The Center for contemplative practice
A Lay Cistercian Looks at Spiritual Reality
THE SIXTY SECOND CATHOLIC- Don’t forget!
I share with you one of my Lectio Divina meditations (Philippians 2:5). Praise be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, both now and forever. The God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages. –Cistercian doxology
Because Christ is both God and Man, you can never exhaust the depth, the heights, and the width of the truth, the Mystery of Faith.
Christ tells us he draws all things to himself. In the physical universe, of which we are a part, all matter, energy, time trend toward Omega (I am the Alpha and the Omega).
In the mental universe, the realm of the mind, we reflect on the physical universe with our reason and ability to choose what is good for us or bad for us. We also use our collective minds and consciousness to find purpose in life, discover our own center, discover what reality looks like (visible and invisible), how it all fits together, the meaning of loving fiercely, and you know know you are going to die, now what?
The mental universe is also the gateway to enter the next universe, the spiritual universe (Kingdom of Heaven( which we do through Baptism. Baptism not only takes away Original Sin from each individual, but also enables us to call God Father (Abba) because we have been adopted by God as His sons and daughters. We have reason for a reason.
Adam and Eve were created to be gardeners of God’s most precious creation, Earth and its being. We inherit that gardenership with our charge to love one another as Christ has loved us. We are stewards of our immediate world. Faith and Grace (God’s energy) allows our tree to bear good fruit by doing this command of Christ.
Ironically, we don’t use the World to find meaning in the world but instead use a sign of contradiction (Jesus Christ) to first transform ourselves from our false self to our true self. St. Benedict in Chapter 4 tells us not to prefer anything to the love of Christ.
Lay Cistercians use Cistercian practices and charisms to transform themselves each day, by God’s grace, into an acceptable sacrifice to the Father, through, with and in Christ. It is the Mystery of Faith. It is our destiny as a human being. It is the fulfillment of what it means to be a human being within the time we have allocated to us and with the abilities we have to make the world a better place, not using the World’s approach, but with Faith in the sign of contradiction. Much more can be said, but not much more can be done. John 20:30
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The Center for contemplative practice 