A COMMENTARY ON A PITHY SAYING

For those following my disjointed ruminations about my results from practicing Lectio Divina each day, I offer the following advice. I never know what comes from being in the presence of Jesus and asking the Holy Spirit to overshadow me with whatever. I can tell you this: this experience is beyond any pleasure I could conjure up.

All the rowers in the world do not make a difference if your boat has a hole in it.

Here are my thoughts.

• I am the boat.
• The rowers are people I know, experiences I have had to try to become a deeper person in my humanity, and the Church gathering.
• The Holy Spirit is the wind to make my ship go.
• The hole is the sins I have committed that still remain open, like a submarine fighting an open hatch.
• The hole is my reliance on the energy of the kingdom of earth, human nature without spirituality, which cannot provide enough power to close the hole.
• The hole can only be closed by the ship builder.
• God builds the ship.
• The Holy Spirit is the wind.
• God the Son is the compass as well as the North Star.
• Even though the hole can be closed by the ship’s builder, I must close the hole myself.
• The Catholic Church is my toolbox to give me the tools to take the time to close the hole.
• Christ is the living material to close the hole, which keeps opening over and over, while I live.
• All I have to do is put myself in the presence of Christ and wait for the Holy Spirit to give me the energy to fix it.
• I can ask for help from those in the Church who gather together to celebrate the death of the Lord until he comes again in glory.
• Christ gave me Eucharist as food for the journey and the Sacrament of Reconciliation as patching material to ensure I depend on my skills and not false prophets who promise a good deal to fix my holes and then abscond with the money.
• My holes will keep appearing throughout my lifetime, even though I am baptized and must make room for Christ (capacitas dei) through daily conversion and practices to keep my focus on what is right and not just easy for me.
• Everything depends on me taking the time to place myself in the presence of Christ through Lectio Divina, Eucharist, Reconciliation, Reading Sacred Scripture, and other Cistercian and contemporary authors.
• It is the time I take to just wait for Jesus to tame my unruly spirit that is prayer.
• To use another analogy (fox and Little Prince), I am the fox, and God is the Little Prince who wants to play with me, but I am shy and mistrustful. God (Trinity) must tame me, which is the precise meaning I have in waiting in prayer for me to feel comfortable with God, enough to realize it is the fear of the Lord that is the beginning of my Lectio and all prayer.

“What is essential is invisible to the eye.”

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