HOW TO BAKE A LAY CISTERCIAN?

If you think the Holy Spirit doesn’t have a sense of humor, then you will not appreciate this blog that I wrote down for my Lectio Divina (Philippians 2:5).

I like to focus these end days (of my life) on how all things move into and out of the Christ Principle. This is a recent appreciation of my Lay Cistercian growth from self to God. When I do Lectio Divina and there is slightly more of God than before, I think of my life in terms of what presents itself to me each day. I had just finished watching a Korean television show on how to make chocolate cake (I love Korean television, maybe because my wife is in Korean.), but somehow that I can’t explain what the Holy Spirit told me,
“Do you know that your life is like that Korean factory that makes chocolate cake?” Now you see why I say the Holy Spirit has a sense of humor.

It has troubled me for some time that I realize my march from false self (the dissonance of Original Sin) to my true self (resonance with the Christ Principle) has to begin each day. Each day, as Jesus had predicted, I must anew take up my cross and seek God as I find Him in whatever comes my way. I kept asking the Holy Spirit to take this cross away from me.

“Just let me believe in God one time,” I pleaded, “and I won’t have to suffer each day to struggle to have to place God’s will over my human inclinations of self-righteousness and self-indulgence.”

What I got back with the Holy Spirit is classic. The Spirit said to me that each day if I sit down on the park bench in the dead of winter and wait for Christ to sit next to me, it is the struggle that Christ had before he entered into his passion and death. “Let this inconvenience pass from me. It is too difficult each day. Some days I don’t even believe or feel that you even care about me, Holy Spirit.”

“My grace is sufficient,” said the Holy Spirit. “When you are depressed or bored with the struggle to be free of the corrupting effects of this world, that is when I am with you the most in your mind and in your heart.”

“Let me help you by using something every day to explain your suffering and frustration. You just watched a television show about baking a cake. Think about this.”

“If your whole life was a cake that you were going to bake, you add ingredients that will make it taste good and become what a chocolate cake should be, not so?”

The Holy Spirit continued, “Each day, you add to your cake from your choices to do God’s will versus what the World says are good ingredients. I give you what makes your cake presentable to God the Father. Christ served up the cake and all of us have a piece of it. I mean the Whole Church Universal, too. Remember the story of the five barley loaves and two fishes? Same thing.”

“Getting back to the Korean cake, you see them putting in ingredients (no talking needed) to the mix that is already there. Each day, you add the flavors of the day to the mix, provided you tied them together for the praise and glory of the Father through Christ.”

“As a Lay Cistercian, your cake began with you adding just a bit here and there and stirring vigorously. It took you many years to keep adding ingredients to the mix. Humility, Obedience to God’s will and not your own, avoidance of the presumption that God fits into your plan and not vice versa. You made an act of Faith in the power of God when you wrote down your Lay Cistercian final promises. Your cake becomes tasty to God because you take that time each day to create life anew. That is why you must seek God daily, using Cistercian practices and charisms. There are ways for you to see God, but only if you have the power that comes from pure energy, our energy we share with you as an adopted son (daughter) of the Father.”

“Relax and just look for ways to be present to whatever comes your way. Know that God is with you as you struggle. Like Christ, the suffering he made for your ransom of many is part of what love is all about.”

That in all things, God be glorified. –St. Benedict