight, coming down like a bullet from the sky behind me and over my roof, the sure aim with which he hit this one bird, as though he had picked it out from a mile away…But in the end, I think the hawk is to be studied by saints and contemplatives because he does know his business. I wish I knew my business as well as he does his…”

“I wonder if my admiration for you gives me an affinity for you, artist. I wonder if there will ever be anything co-natural between us, between your flight and my heart stirring to serve Christ, as you, soldier, serve your nature. And God’s love a thousand times more terrible! Now I am going back to the attic and to the shovels and the broken window and the trains in the valley and the prayer of Jesus.”(p.274-275)

REFLECTION QUESTIONS

1. Is your prayer life like that of the eagle or the hawk? How so?
2. What did Merton see in the hawk and how did he connect it to prayer?
3. Recall a time of prayer that was especially focused for you. What factors contributed to your heightened attention?
4. How can you apply Merton’s spirituality of attention to your life?

Season of Lent

Last year we offered a Lenten Contemplative Studies Series: three Mondays in Lent beginning at 7pm with presentation, break at 8pm and Night Prayer with the community at 8:15pm. The topics were contemplative values for daily living, contemplative prayer and the contemplative monastic life in our time. We were amazed at the interest in this sessions.

This year we are going to offer material on the history, theology and practice of the Liturgy of the Hours. The main title is The People's Divine Office. Local parish bulletins and newspapers published announcements yesterday and registrations are already coming. There is a hunger out there! Hope we can help to satisfy it in our little way as contemplative nuns who would like their monastery to be a school of prayer for all the faithful.

Monastic Prayer - The Prayer of the Church

Bout Psalter

Immersed in the Advent Moment

The Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours together form the great, deeply rooted trunk of contemplative monastic life. This pillar of life nourishes perseverance in in the vows and devotion to private prayer. In addition, as is particularly evident in the Advent season, participation in the official public worship of the Church, provides penetrating connection with the Paschal mystery of Jesus' birth, life, death and Resurrection. To take part in these two expressions of the Church's official public worship is to be totally immersed in the meaning and invitation of these days.

The Roman Catholic breviary (The Liturgy of the Hours) currently in use was first published in 1970 by the International Committee on English in the Liturgy. Like the Sacramentary used for the celebration of Mass, its readings, antiphons, prayers, petitions and music are specific to the season and/or the feast of the day. It is amazing that these books of ritual and prayer so necessary for public worship were created and edited without the use of computers on which we so totally rely for organizational and editing assistance today.

In our monastery we are blessed to have Mass every day and we celebrate together The Office of Readings, Lauds (Morning Prayer), Midday Prayer (one of the "little hours", Vespers (Evening Prayer) and Compline (NightPrayer). In these times of prayer and celebration the ambiance of the season, its deepest spiritual significance will plunge us into the mystery of the Incarnation over and over again.

The day begins with the antiphon for the Invitatory Psalm 95:

Come worship the Lord, the King who is to come.

The first hymn of the day began:

Lift up your heads you mighty gates; behold the King of glory waits.

The first selection for the Office of Readings told of Isaiah's prophecy of the conversion of Egypt and Assyria. The second reading was one of my all-time favorites, a selection from the Proslogion by St. Anselm. It begins:

Insignificant mortal, escape from your everyday business for a short while, hide for a moment from your restless thoughts. Break off from your cares and troubles and be less concerned about your tasks and labors. Make a little time for God and rest a while in him.

Enter into your mind's inner chamber. Shut out everything but God and whatever helps you to seek him; and when you have shut the door, look for him. Speak now to God and say with your whole heart: I seek your face; your face, Lord, I desire.

The wise Bishop Anselm then speaks of how difficult this is and how hard it is to see God who is, after all, light inaccessible. But he ends with a beautiful plea, a prayer for all seekers.

Teach me to seek you, and when I seek you show yourself to me, I cannot seek you unless you teach me, nor can I find you unless you show yourself to me. Let me seek you in desiring you and desire you in seeking you, find you in loving you and love you in finding you.

These examples are only the tip of the iceberg. When the antiphons, readings, responses and prayers of the Office combine daily with the prayer texts and scripture readings provided for the celebration of the Liturgies of the Word and Eucharist at Mass, those who are blessed to participate are plunged into the life of prayer particular to this season. Every provision has been made to create the atmosphere necessary for the coming of Jesus within. We are not waiting for Jesus to be born 'out there'. He was born 'out there' over two thousand years ago. Rather, we ourselves are gestating the appearance of the Jesus within, the Jesus who is in us by virtue of his very birth in human flesh. Jesus is to come alive in us, to be unveiled for all to see.

How blessed we are in our contemplative monastic home to be surrounded by these gifts of the Church.

Back Home

Returning from Retreat
New and Improved, I Hope!

Perhaps you've been wondering if I'd dropped off the edge of the earth. No, I only dropped out for a while - ten days for my annual personal retreat. Does a contemplative nun need a private retreat? In a word, "Yes." Just as the Trappist, Thomas Merton, left the community of the monastery seeking solitude in his hermitage, all contemplatives need, crave, and desire time apart. It is a time of greater withdrawal and movement to a place of greater intimacy with God.

The place this year was a house in Vermont all to myself at the peak of the fall season. And it was glorious. The pastel drawing shown here was the result of an amateurish but very helpful effort to enter into recollection by concentrating my attention and being totally present to my surroundings. The result was a much deeper and more abiding sense of the total glory and immutable transcendence of God. All else just fell away. And what a relief that is! And what a sense of the freedom of the children of God comes with that blessed grace.

My time was further blessed by the availability of daily morning Mass nearby celebrated in a small parish worshipping community. A visiting priest from Nigeria offered short but intensely meaningful homilies so in tune with Redemptoristine spirituality that he became my retreat director without knowing it. I was in awe.

When I say the Divine Office privately, I like to use Psalms from Nan C. Merrill's book Psalms for Praying. In her translations, in accord with the spirit of the Gospel of John, she often gives God the name Love. Merrill's version of the Psalms is always a gift in retreat ime.

Another personal guide was a book by Robert Waldron, Thomas Merton - Master of Attention. Waldron reveals how Merton, influenced by Simon Weil, came to see pure attention as prayer. Jacques Cabaud, biographer of Weil explained, "...Attention is synonymous with contemplation...The mind remains in the state of suspension essential to contemplation. Attention is linked to desire. It is not linked to the will, but to desire."

Here are some snippets from my retreat pondering:

Sing with all the sons of glory, sing the Resurrection song!

The fruits of those who know LOVE are a blessing to all.

Nan C. Merrill

Let nothing disturb thee.

Let nothing afright thee.

All things are passing.

God alone sufficeth.

Teresa of Avila

Today is all I have and God is all I have in today.

The Dangers of Solitude

All of the People of God, all of the baptised are called to a life of prayer and contemplation, not just contemplative nuns. Most people get the prayer part but not the contemplation part. How can I, with my busy life, the obligations I am bound to by conscience, my short attention span, my weaknesses and addictions, my phobias and fears, be called to something as other worldly as contemplation? Does it help to translate a life of contemplation as a life of intimacy with God. Or is that notion of intimacy with the Almighty just too scary?

Well, in spite of all the possible objections we are all called to contemplation to some degree or another according to the circumstances of our lives. But, instinctual fear at the thought of such engagement is not so far from the mark. We ask, "What will happen to me if I go there? What will happen if I go to that secluded place, or if I just enter into the seclusion of my own heart and dwell there for a while with God? We are wise to ask.

Believe it or not, there has been a recent wave of people choosing to move even more radically into contemplation by living the life of a hermit. They do not chose to dwell in caves as did St. Anthony of Egypt but make their apartments, their trailers, their cabins or yurts into their hermitage, a place of intense and exclusive intimacy with God.

According to the practice and customs of this monastery silence and solitude are sought and cultivated outside of the times in which we prayer, work, eat and recreate together. For an extrovert like me, these times carved out of daily life feel like my hermitage. For a busy family person, or someone with a career, the time and place they find to engage in the life of prayer and contemplation may feel like their hermitage, their place apart.

And now we get back to that question. What will happen to me if I go there? What will happen to me if I make myself available to God? Some have images of St. Teresa of Avila in levitation, to the ecstatic look of the saints in medieval and Renaissance art. I don't think most of us have to worry about this happening to us. At least, I don't.

Much more realistic possibilities were explored in an article by Kenneth C. Russell entitled The Dangers of Solitude (Review for Religious, Nov.-Dec. 2000, p. 575). The intended audience are hermits living alone. However, I believe that anyone who seriously pursues the contemplative life in the midst of their particular day to day will inevitably face the same experiences. Here is some of his wisdom in the short form. Hope it draws to seek the entire piece.

* If you leave the flurry of activity you will come face to face with the self that you usually scurry around trying to avoid. If one begins to see behaviors for what they truly are it can be awfully uncomfortable. Even worse, it can make it a matter of conscience to do something to correct an unfortunate reality.

* "Hermits [read as contemplatives] also soon discover, as the Carthusian GuigoII put it, that they are a crowd unto themselves." Distractions and temptations will abound. This reminds me of a saying that can be heard in 12 Step support groups. "While you are at a meeting, your addiction is doing push ups in the parking lot." In other words, spending time in contemplation doesn't necessarily make life any easier.

* Solitude, not playing an active part, even for a short time, on the busy stage of life can makes us "vulnerable to the imagination's readiness to reassert our right to a place in the world."

* "Hermits have to live without the external momentum that social interaction usually provides."

To the extent that we are addicted to this momentum, that we think we cannot live without it or that live without it is not worth living, we resist the life of contemplation to which we are all called.

* Doing "good things or deeds" to relieve pressure or to justify a lapse from our contemplative practice can lead us down the proverbial road that is paved with good intentions. For people who are not hermits but living in the world, these can also happen to those enticed into speaking more and more about contemplative prayer to others, to suddenly entertaining groupies and finally to the total collapse of their contemplative life. Russell quotes Aelred of Rievaulx, "When you are pressured to get involved: Tu sede, tu tace, tu sustine. Sit still, keep quiet, and stick to it!"

* The social self will not go lightly into solitude. Our moodiness will show. Solitude once eagerly sought will become distasteful and repugnant. Those who spend time apart can become the target of acedia (dryness in prayer) and sadness.

* In response to all of this is the advice to live in the now. Living in the present moment counter acts weariness and distraction.

* Above all else is the need to remain faithful to the practice and to stay focused on one's center, the place within where God dwells waiting for us to cast the eyes of our soul upon the presence and contemplate the glory.

Our Series Continues

Lenten
Contemplative
Studies
Series

Redemptoristine Nuns

The Art of Contemplative Prayer

Church documents concerning monastic communities have invited them to become schools of prayer. Our current Lenten Series is an effort on the part of our community of contemplative nuns to offer that service to the community which surrounds us, to people who hunger for a deeper spirituality and prayer life. The following is an excerpt from the second presentation in the series.

How can justice be done to this topic in the single hour we share here? We have over 5,500 volumes in our monastery library, most of them concerned with the practice of contemplative life and prayer. As I began to prepare, I said to myself, “What can you be thinking? How can you pretend to even approach this topic when the spiritual giants St. Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross wrote whole books?”

All that can be offered here is what the Italians call a “ferverino”, a little fervent input, a spiritual pep talk, a heartfelt invitation, a word of encouragement, a shot in the arm. While in no way comprehensive, it comes from the experience, however limited, of a fellow traveler, who remains surveying the moat that must be traversed to reach Teresa of Avila’s interior castle.

The word “art” in the title of this presentation was chosen very purposefully.

Painting is an art. You can only teach so much about perspective, anatomy, paint mediums, and brushes versus palette knives. The rest relies on the eye, the hand, the imagination of the painter at work and the artist’s illusive inspiration. In the same way, the practice of medicine is an art. The physician applies on the principles and findings of hard science according to his own knowledge, experience and diagnostic instincts. Therefore, just as you would not say that painting and the practice of medicine are methods, the practice of contemplative prayer is not a method either. It is an art, an art learned over time, an art form unique to the individual, an art in which the Holy Spirit has the upper hand...

Contemplative prayer is not a method. IT IS AN ART. It is a turning toward, an orientation to, a predisposition for being present to the transcendent and all loving OTHER, the Lord our God. It has also been described as a long, loving look at the real in which we make ourselves present and available, assuming interiorly an open, listening and receptive posture. This is not at all a passive posture although it can seem to be wasting time with God.

This place of total presence and availability can been seen as the ‘inner room’ which Jesus directed us to enter when we pray. BUT, how can we find this inner room, what will lead us there, what is the path we should take, the directions to follow? This is another aspect of the art form. What activity, what practice will facilitate my entrance into this room? What will provide the doorway for me to slip through so that I can get to the place of my tryst with God?

This is the only consideration where a question of method may play a part.

You may think that in a monastery it is so easy to make the transition, to calm body mind and emotions so as to enter the inner room, the monastic cell of ones heart. Certainly it is easier here than in your world. Thousands of years of fine tuning monastic practice have yielded a way of life centered on making the room readily accessible. However, we too reside in the world of 2008. We must fulfill obligations, clean house, earn an income, pay bills, be devoted in loving charity to community members, family and friends. But the obstacles we experience, the hurdles we must jump or go around are not as high as those you encounter.

When I get into bed at night it feels so good. But I know that I cannot just turn over and expect to fall asleep. My body doesn’t work that way. I am still too ‘rev’d’ up by the events of the day. Experience has taught me that even fifteen minutes of reading, fifteen minutes in which my muscles can relax, and respiration slow down will mean that when I do turn over sleep will not be far behind. Similarly, in my former life, it took a quiet ride home from work to depressurize. If I came to the monastery to sit in the chapel, or if I went home to pray alone in my room, I couldn’t just jump in. Usually what helped me to approach that inner room was to read an office from the Liturgy of the Hours. In the process of reading the psalms I would come near the threshold and by the time I was done I could put my foot through the door. I was physically, mentally and emotionally ready to just BE in the presence of God, to hold the fixed gaze. When my mind wandered, I caught myself and said the name of Jesus, renewing my intention to move from brain to heart and to be present to him alone.

What might your method be, your transitional path from busy every day demanding life into that inner room to which Jesus invites? It might be the Rosary recited thoughtfully. It might be a time of Lectio Divina, holy reading, of scripture or a spiritual classic. This is a prayerful and meditative way of reading. Many great books on this, especially one by the Trappist monk, Michael Casey. Perhaps it could be CENTERING PRAYER as taught by the Trappists Thomas Keating and the late Basil Pennington. Or the ancient tradition of repeating the Jesus Prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” or “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me a sinner.” Another path that works for me is writing in my journal. I can vent, talk about what I need or the needs of others in the world or list all those things for which I am grateful. Often an entry will end in a prayer. Someone else may find a slow contemplative walk just the ticket. By this I do not mean race walking or meeting the exercise requirement of your latest diet. This is a very deliberate slow paced stroll – a walk in which you do smell the roses and listen to the birds...

What is it like to spend time in the inner room? First of all what happens there is completely out of your hands except to the degree that you are committed to staying. To get technical, this is the place in which we can enter into infused or mystical contemplation. But don’t wait for it to happen. The late medieval classic on contemplative prayer is aptly titled The Cloud of Unknowing. The movement of the soul required here is such a total surrender, such a turning over of the self to God that it is most often experienced as a great darkness, especially for the ego. The ego is like the spoiled child stamping its feet at having been put aside in favor of another. In this case the other is God. Over time this negation of the ego allows a strengthening of the true self, the self that God created, the deepest self where we are most intimately united with God. The false self, the persona of the ego, was created for our protection in a harsh world. But that persona is hard to leave behind even when we clearly see that it is no longer needed. By our contemplative prayer we can over time, without even becoming aware, begin to shed that false self and find ourselves behaving in new ways, ways more true to our inmost, god-created selves. But don’t kid yourself, the ego will not go down without a fight. Yet from the very energy of our resistance new life can be born.

So, if it is a dark and empty place, if the flash of darkness is very rare, if there is a chance that I may never see it at all, why bother? Only love and desire, only your pure intention will keep bringing you back. But slowly, surely, maybe in barely perceptible ways things will change. Merton spoke of finding oneself by losing oneself even as we survey the heart of darkness. After a while friends may say things like, “I see something different in you. You’ve changed. What’s your secret?” Another paradoxical development may be that by spending time at the solitary center in union with God, you become, in turn, through God united with all that is. This is the gradual apprehension of the essential oneness of all creation.

A while back I was stuck in a long line of traffic. The wait gave me time to read each of an odd assortment of bumper stickers plastered to the rear of the car in front of me. One so struck me that I grabbed a pad to write down. It was quote from the writer and Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Han, “We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness."

Recollection and Silence

Our recollection as Redmptoristines is our 'life, hidden with Christ in God.'

It unties us with Christ in spirit and in heart enabling us to live the Paschal

Mystery...

Silence, being an essential value of monastic life, liberates the soul, and always

brings with it the call of the desert to solitude and peace.

It opens a person to the depths of the mystery of God and to

intimacy with Him.

Redemptoristine Rule - 6.45,46

The other day I enjoyed a quiet blissful almost entire morning of silence. I went early to our large sewing room furnished with many sewing machines, cutting tables, and racks for hanging completed capes for the Knights and Ladies of the Holy Sepulchre or habits for Redemptorist priests and brothers. It is a bright room with large windows that allow for a view of the river valley, the vagaries of the weather or the deer and Canadian geese that wander by. Some times this room is very noisy, humming with the sound of a few workhorses of the sewing business vying with each other for mastery and maybe the click clack of a typewriter (yes, we still have one). Most days I share the room with another sister or two or three and so there may be conversation about the work we are doing or a brief exchange about community business or a personal concern. But most of the time conversation is minimal as we try, within humane limits, to maintain those primary values of contemplative monastic life - silence and recollection.

It seems that this business about maintaining silence remains part of the 'mystique' with which lay people regard our life. I am currently reading a delightful pictorial history of the Trappist monastery of Gethsemani, Kentucky, the community to which Thomas Merton belonged. The author speaks of this fascination and how newspaper readers delighted over one hundred years ago to read of a visit of outsiders into the enclosure (the governor and his wife, no less) and the nature of the spoken words issuing forth from the long silent lips of the monks. It also seems that extended periods of silence are looked upon as a particularly difficult penance. But the other morning, when I started my sewing early, when the sunlight was streaming through the windows and no one came to disturb me, that morning was glorious.

This reaction would not have been the case just a few years ago. Over the years of raising three sons in a small house, as their bodies and circles of friends expanded, I found myself gravitating more and more to my bedroom. It was a place to go when I had enough of the activity and all of us needed our own space. Gradually the room became a technology center too. There was the telephone, of course, T.V., VCR, radio/tape/cd player, eventually a computer and, but of course, my sewing machine. My feet did not hit the floor in the morning without one, maybe two, of those devices being turned on beginning the endless stream of input with which I kept daily rhythm. And it just went on from there. This must all sound very familiar. It was part of my facility with multi-tasking, at which success is a boon to motherhood combined with the world of work.

I would not have entered the monastery in the year 2000 if I had not already begun to cultivate the ability to turn it all off. I began a few years before by avoiding all information technology in the morning. Even the twenty-minute drive to school became meditation time. But the commitment to contemplative life upped the ante. Shortly after I entered I was posted to the sewing room. I arrived one morning with cassette tape player on my hip and headset in place. Later, I was privately encourage by my formator (read as novice mistress), that I should not come to work so armed. Rather the goal was to allow the silence to do its work, to bring me to a place, some moments, of recollection. Now that may have an arcane ring to it. What exactly is recollection? It is a posture, a way of being, that speaks of openness, of availability to God, to His grace and to the inspiration of the Spirit. It is a contemplative stance in a hectic, distracting world.

Prayer is not a one way street. Seems to me the old catechism said (the new one too) that prayer is a conversation with God in which both talking and listening takes place. Recollection is that contemplative way of being which allows for the listening part.

During that special morning I was putting very exacting finishing touches on a habit destined for a Redemptorist priest I know. Years ago, the same sister who advised mental silence in the sewing room, shared that she enjoyed this work for the Redemptorists. It was a contribution to their varied ministries, a support for them in addition to our prayers. She even suggested when a habit proved to be a difficult one, calling for much ripping and adjusting, "He must really need your prayers and effort." So that morning I prayed for the priest who would receive that habit and felt privileged to be able to provide, at least in part, this sign of his commitment to Jesus our Redeemer and to serving the poor and most abandoned.

The problems of our world call out to us for a more conscious awareness of ourselves, our lives, the choices we make and our relationship with all other people, all other creatures and the environment which sustains us. I have found that I cannot live more consciously, cannot hear God speaking directly His words of love for me and for the world, unless I purposefully cultivate opportunities to enter into silence and recollection, prerequisites to contemplative prayer. I eagerly await another quiet morning in the sewing room.

CODA to Contemplative Nuns Offer School of Prayer

" The precious enclosed garden of the Lord which is the human soul."

Maria Celeste Crostarosa, Foundress of the Redemptoristines

The Fruits of Contemplative Prayer

And what is it that happens when the soul is totally disposed to God, when the donation of self in complete abandonment and utter generosity is the desire of the heart? What happens in that prayer of nothingness called contemplation?

* It becomes the place of transformation. Over time changes can be seen in behavior and attitudes; in greater desire for quite and solitude; in a slower pace of operation, greater acceptance of what is, and gratitude in all things.

* Contemplative prayer changes the atmosphere. In his introduction to The Cloud of Unknowing, Fr. William Johnston says, "No corner of the universe is untouched by this exercise of love...It is, of course, a great paradox that we should help people by forgetting them..." Thomas Merton often wrote of this cosmic effect of contemplative prayer. His book Basic Principles of Monastic Spirituality ends with these words.

In the night of our technological barbarism,

monks must be as trees which exist silently in the dark,

and by their vital presence purify the air.,

Instead of "monks" use the words "all those who pray" and read the quote again. Now go into your room and shut the door.