Even life in hot fields and drab offices and small houses is somehow one long happy thought when God is its center, and blessings, however rare, however scant, are blessed.
We simply must learn to surrender into His hands--making Him the center of our lives!
At the break of dawn, every day of the week, Benedict, through his organization of the morning, psalms, reminds the monastic of two unfailing realities.
Life is hard and we will struggle; and, having survived the week, saved one more time God. We are under the shelter of his wings.
Each of us should have two pockets, the rabbi teaches. In one should be the message, "I am dust and ashes." And in the other, we should have written, "For me the universe was made."
God, by His Grace, will prevail
and in doing so will enable us to prevail.
If you follow the daily office closely, you will find that there is an element of freshness every day. The prayers and patterns are concentrated and contemplative. Benedict encourages us to listen as well as recite.
Pay particular attention to the Sabbath as a moment of returning to the surety and solemnity of life, for setting our sights above the daily, for restating the basics, giving meaning to the rest of the week. Yes, reinforced through repetition.
Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt. Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclinch. Care about people's approval and you will be their prisoner.Do your work, then step back.
The only path to security.
The movement to prey is the movement of God in our souls. Our ability to pray depends on the power and the place of God in our life--we pray because God attracts us, and we pray only because God is attracting us. We are not, in other words, even the author of our own prayer life. It is the goodness of God, not any virtue that we have developed on our own, that brings us to the heart of God.
Sister Joan challenges us with this notion. Many of us would like to believe that we have such great insight into the world, into the universe, that we can author our own prayers. But if we look closely at the words that we choose, at the elements of our life that draw our attention, at the goodness that we seek to accomplish, we suddenly realize that these are not our works alone.
I believe he is the author of these actions; the author of these prayers. He authors these so that we might see what he desires for us, and in time, I believe we act with Him motivated by his love for us and His love for the world in which we live.
Many of these prayers come from deep within us, that is true. But so He resides deep within us. He is the very heart of our soul, the soul of our lives. Once we embrace this, once we accepted this, then I think the conversation begins. Prayer life, grounded in faith, conversation with him growing daily.
Among the sayings of the Desert fathers, there is a story that may explain Benedict's terse and clear instructions on prayer:
One of the disciples asked Abba Agathon, "among all good works, which is the virtue that requires the greatest effort?" Abba Agathon answered, "I think there is no labor greater than that of prayer to God. For every time we want to pray, our enemies, the demons, want to prevent us, for they know that it is only by turning us from prayer that they can hinder our journey."
The 12th step of humility is that we always manifest humility in our bearing, no less than in our hearts, so that it is evident at the Opus Dei, in the oratory, the monastery or the garden, or on a journey, or in the field, or anywhere else.
To be truly humble is to simply measure ourselves without exaggeration. Humility is the ability to know ourselves as God knows us and to know that it is the little we are that is precisely our claim on God.Humility is, then, the formation of our relationship with God, our connectedness to others, our acceptance of others, our way of using the goods of the Earth, and is our way of walking through the world, without arrogance, without domination, without scorn, without put-downs, without distain, without self-centeredness. The more we know ourselves, the gentler we will be with others.
Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
....tread tenderly upon the life around us....
If we truly know our place in this world, we can easily afford to make room for others. We do not need to dominate conversations and insist on our own way--there is room in life for all of us.
God can be God for all of us because we have relieved ourselves of the ordeal of being God ourselves. We simply unfold and become.
Do not be confused. Benedict is not asking us to be such stoic that we never smile or laugh. He wants us to recognize that life is serious and that we are called to honor our ourselves and the world in which we live. He wants us to be in control of ourselves at all times, never threatening others.
A humble person handles the presence of the other with soft hands, a velvet heart, and an unveiled mind – even your enemies.
When arrogance irrupt anywhere, it erupt invariably in speech. Our opinions become the rule. Our ideals become the goal. Our judgments become the norm. Our word becomes the last word, the only word.
Aware of our own meager virtues, conscious of our own massive failures, despite all our great efforts, all our fine desires, we have in this degree of humility, this acceptance of our ourselves, the chance to understand the failure of others. We have here the opportunity to be kind.
We must first reveal to ourselves who we really are. We cannot grow until we do.
...difficult, unfavorable, or even unjust conditions, where our hearts must quietly embrace suffering, and endure it without weakening or seeking escape.
On first reading, this may seem so foreign, so unrealistic – that we must even remotely consider accepting such conditions. But in time, we will realize one of the most important lessons of life – it really isn't all about us.
We frequently cling to our own ways, refusing to confront and accept the reality of life. But there are a great many essential and positive lessons to be learned from these trials. They are not to be ignored.
Sister Joan reminds us that in this degree of humility, we must hold on when things do not go our way, for we must learn to...
...withstanding the storms of life rather than having to flail and flail agaist the wind and, as a result, lose the opportunity to control ourselves when there is nothing else in life we can control.
Yes, yes, I understand. This is so easy to say. But we must persist! We must persevere! We must endure! We must learn to live this life for Him! It really is not all about us.