See now is the acceptable time: see now is the day of salvation. (I Cor: 6:2) These words taken from the readings for Ash Wednesday, express in a nutshell the whole purpose and goal of Lent. Although Benedict often refers to the various liturgical seasons of the year throughout the Rule, evidently the time of […]
Lectio Divina
As a child, Lectio Divina came naturally to me, having learned a love of the Bible from my Methodist father and my Congregationalist mother! Lectio Divina has a very long history, going back to the time of Jesus himself, who loved and taught from the Hebrew Scriptures. The Desert Fathers and Mothers of the 3rd […]
The Benedictine Oblate Path
Since the time of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, when the Christian monastic movement began, there have been many ways of expressing the monastic archetype. Even in the Desert there were anchorites, hermits and coenobites. The Desert wisdom also knew that the monastic archetype dwells in each human soul as that which orientates us to […]
The Gift of Silence
Listen to me in silence… (Isa. 41:1) Benedict obviously cherished silence, and saw it an absolute necessity for anyone who wants to pursue a spiritual path. He devotes a whole chapter of he Rule to silence, (RB 6) as well as mentioning it in a number of other places too. The very first word of […]
Oblates in the Western Monasticism
Whatever the outward historical form oblature has taken -and it has taken many outward forms- its first and essential reality is a commitment to the monastic tradition of prayer and its generous silence. Its second purpose, almost inseparable from the first, is to seek to share that tradition of prayer and that profound gift of silence with the whole people of God. Unless that commitment and motivation are pursued, oblates lose their reason for existence as lay affiliates of monasticism who have promised their lives to the cultivation and sharing of those ideals. His prayer and his oblation, as the oblate soon discovers if only obscurely, are formed within a role [1] in the monastic community, a role which has had a vigorous, varied and tenacious history since the origin of monasticism.
The Prologue
The Prologue is addressed to each one of us personally. It is an invitation to the beginner (and all of us) to follow Christ. Like any other invitation one is free to accept or decline. It is a matter of choice. If we decide to accept the challenge, it means a total commitment of our […]