During one of my Lectio Divina sessions (Phil 2:5), I thought of what the obedience of the Son must be to God the Father to come earth and make reparation for the sin of Adam and Eve. He who takes away the sins of the world indeed has mercy on us. But there is more to obedience than meets the eye. First of all, we do not think of obedience as the world sees it, influenced by pseudo psychological pragmatism and relativism.

WHAT IS OBEDIENCE?

The spiritual universe is God’s playground and if we want to use it, we must follow God’s rules. The biggest rule has to do with the relationship of Adam and Eve to God in the Garden of Eden. In the Genesis story. there is a tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God says, don’t eat of it.  The Devil tempts Eve to eat of it because if she and Adam eat its fruit, they will be God. This archetypal story of God and Humanity is the Original Sin, the one which Jesus had to become one of us to reconcile with the Father.  If you look around the world today, you will see this sin as the most prevalent and pernicious one we commit. The Wiley One still pulls the wool over the eyes of most of us and even tempts us as individuals to become god.  All sin is the sin of Adam and Eve at its core. Sin, remember, means the archer aims at the target but misses the bullseye, or even the target itself. God give us the target. This Genesis story has disobedience to God and its consequences at the heart of what it means to be human. There is also another dimension to obedience or the lack of it, and that is humility. All told, I count three big events or principles in Genesis:

God is God and you are not.-– God is not human but divine. Jesus Christ is both human and divine. We are adopted sons and daughters of the Father, each and every human. Some realize this and move forward in resonance with their human nature Forever. Some do not and end up in dissonance with their human nature Forever. Each person has a choice of placing God as their center or placing themselves there. If you place yourself at the center of reality, you are a god. The First Command Moses received on Sinai was to war that God is God and we are not. This sin contains every sin that we commit against God.  The Kingdom of Heaven on earth is God’s playground and you must follow His rules. There is only one rule, according to our Master, to love one another as Christ loved us.  All the Creeds, all the Sacraments, all the contemplations with Liturgy of the Hours and Lectio Divina all flow from the Christ principle. God is love and our purpose in life is to love God with all our hearts. all our minds, and all our strength and our neighbor as yourself. (Deuteronomy 6 and Matthew 22:37). It is the center of both our Jewish heritage and the fulfillment with the resurrection of Christ.

If you want to be God, when God told you not to, this is disobedience. At the heart of what it means to be human, there are some concepts that are prominent.  Chief among them is that God is the creator of all that is. What God made is good, not evil. God gave Adam and Eve limits but they disobeyed Him. Sin came into the world through one man (Romans 5:12-21) and we inherit the effects of that Original Sin. That is why, although we are good, we have been wounded and are prone to evil. We must make up in us that which our nature does not provide. That is why Christ, Son of God, had to die on the cross (Philippians 2: 5-12). It is the ultimate sign of contradiction and the perfect gift of obedience of a human (Jesus) to the Father in reparation for the sin of Adam and Eve.  The problem comes when Christ entrusts his mission to the Apostles. By themselves, they cower in the upper room, afraid of the Jews and of being martyred.  At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came upon them in tongues of fire and the Church was born. It is still being born today, the New Jerusalem, the Kingdom of Heaven in time and space, the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church Universal (church triumphant in heaven, the church militant on earth, church purgative awaiting the last judgment).

Pride or the lack of humility is at the core of disobedience. You can’t have disobedience without having a lack of humility or pride. Pride means you think you are better than anyone, including God. Humility recognized who you are and who God is. St. Benedict in Chapter 7 of his Rule speaks of the steps to gain humility. As a Lay Cistercian, humility and obedience to God’s will through my visible authority (Abbot or Abbess) but also with the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the community, keeps me grounded in moving from self to God. Pride is one of the sins that opens up the possibility of me thinking that I am God, that no one can tell me what to do with my body, that love can exist without God, that I don’t need to be a part of the living community of the Body of Christ. I am Solus Sola, my own church, the individual alone can define what God is. God is who I say it is. No one can tell me what to believe. Things are true because I believe them not because I believe them because they are true. The modern heresy after Pentecost is: God is who I say it is and no one has the right to tell me anything about God except me. Modern idolatry at work, offering incense to the gods (you) on sacrificing on your own altar with unclean gifts (lack of obedience, lack of humility and lack of love).

Next time, we will talk about how this outcome of the Resurrection plays out in each age.

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

Have you ever had a personality fault that just keeps digging at you and won’t go away?You pray that it will go away, you try to overcome it every time it pops up its ugly head. Nothing works. The monks have a chapter of faults where they try to get rid of those little peccadillos that are like mosquito bites that keep itching at your good intentions. Here are some of my Lectio Divina (Phil 2:5) thoughts on my faults.

In his Rule, St. Benedict points out in Chapter four some faults for us to overcome if we are to sustain the mind of Christ Jesus in us. Here are some of his recommendations:

(28) To speak the truth with heart and tongue.
(29) Not to return evil for evil (cf 1 Thes 5:15; 1 Pt 3:9).
(30) To do no injury, yea, even patiently to bear the injury done us.
(31) To love one’s enemies (cf Mt 5:44; Lk 6:27).
(32) Not to curse them that curse us, but rather to bless them.
(33) To bear persecution for justice sake (cf Mt 5:10).

As you can see, these are the practices that we must either do or not do for us to love one another as Christ has loved us.  Most of them are based on Scripture, and Scripture is there to help us deny outselves, take up our cross daily, and follow Christ. I have selected the following instruments or tools for good works, as St. Benedict calls them because they are indeed transformative practices, key to dying to self and rising with Christ. The whole notion of the Church is to love others as Christ loved us.  It is not to know all there is to know ABOUT Scripture, although we should always want to know more. It is not to have faith in Christ so we can SHOW to others that we are his followers and not like the rest of sinners. It is not even to attend Mass on Sunday to fulfill some worldly habit we received from our parents that it is just the thing to do, without actually converting our lives daily through the Eucharistic sacrifice of Christ to the Father. As it applies to the six items St. Benedict gave us to root out of our lives, it goes against our animal nature of self survival, our mental mantra of being the center of the universe, or what the world teaches us to be if we want to be happy. No. The Rule of Opposites kicks in here. Read these six behaviors that are expected in the Kingdom of Heaven.  They are the opposite of what you expect from what the world thinks.

(28) To speak the truth with heart and tongue. — The world says that the truth is what I say it is, or what I interpret it to be.  When I make an statement that I believe the Church to be founded by Christ to give us grace, among many other things, my friends at Starbucks rail against me that this is just my opinion and my notion of truth but it is not what they believe. This thinking is seductive because it is partially true and partially false. Truth is not true because I believe it to be true but because my source of truth is the Way, the Truth and the Life.  People can disagree what that means, which is called the freedom to choose.  Often, people are angry when I state my convictions (which are actually not mine) sometimes to the point of hysteria that I am going to Hell, screaming at me that I am worthless and God does not love me.  It is in these times, although not frequent, that I turn to these six admotions from Christ to be strong and hold onto the Faith of the Church Universal.

(29) Not to return evil for evil (cf 1 Thes 5:15; 1 Pt 3:9).  Following up on what was just said, I do not argue these days about my faith. Faith is not an intellectual arguement, one where you can convince people through mental jousting that you are correct and someone else is not. Faith is the quiet conviction that you have in you wish to have the mind of Christ Jesus (Phil 2:5) and that, with God’s grace, you will be faithful to the gift of Faith give to you in Baptism and which you accepted in Confirmation. When people call me names, say that I am a failure, mock my spirituality as something in la-la land, put down religion as something where I just go to gain attention from women, I indeed want to hurt them back.  My human nature wants to protect itself from outrageous comments that demean me to my core. It is not normal to not want to respond and that is exactly what Christ tells us to do, through his disciples. I bite my tongue to keep from saying anything back when someone

(30) To do no injury, yea, even patiently to bear the injury done us. When someone injures us, more mentally and spiritually than physically, we want to get even, to get revenge on them.  This seems to be built into the human psyche and is covered by what I call Original Sin.  The world says get even, Jesus says to bear injuries patiently.  That just doesn’t make sense, unless you live in three universes.

(31) To love one’s enemies (cf Mt 5:44; Lk 6:27). Jesus bid us to love each other as He loved us.  The “each other” includes all those who hate us.  That doesn’t make sense, in terms of the world, yet that is the challenge for those that call themselves by the name of Christ. I can say I love my enemies, but I keep struggling to overcome these attitudes all the time.
(32) Not to curse them that curse us, but rather to bless them. I fail at this many times.  I don’t curse them audibly but think that in my heart. It is instictive.  As a Lay Cistercian, I am getting better at holding my thoughts.  At least I know what is right and wrong.

(33) To bear persecution for justice sake (cf Mt 5:10). Ever had someone screaming in your ear that you were going to Hell, absolutely convinced they were doing God’s will?  I have.  I could smell the hatred and anger at me. What does hatred smell like? A week old garbage can smells better than this.   Hatred is the perfume of the Evil One and the smell waifs long and wide from those who spew hatred, envy, jealousy, calumny, detratction.  Read Galatians 5.  What did Jesus do before Pilate and the Chief Priests?  He was silent. He bore the effects of Original Sin for justice sake.  We all should count ourselves blessed to bear such persecution.

St. Benedict wanted his monks, and all of those who wish to have in them the mind of Christ Jesus, to practice the instruments of good works that lead to our dying to self so that we can rise with Christ.  Each time I am tempted by these human responses to the challenges of my faith, I proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes again. As St. Paul says in Philippians  3:7-10, “For him, I have accepted the loss of everything, and I look on everything as so much rubbish if only I can have Christ Jesus and be given a place in him.”

There is a reason why the martyrs of the Church gave up their lives. There is a reason why men and women give up everything to become Cistercians and follow the contemplative way to what is meaningful in life. There is a reason why Lay Cistercians make Final Promises to convert their lives to love as Christ loved us. There is a reason why we follow the pattern of Christ in Baptism, the Holy Spirit healing and making all things new. We follow Christ because to whom else can we go, he has the words of eternal life.

Praise be  the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. The God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages. Amen and Amen.  –Cistercian doxology

When doing Lectio Divina (Phil 2:5) a while back, some thoughts that came to mind when I thought about Christ emptying himself to become human, I thought about these other strange inconsistencies in my view of reality.  Trying to seek God, at the core of what it means to be a Lay Cistercian, means living with what does not make sense. I can live with this because I consider it a mystery of faith, even though I don’t quite understand it, it is believable.

PROBLEM ONE: One such difficulty I have is why God, who exists in unapproachable light and is pure energy, pure love, pure thought, and pure service, needs to even create any matter and time, much less sentient beings such as Adam and Eve.  There is only one reason why God would do this. Read John 3:16.  Love is energy. Love is a nature. Love is the Spiritual Universe. Love is.

PROBLEM TWO: Why do humans have reason? Even though I think humans have reason for a reason, it is strange to look out on the landscape of my life and see how human reason can be used for good and also for evil. From the very beginning of the Book of Genesis, our chronicle of human behavior, there is dysfunction. Adam and Eve want to be God. Caine kills Abel. The tower of Bable. Humans do not know how to use reason (choice). Reason does not insure that we won’t choose something bad for us. That there is sin means we do choose what is not good for us even though we have seen the marvels of the works of God in our world.

PROBLEM THREE: Where is everyone?  The famous line from Enrico Fermi, called the Fermi Paradox, asks the question of why can’t we find evidence of human life, any life, in our universe. Some answered this question by telling us why we can’t find human life anywhere, such as the Drake Equation, Dr. Frank Drake’s calculation to estimate the probablilty of life in the universe.   See https://www.space.com/25219-drake-equation.html  What I find interesting is the purposeful squewing of the answer to this question in favor of the “there must be life out there, we just haven’t found it yet” arguement. What if the opposite is true? What if there is no life out there? Impossible?  I actually think that there may be life out there, but I am open to thinking that there is no other reasoning civilizations in the universe. The assumptions you get when you think there is no other sentient life out there is frightening. If you look at the question of why we have reason, the assumptions are that a mind, someone rational, created us for a reason and that we are here on earth for a reason.  Where you get the answer to these questions depends on human reason but also faith, faith in the words of Jesus on why we are here on earth. Human reason must look at reality and make a decision on what is reasonable and what needs additional knowledge to make it real. The notion of mystery is a way to say that I don’t know why but it seems reasonable, given the reasons Jesus gave us for why we are here and how to live forever.  For some it is a stumbling block, for other it is folly. For those who believe, there is no answer necessary; for those without faith, no answer is possible, Read John 1:1.

PROBLEM FOUR: We are not meant for space travel.  Compounding the problem where is everyone is the issue of space travel.  The thinking these days is that we need to travel to other worlds when this one runs out of fuel (more likely water). The problem is we did not evolve in space but in the context of gravity. Space is not our natural environment. Wonder if we are not meant to travel in space? Wonder if we are designed to live for seventy or eighty years and then die? Wonder if earth is just a platform, a boot camp for humans, a training camp for those to prepare to live Forever?  This goes to the purpose of why we are here.  You have reason to discover this. You are here to discover how to live forever. You have to discover how to do this, among all the false ways, prophets (profits) and false ideologies.

PROBLEM FIVE:  How does all reality fit together?  Depends.  It depends on what you mean by the purpose of life, what your purpose in life is, what reality looks like to you, what you think about the meaning of love, and how you deal with your death.  Reality fits together in the most macro of ways (three universes of physical, mental and spiritual). We are not talking about a theory of everything (Quantum theory and the Standard Model of relativity as one theory).  That won’t work for me because science doesn’t deal with all of reality, just what can be seen and measured.  Part of what it means to live in the physical and mental universes is to seek what is real and discover meaning. Part of what is means to live in the physical, mental and spiritual universes is to seek God. As a Lay Cistercian, I have some of the tools to discover God, actually the word uncovers God might also be appropriate. Each day, something new happens to link all of reality together.

PROBLEM SIX: The Change in Spiritual Polarity.  Every so often (measured in geologic time) the poles of the earth reverse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal

It happens.  There are consequences. In one of my Lectio Divina (Phil 2:5) sessions, I thought about how these natural phenomena, pole reversal, plate techtonics, subduction zones, play a part in the way we live where we find ourselves. I also thought about Problem Five (above) and how physical, mental and spiritual universes are inter-related, although we don’t yet have the intelligence nor the tools to see how they all fit together.

As a Lay  Cistercian, I believe I have had spiritual pole reversals. Impossible?  Think about it. I have changed the way I look at life. I have changed what is important in life. I have survived cardiac arrest (2007) and leukemia (CLL type) (2014). These are personal pole resersals because I switched priorities. There is a much deeper spiritual pole that went on as a result of the Resurrection Enigma, the title of one of my manuscripts. It is an enigma because it does not make sense, logically and with what we know of human love. Read Philippians 2:5-12.  With the Resurrection of Christ, the poles of the Spiritual Universe reversed with consequences. These consequences are documented in Scripture (John 11:25-27, I Corinthians 15:12-28). It is impossible to approach God directly by any human. It would fry our neurons and disintegrate our cellular integrity. This is pure energy we are talking about, something we can only see as through a foggy glass. Look at the window below and reflect on the spiritual pole reversal of the Resurrection and what that means before and after.

The Resurrection allowed humans to be in the presence of God without destroying out nature. We do that through Christ, our mediator, our advocate before the Father, one who can approach unapproachable light to give the Father glory through, with, and in Christ, in unity of the Holy Spirit. Read John 17 for the purpose for which Christ became human. Adam and Eve tried to related to God as divine and paid the price. We are able to related to God because Jesus has said we are adopted sons and daughters of the Father and heirs of the kingdom. God makes living in his presence possible, just as he became man for our salavaion and overshadowed Mary with his grace (energy).

One of the consequences of spiritual pole reserval is this. Things are not as they used to be. Physical and mental universe characteristics do not change, nor do the Laws of Nature and Science. What did change is that living in the spiritual universe is subject to the three rules of that universe.  They are:

You choose the Center or purpose of your life. One of the challenges you have in the seventy or so years you have on earth is determining what your center is. Your center is who you are and hope to be. Only you can choose your center.

You live in a universe with the sign of contradiction is default. With spiritual pole reversal come the rule of opposities.  What was up is now down. It is the sign of contradiction. Everything about Christ goes contrary to what the world thinks. This is a constant theme from the time of the Apostles to now.  Examples: God becomes human; Mary is overshadowed by the Holy Spirit; the virgin shall conceive a bear a son; greater love than this no one has than to give his life for another; to lead you must serve; the first shall be last.  You get the point.  Everything in the spiritual universe is the opposite of what the world teaches us as meaningful.

Your center will eventually corrupt without you sustaining it.  We live with the effects of Original Sin, even as we are absolved from death. The Resurrection freed us from death but we still must work for our salvation. We do that by loving others as Christ loved us. Read Matthew 25:31-46.  We need food for the journey (Eucharist) and the ability to make all things new (Penance and Forgiveness). We need to have mercy on others as we wish to have God treat us. Just as Adam and Eve, we must work as though everything depended upon us and pray as though everything depends on God’s mercy.

So, what does all of this mean?  For me, it means science only answers a part of reality, but a critically important part.  Science is good. Spirituality, expecially one that has the authority from Christ, contradicts the meaning of the world, but his contradiction is reasonable (faith informed by reason).  To discover what it means to be fully human, what we humans were destined to become, we need not only the physical and mental universes, but the completion by the spiritual universe.

Praise be the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. The God who was, who is, and who is to come at the end of the ages. Amen and Amen.  Cistercian Doxology.

During one of my Lectio Divina (Phil 2:5) encounters, my thoughts wandered to the meaning of Jesus’ command: love one another as I have loved you.  What can this mean? Does Jesus just come down to earth and abandon us to the perils of Original Sin with all its swirls and eddys of unbelieve or even false beliefs?  It came to me that God does indeed give us helps with trying to convert our lives daily from self to God. God give us five gifts to help us in our journey to Forever.

• The Cup of Salvation
• The Thread of Meaning
• The Light of the World
• The Book of Life
• Special glasses

There are probably more gifts we receive, but I will focus on The Cup of Salvation for this blog.

THE CUP OF SALVATION

Notice the photo above.  Look at it intently for five minutes (yes, for five minutes).

As you look at it ask yourself what you see. Rememer that there are three dimensions to this photo. One is the physical unverse, where you see foggy glass, a cup, a somewhat dirty window sill, vague images on the other side of the window, the color of the cup, the color of the window sill. One dimension is the mental universe, where you can go beyond just the phyiscal universe to what it means. What is means is influence by the addition of a spiritual universe, one which depends upon how you relate to the Sacred. Your mind gives meaning and the spiritual universe adds the dimension of God.

This is a blog about what I discovered about the spiritual meaning of the cup.  It has to do with my assumptions about who God is, who I am, my purpose in life, how I view reality, how all of it fits together, how I love fiercely, and finally, what is the final outcome for me after I die.  Using my mental universe, I try to make sense out of what I see is just a cup sitting on a dusty ledge overlooking a foggy glass.  What can it mean?  I use the physical universe of the cup, using my mental capabilities to intrepret a spiritual meaning for me that leads me from self to God.

THE CUP

When I see the cup in this photo I think that everyone gets a cup from God when they enter the spiritual universe. We get gifts when we make our Confirmation or Bar Mitzvah as a sign that this is a special time. God gives us four gifts, one of which is a simple cup. It is an empty cup because each of us must fill it up. God won’t fill it up for us but, ironically, it is God grace and energy with which we fill it.  St. Benedict has a list of good works that will fill our cup. As a Lay Cistercian, I try to read a least a portion of Chapter 4, every day.  ThatI do it every day, because I want to fill up my cup with the goodness of God.  Your cup is different from mine, but they both come from God. God does not fill our cup FOR US but we fill our cup because of what Christ taught us. Read Matthew 25:31-46. I am thinking I must take up my cross daily and follow Christ. It doesn’t matter if my road is rocky or I have difficulties. All of my actions, my morning offering, my attendance at the Liturgy of the Hours, the reception of the Holy Eucharist, my recitatin of the Rosary, my daily Lectio Divina contemplation, all help me to keep my cup from spilling.   I think that when I am judged by Christ, he will asked to see my cup and determine how faithful I have been in keeping his love in it. Being a sinful person (don’t love with all my heart and mind and strength) I have the obligation to have in me the mind of Christ Jesus. I ask for mercy. Only people with full cups can get to Heaven. Christ fills up my cup with his own love so that I can live Forever. Christ must increase, I must decrease.

MARY, MOTHER OF GOD

I am thinking of Mary, Mother of Jesus, Mother of God. She received a cup from Christ when she entered the spiritual universe. Mary is human, not god. She is like all of us, but with this difference. According to Scripture, she was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit.  For me, this means that Mary’s cup was so filled with God’s love and grace that there was no room left. I received my cup empty and must spend my life trying to fill it up.  Mary’s cup was filled for her by God. That is why we say she is full of grace, her cup runneth over, there is no room for sin. She could not have had sin because Jesus is without sin. We honor Mary and ask her to interceed for us before the Throne of the Lamb because she, of all humans, is the perfect human, what Adam and Eve would have been, had they not sinned. Mary is the second Eve.

THROUGH A FOGGY GLASS

This photo tells me a lot about my life. Life is cluttered and somewhat messay. The window is cloudy and we can’t see what is on the other side== well, almost, but not quite clearly. This is like my life. As a Lay Cistercian, I try to clarify what I can about the mystery of faith using my reason. Sometimes, the spiritual universe conflicts with the physical and mental ones, i.e., trying to measure the spiritual universe with the scientific tools.

As a Lay Cistercian, the cup reminds me that I must convert my life daily to something that does not make sense to the world, to take up my cross daily and tame my humanity by denying self and accepting Christ. Christ must grow and I must decrease. Far from being an abandonment of my humanity, paradoxically, it is precisely what makes me more human.

LEARNING POINTS

• Christ gives us a cup when we enter the spiritual universe. The problem is, you must fill up your cup with God’s grace and good works (Chapter 4 of St. Benedict’s Rule).
• The spiritual universe is a sign of contradiction. What is up in two universes, is down with three universes. Christ gives us glasses (faith) to see. Far from being a crutch for reason, faith actually allows us to see what the eyes cannot see and hear what the ears cannot hear. Spirituality, to the scientific mind, does not make sense.  It doesn’t!
• The cup of salvation allows you to collect your good works and hold them in your spirit until you are judged.
• Christ gave us only one command, to love one another.  We are given instructions over and over to have mercy on those as we want God to have mercy on us.
• Creation is the realm of the Word. Resurrection is the realm of the Word made flesh. The Word made flesh in us through good works of Christ is the realm of the Spirit.  The Church universal is asked to make all things new in each age.

Praise to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now and forever. The God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages. Amen and Amen. Cistercian doxology.

The following information is from Wikipedia about the martyrdom of Seven Cistercian monks from the Monastery of Our Lady of Atlas, Algeria, I offer it as part of my Lecio Divina meditation last week as I prepared for the Resurrection.

“On the night of 26–27 March 1996, seven monks from the Atlas Abbey of Tibhirine, near Médéa, in Algeria, belonging to the Roman Catholic Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (known as Trappists) were kidnapped during the Algerian Civil War. They were held for two months, and found dead in late May 1996.

The circumstances of their kidnapping and death remain controversial; the Armed Islamic Group (Groupe Islamique Armé, GIA) claimed responsibility for both, but in 2009, retired General François Buchwalter reported that the monks were killed by the Algerian army.^[2]

Circumstances

At approximately 1:15 AM on 27 March 1996, about twenty armed members of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) arrived at the monastery of Tibhirine and kidnapped seven monks. Two others, Father Jean-Pierre and Father Amédée, were in separate rooms and escaped the kidnappers’ notice. After the kidnappers left, the remaining monks attempted to contact the police, but found that the telephone lines had been cut. As there was a curfew in force, they had to wait until morning to drive to the police station in Médéa.

On 18 April, the GIA’s communiqué no. 43 announced that they would release the monks in exchange for Abdelhak Layada, a former GIA leader who had been arrested three years earlier. On 30 April, a tape with the voices of the kidnapped monks, recorded on 20 April, was delivered to the French Embassy in Algiers. On 23 May, the GIA’s communiqué no. 44 reported that they had executed the monks on 21 May. The Algerian government announced that their heads had been discovered on May 31; the whereabouts of their bodies is unknown. The funeral Mass for the monks was celebrated in the Catholic Cathedral of Notre-Dame d’Afrique (Our Lady of Africa) in Algiers on Sunday, 2 June 1996. Their remains were buried in the cemetery of the monastery at Tibhirine two days later.^[3]

The surviving two monks of Tibhirine left Algeria and traveled to a Trappist monastery near Midelt in Morocco.^[4]

The monks[edit]

All seven monks killed were French. They were: Dom Christian de Chergé, Brother Luc (born Paul Dochier), Father Christophe (Lebreton), Brother Michel (Fleury), Father Bruno (born Christian Lemarchand), Father Célestin (Ringeard), and Brother Paul (Favre-Miville).^“[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_the_monks_of_Tibhirine

OF GODS AND MEN

There is a movie made of this event entitled Of Gods and Men. Here is the source from Wikipedia.

Of Gods and Men is a 2010 French drama film directed by Xavier Beauvois, starring Lambert Wilsonand Michael Lonsdale. Its original French language title is Des hommes et des dieux, which means “Of Men and of Gods” and refers to a verse from the Bible shown at the beginning of the film. It centers on the monastery of Tibhirine, where nine Trappist monks lived in harmony with the largely Muslim population of Algeria, until seven of them were kidnapped and assassinated in 1996 during the Algerian Civil War.^[2]

Largely a tale of a peaceful situation between local Christians and Muslims before becoming a lethal one due to external forces, the screenplay focuses on the preceding chain of events in decay of government, expansion of terrorism, and the monks’ confrontation with both the terrorists and the government authorities that led up to their deaths. Principal photography took place at an abandoned monastery in Azrou, Morocco.

The film premiered at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival where it won the Grand Prix, the festival’s second most prestigious award. It became a critical and commercial success in its domestic market, and won both the Lumières Award and César Award for Best Film.

LEARNING POINTS

The one command Jesus gave us is: love one another as I have loved you.  This act of love by the seven monks of Our Lady of Atlas epitomizes that command as something still relevant even in our own day.

We don’t usually get a chance to love God with ALL our heart and ALL our mind and ALL our strength, as did these seven martyrs.  I asked myself, would I have had the courage to choose to remain with the people or would I have fled in the night. I don’t honestly know what I would have done but I hope I would have had the strength to choose life.

The seven martyrs are saints, although not yet made Saints by the Church Universal, and certainly worthy of emulation for giving their lives for the love of Christ.

The Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Churches both honor those who have gone before us and exhibited extraordinary courage and love. We honor all those who are in heaven marked with the indelible sign of the cross on their spirit, but the Church Universal gives special honors to those it declares to be worthy of our devotion and practices so that we, too, may call upon them to help us in our quest to move from self to God.  They did it, and we ask their intercession, those standing before the Throne of the Lamb, to pray with us to Christ and through Christ to the Father giving praise and glory in union with the Holy Spirit.

The commuion of saints, which we recite in our Creed is a living testament to those who, either saints or Saints (proclaimed by the Church Universal) to have loved God with all their minds, all their hearts, and all their strength and their neighbor as themselves.

I have had occasion to have conversations with unbelievers about the reality of the communion of saints. They claim they do not pray to any saint, only to God. Neither do I, but I have something more. I am joined, as I pray with the Seven Cistercian Martyrs of Atlas, who stand right now before the Throne of God to add my prayer with the living and eternal prayer of their love to give glory to the Father, through the Son, in union with the Holy Spirit. I ask God to have the strength of grace to live in such a way as to recreate in me the mind of Christ Jesus (Phl 2:5). The communion of saints taps into the ongoing prayer of those who have gone before us, my mom and dad, those who, through the centuries have tried to follow the command of Christ to love one another. Were all those saints sinners. You bet. Were all these saints imperfect and in need to take up their cross daily to follow Christ? Indeed. It is not because they are imperfect that we believe in them but rather precisely because they overcame their humanity to choose God. They were what Adam and Eve were not. They were what Christ was and is and will be. They all stand before the Throne of the Lamb in adoration by their lives and the transformation of their weaknesses and sins to glorify God, in the grace of Christ’s one sacrifice of love, the passion, death, resurrection and ascension to the Father.

THE HALL OF FAME

Using a modern analogy, Saints, those formally inducted as such as actually being made a member of the Hall of Fame, like Basketball, Baseball, and Football.  One who makes it to the Hall of Fame must be elected to its elite status.  There are many football players but only a few make the Hall of Fame. We honor them for being best at what they do. In the same way, Saints are elected to the special honor because they were ordinary persons but loved others in an extraordinary way. We do not adore Saints because they just have a human nature. Only Jesus had both human and divine nature.

All those of the Church Universal who make it to heaven are called saints. Those that the Church Universal designates as meriting the title of hero are called Saints.  Early Saints were acclaimed so as you can see in the Catecombs of Rome and the early martyrs. As the heritage of the Church Universal evolved, more rules crept into the process to make a Saint.

Mary is honored as the first of the Saints. She is not adored as God, even though she is called Mother of God (that is food for another blog).  In our age, we honor those who excel at their craft, as in sports. The Seven Cistercian Martyrs of Atlas Monastery are those we want to emulate and be like principally because they chose Christ over the world and life over death. Saints and saints (your mom and dad and family in Heaven) are still alive. When we pray to them we do not pray TO them as God but ask them to help us by praying WITH us as they stand before the Son, giving glory to the Father in union with the Holy Spirit.

Think about the Seven Cistercian Martyrs of Our Lady of Atlas Monastery next time you want inspiration from those in our time on how to love God with all their hearts, all their minds, all their strength and their neighbor as themselves.

Praise to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. The God who is, who was and who is to come at the end of the ages. Amen and Amen.  –Cistercian doxology

Are you crazy, you say?  You ate meat on Good Friday, the one of two days (the other being Ash Wednesday) that you are asked to give up meat (abstinence) each year? The sign that you really follow the spirit of the law and not just the letter, and you are meat?

That’s me.  I am a sinner alright. I am not proud of what I did. Let me share what happened.  I started out Good Friday reciting the Liturgy of the Word (no Eucharist) like a good boy.  Proud of myself, I thought I would go through the day thinking about the passion and death of Christ that leads to the Resurrection, like a good boy.  That morning, I remember thinking how I would not eat meat on Friday because I would never go near a Five Guys, McDonalds, Wendy’s or Chick-fi-la, like a good boy. I am not like the rest of those unbelievers who wolf down a bbq sandwich at Sonny’s or 4 Rivers Smokehouse on Friday, like a good boy.

Here it is Friday and I am sitting at home when my wife asks me what I want for lunch. I say, without thinking, a cheese sandwich, not thinking of offering up my lack of food in reparation for my sins, like a good boy. She says, want a bacon sandwich?  I think, that sounds good, already smelling the crisp bacon on two slices of Publix Mountain Bread. Yummy. The bacon sandwich was good, in fact great. That crisp bacon just melted in my mouth and I enjoyed every bite, like a good boy. No thoughts of Good Friday, no denying self to follow Christ by abstaning from meat, like a good boy would. From one to three in the afternoon, I took a nap, content to think about Jesus in Philippians 2:5-12 and what he did for us out of love to enable us to be adopted sons and daughters, like a good boy would. At  330 p.m., after having watched my normal program, The Herd, with Colin Cowherd, I sat upright in my chair and said, “My God, I ate meat on Friday!!!!!!!” like a bad boy.

At that very moment, I heard a voice sounding a lot like my own, somewhere within me laughing uncontrolably, Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! it said. I got you!  Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! it said, you think being a Lay Cistercian will automatically keep you free from my grasp?  Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! I won and you lost, it said. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! God lost and I won, it said, Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! In the silence and solitude of my heart,

I asked Jesus to be merciful to me, a sinner, not just for not eating meat, which is trivial in itself, but for recreating the sin of Adam and Eve once more, which, after all is what sin is. Satan had beaten me, but not Christ, and it was gloating over the win, much like it did with the seeming victory over Job  (Read the Book of Job). Just when I think I am strong, God comes along and reminds me that I am so suseptible to sin that it only His light that allows me to overcome the darkness. Left to following what the world wants, I would perish in a sea of Original Sin, alone in a vast wilderness of ocean with no boat, no food, no water.

The devil had good reason to laugh. I had made a complete fool out of myself, which is a good way to think about sin, missing the mark that you set out for yourself, in this case, the mark being to have in you the mind of Christ Jesus.

I used to think of sins like that of being wrong because I break the law which says I should not eat meat on Ash Wednesday, the Fridays of Lent, and Good Friday. The wrong here was in placing power in me and not thinking of God. It was the classic sin of Adam and Eve, the archetypal sin of all to come, preferring Devil to God, or in my case, not even being away of what was going on.

Being a Lay Cistercian, I have come to be aware that this was an opportunity missed to love God with all my heart, my mind, and all my strength, and my neighbor as myself. It is a chance for me to practice the Tools for Good Works of St. Benedict’s Rule, Chapter 4 and return good. Temptation in itself is not evil, it is in forgetting that God is God that is insideous. It one sense, it is thanking God for giving me that grace to recognize that I am in need to daily take up my cross through doing the Cistercian practices which lead to my increasing and the devil decreasing, which in turn is occasion for Christ increasing in me and I not dying to self again.  Sin is the opportunity to recognize who you are in the sight of God (humility) and respond once more by asking for mercy on so weak a human that need daily santification of his humaness to recognize what is really going on in his life.

It is in this sense, that all the times we think we are god and fail that helps us remind ourselves that we are adopted sons and daughters of the Father. You are not me, I am not you; God is not you, and you, most certainly, are not God.

Jesus forgives all of us but with a challenging command in John 8: 7-11

There are six questions which I think everyone, every human, that is, should answer, if they are to prepare to live Forever. It is all about perspective and your perspective determines the world you create here and in the next world to come.  Here are my Lectio Divina (Phl 2:5) thoughts on perspective, one that asks us to have in us the mind of Christ Jesus.

Jesus only gave us one command, love one another as I have loved you.  The Resurrection remembrance of last week speaks to the fierce love God has for humans, despite their penchant for always doing what God says is bad for us.  One of the take aways from the Resurrection is us being able to do what Jesus commanded in the context of Faith (individual and community). We must DO the resurrection as part of what it means to love as Jesus loved us. At the heart of Resurection Mystery is transformation. Not that Jesus was not God from the moment the Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary, but the human side grew in knowledge and wisdom before God and man. As a Lay Cistercian, one of the things that hit me as a brick between the eyes is, I must daily convert myself to living the Life of Christ according to the Cistercian practices and charisms, moving from self to God, seeking God first and then all else next. The power of the Resurrection in my age and at my age means, once again, I take up my cross with whatever the day brings and rise with Christ to a more meaningful approach to life, a more positive and productive way of looking at what is of value, in short, the perspective to have in me, with all my strength, the mind of Christ Jesus.  The problem is, I am not there yet. Some days are better than others, but it is a ride I must take on the roller coaster of life.  I just hope I don’t fall off the tracks.

SIX QUESTIONS YOU MUST ANSWER BEFORE YOU DIE

I just published a book entitled,  Six Questions Everyone must answer before they die. (2018)  You can get in on Amazon Books.

Here are the six questions you must answer. Remember, you must answer them correctly. I began the quest for answers when I was in Eighth Grade and am still trying to figure out the depth of meaning in each of them.  I would say I know all six to some degree but they are in process of unfolding like a rose bud unfolds in the warm Florida Sun,  slowly but steadily.

• What is the purpose of life?
• What is your purpose in life?
• What does reality look like?
• How does it all fit together?
• How do you love fiercely?
• You know you are going to die, now what?

If you are like me, you look at these six questions and think, “Are you crazy?” Probably! But, can you answer them, not to the fulness of their meaning, which may take me a lifetime of processing them against my life experiences and faith struggles?  Don’t be sidetracked by superflueous questions that steer you away from confronting these six questions. Don’t worry about who is right, instead concern yourself to be right.

Another thing I thought about was the statement about answering them correctly? Ah! Here comes the real test of your perception. Who determines what is right and wrong? You? Somthing outside of yourself? What or Who would that be? If your center (the second question above) is you, you have a fool for a god. You as god makes no sense. For one thing, you may only live to be seventy or eighty, if you are strong. Then what? Is having you as god something that will propell you to the next level of reality, the Kingdom of Heaven? If you don’t believe in the Kingdom of Heaven stuff, what stuff do you believe in? Do others share that belief system?

Life is simple yet quite complex. We must believe in something or someone that is sustainable beyond our lifetime. The Resurrection is a statement that there is someone who can be that center now and Forever. You can hold any philosophy or belief system you want, but not all beliefs will lead you to the truth., no matter how sincere their followers may be. Again, who determines what is truth? You have reason for a reason. You have faith, informed by reason, for a reason. Use what God has given you to open up the layers of meaning contained in the Resurrection and discover how good the Lord tastes. Once you taste God’s love, nothing is ever the same…Forever. Bon appetite!

Praise be the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now and Forever The God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages. Amen and Amen.  –The Cistercian Doxology

This might seem like an unlikely topic for Lectio Divina (Phil 2:5) but it happened so I will pass it on.

I have had conversations in the past about spirituality and how it is not based on reality but on Faith and subjective belief. Did Jesus really live?  Did he really say those things in the Gospels or were those all made up by over zealous disciples who wanted to believe that Jesus was God so much that they made up all the stuff about the Resurrection?

At a luncheon, an acquaintance of mine once told me I was crazy for believing in the words of a young carpenter kid who had a messiah complex and fixated on wanting to be God in order to fullfill the Jewish notion of a Messiah and please his mommy. She told me I was delusional just like his young kid’s followers who thought that he actually rose from the dead and is waiting for us in heaven. “There is no heaven,” she said.  I told her, “That’s the Hell of it all.”  We laughed and then finished lunch. It is all a matter of perspective. I am responsible for my reality not someone else’s.

Like with everything in my life, I try to use my reason as much as possible. I have reason for a reason. Faith takes over when reason does not make sense. Remember, I said that the spiritual universe is the opposite of what the world (reality) teaches. I can’t remember when I said it but it was something like having the polar caps reverse themselves, South is now North and vice versa. This actually has happened in our human history. Polar cap reversal is real whereas my notion of a spiritual cap reversal (the world’s values are not the same as the Kingdom of Heaven) is not grounded in science but of faith informed by reason.  The “informed by reason” is important because it gives limited access to the whole universe of mystery and the Mystery of Faith.  I don’t believe in blind faith, or faith without reason, because blind faith is still blind. We all have reason for a reason and whatever we view as real must run the gauntlet of disbelief, unbelief, and skepticism. The danger is getting stuck in a negative view of what reality is.

REALITY AND FANTASY

Call me a poor luncheon partner, but I can’t justify what is real with some of these movies I love to watch. I woke up at 2:00 a.m. the other night thinking of a movie, The Avengers, I just watched. One of my favorite scenes was when The Hulk responded to Loki’s taunt that he was not a god by thrashing him from side to side, leaving him moaning on the floor in a deep hole in the concrete. “Puny god,” The Hulk said to Loki. I love that scene.  I love thinking about mythical creatures and how they live in our human experience and take on our human characteristics although more perfect. One thing I don’t do is think that these stories are real, they represent the mythical answer to why we are human and how we should act or not act. I don’t think that other movies that show Arnold Swartzenneger’s character of Conan fighting evil with the good that comes from Crom, is real, but it real in that it may give entertainmet and pleasure. So, what is real and what is fantasy.  I have often thought of young children of today growing up believing that Dr. Strange’s world is real, and that  The Witch Hunter, starring Vin Diesel, actually exists.. My previously-mentioned  luncheon partner acttually brought up these mythical movies as proof that this is what happened to the early followers of Chrst.  They believed that the myth was true, that a man could rise from the dead, that God would become man becaue of love, that living in the world alone will not get us to heaven. You and I both have the same choices. I based my choice on Faith informed by reason, that of the literary texture that fortells the coming of Christ and makes sense. There is a point where reason ends and Faith begins, but it is not the same as seeing the Devil as they do in movies of Rosemary’s Baby, and Constantine.  Where my Faith begins and reason ends, I have Hope that the words spoken by Christ are real and not fantasy.

WHAT IS REAL FOR ME?

I am constantly being accused of being in La-La Land regarding my Lay Cistercian practices and having conversion of life to Christ as a purpose (Phil 2:5). Of course, my perspective is not the same as that of theirs. “I am not you; you are not me; God is not you; and you, most certainly, are not God. ” –Michael F. Conrad

I will set forth what I think is real. What is real is contain in my church of the mind and my church of the heart. I not only want to know something is true and believe it but use it to change both my faith and the faith of those around me.

• Love for one another, especially looking at the love Jesus had for each of us.
• God as one nature and yet three persons
• The hypothesis of three universes in which I live(physical, mental, spiritual) verses those two universes (physical and mental) as recognized the world
• Christ as my center (Phil 2:5)
• The living Body of Christ, the Catholic Church Universal, Church Diocese, local Community of Faith, and finally, me
• Each of us will be judged according to our works (Matthw 25:31-46)
• As a Lay Cistercian, convert my life daily to be more like Christ and less like me using the Cistercian practices and charisms
• Be merciful to others as I want God to be merciful to me
• Glorify the Father through the Son in union with the Holy Spirit
• Love God with all my heart, my mind, and my strength and my neighbor as myself (Deuteronomy 6 and Matthew 22:34-40)
• Take up my cross daily and follow Christ
• Pray that I not enter into temptation
• The Real Presence is the same Christ that rose from the dead to ascend to glorify the Father.

Praise be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit now and Forever. The God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages. Amen and Amen.  The Cistercian Doxology.

In one of my more lively Lectio Divina meditations (Phil 2:5), the thought came to me to act my nature. What an out-in-left=field thought! Especially at this season of Holy Week 2018, what in the world could that mean?

I have actually had this thought before and I think I put it in my book series entitled Spiritual Apes, but I am not positive. At 78 years of age, I am not positive abut anything except about the need to use the restroom frequently. Here are my thoughts on acting your nature. This is not my typical blog– it is very long.

WHAT IS NATURE?

You have heard of the Laws of Nature, and natural medicine, but this has to do with the very essence of what it means to be.  This subject of Nature, like all ideas about philosophy and religion, takes on a multiple layer of meaning, depending on the assumptions held by the one defining it. Read the reference in New Advent on “nature” to find out the complexity of this subject. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10715a.htm

For my part, I gravitate towards a more simple exaplanation of nature, rather than the more historical approach of disecting it to death. Nature, in my view of reality had to do with being, a class of existing. As I learned it, reality has three categories of nature, divine, human, and animal. These three are separate and distinct. I based my notion of three universes on this concept. The notion of three natures might seem insignifcant at first glance, but it is at the very center of the plan of salvation, the story of Genesis, The Resurrection that we commemorate this week, and our own journey to Forever.

DIVINE NATURE — God’s nature is to be. In God’s own words, “I am who I am” (Exodus 3:14) Unlike the family of gods on Mt. Olympus, the divine nature is just beyond our limited ability to grasp it and contain it. We call it a mystery, the same way the early Hebrews thought of God living on the highest levels of a mountain, covered in mists and clouds.

I have come to think of it as pure energy, or energy that is alive, 100% of its nature. If God is pure energy, then we can’t touch it without frying our neurons. It is beyond dark matter and energy, above the theories that seek to unifiy all reaity into one, and so simple that it just is, or as some call it, the Alpha and Omega. Humans do not and cannot live in this level, we who are just bound to this one gassy rock in space and time. We have not found if there is anyone else out there, although our intelligence says it is possible (See the Drake Equation). https://www.seti.org/drakeequation. The problem for me is that the language of mathematics and physics are limited languages and only describe what they see. They are the best tools we have to see the universe, but one of matter, time, space, and energy.

Divine nature means God lives in pure energy, energy that is living, the product of the love of the Father for the Son and the Holy Spirit. God has one nature, divine, but there are three persons within that nature, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The reality is much greater than the feeble attempts to use human words to describe that which cannot be contained within the human experience. In a few moments, we will look at six scenarios that reflect the nature of God. We can describe them but not define them. We don’t know enough. The concept of mystery is essential to any attempts to describe God.  Far from being untrue, mystery penetrates to the deepest levels of our humanity as

HUMAN NATURE - Divine nature can create human nature and animal nature but not the other way around.  Adam and Eve discovered this the hard way. Humans have always wanted to be god. In fact, it is the strongest desires we humans have, with sexuality being a close second. There is a reason God put not being our own god as the First Command. More on that later.

Genesis is a marvelous story about what it means to be human. This archetypal ancient myth of relationship with God and then losing it because of disobedience and wanting to be god, brought sin into the world. We say all people are born with Original Sin and Baptism cleanes us from that sin of Adam and Eve and establishes our new covenant with God, one written in our hearts (Jeremiah 31:31). Man is good in our nature, not evil. Matter is good not evil but the effects of Original Sin are that matter deteriorates and will not live forever. We just die, even though we try as hard as we can to prolong life.

Christ came to save us from death and it is in that moment that all humanity has a chance to live forever, as God intended. Intrinsic to being human is the ability to choose. The integrity of being human has to do with using reason and obedience to God being God and Humans being Human.  Easter is a time to celebrate victory over death, that Christ, the Second Adam, conquered sin (Original Sin) and allowed us to be adopted sons and daughters of the Father, if we choose. Choosing has reponsibiities. We are not god. We must be obedient to the will of the Father, as Christ taught us. We must not be led into the temptation of hinking that, just because we are free to choose anything, anything we choose corresponds to God’s will. Human nature is obedient to Divine nature, not the other way around.

Something happened to Human Nature when a young Jewish maiden said “yes” to the invitation by God to be the mother of His Son, Jesus Christ. The divine nature, once more, reached down in time to give humanity a chance to be what was originally intended in the Garden of Eden. Jesus was like us in all things but sin. He had no Original Sin but accepted the human condition, feeling pain, being hungry, getting angry, temptations to be god (notice the lower case), and finally to die. All of this I read each time I do my Lectio Divina because my only reading is Philippians 2:5. Now, human nature has two natures in the person of Christ, both divine and human. There is no other human who has this duality. The Scriptures tell us that God overshadowed Mary with the Holy Spirit and she will full of grace. Mary was the number one human, in terms of changing time, but she was not God, i.e., having a divine nature.

Man’s nature is to find the purpose of life, find his or her purpose in life, discover the scope of reality, learn how it all fits together, learn the meaning of fierce love, and learn how to live…Forever.  The nature of man, that for which we were created is to know, love, and serve God in this life, and be happy with Him in the next. We are not just humans like the animals, but spiritual apes, our destiny being Heaven. Christ helps us to fulfill what it means to be human, making up for us what Adam destroyed. (Romans 5)

Because Christ is both God and man, he can make atonement for the sin of Adam and Eve. He give himself up totally, even to death on a cross, to buy back what was lost, to open the gates of Paradise again, to allow us to be adopted sons and daughters in good standing. He makes all things new. When Adam and Eve sinned, their offense was measured by the one offended, in this case, someone from our human nature offended someone from the divine nature. To reoncile with the one offended would take someone from the divine nature to become human to say they are sorry. That is called the reparation hyothesis. Read Romans 5: 12-21 for St. Paul’s take on this comparison between Adam and Christ.

The nature of a human is to be what he or she is supposed to be, determined by the one who made us. Because of Original Sin, our default, human nature, we cannot move to the Spiritual Universe without washing away the stain of sin. Christ came to take away the sin of the world (not just sins), Original Sin. When we are baptized with water, it cleanes us symbolically from the act of disobedience by Adam and Eve, but it does not take away the effects of sin. We must still die, suffer pain, go through temptation, suffer bad days as well as have good days, and seek to find meaning and purpose in a world that is not our natural state. The Kingdom of Heaven is the state where we are and are headed, not the world. Chapter 5 of Galatians speaks to this state and how we must use the Holy Spirit to rise above our normal, default nature. That is why I wrote my three volumes entitled Spiritual Apes to attrempt to show how man, wounded by the disobedience of Adam and Eve can rise to new life with Jesus’s passion, death, and resurrection. This return to the Father to atone for our collective disobedience completes the obedience of the Son to His Father, prepared since the beginning of time itself.

Sin, or missing the purpose of our nature, is not acting our nature. Adam and Eve tried to act as God with disasterous consequencee. When we commit certain sins, not consistent with our human nature but more in common with our animal nature, then we do not act our nature but rather act as an animal. That is called sin, or missing the purpose of our nature. Componding the intricasy of the action, is the fact that Jesus became one of us by not acting his nature, or divine status, but taking on the nature of a sinful human. If we did that, it would be like one of us becoming an animal, such as a dog, in our nature (not just acting like one) because of love in order to allow all dogs to go to heaven. Read Philippians 2:5-12.

Sin is like having a hole in your boat of life. Water keeps coming in unless you plug the leak. If you can’t find the leak or fix it, then you must bail out the water…forever. Christ is the plug, the patch that makes all boats new again. We won’t get there without work, thanks to the sin of Adam and Eve, but equally thanks be to God, we have a living patch to help us until we reach the far shore of Heaven with Christ.

As a Lay Cistercian, I am becoming more and more aware that I am more like Adam and Eve than I thought. I have terrible temptations to place me at the center of my life and it is a struggle to be not just human but spiritual, the purpose for which I was created. I went through a stage that, if I read the Bible over and over, I would not have such a diffitult time loving Christ with all my heart, my mind, and my strength, and to love my neighbor as myself.  I now realize that it is not the number of prayers you say or how many prayers you can say in a day, but how you love others as Christ loved us, that is the norm for my spirituality. The Cistercian practices and charisms, especially humility, obedience to visible authority that is not me, hospitality to others, and daily prayer to the Father that I not be delivered into templation, all make up where I am now in my spiritual journey.

ANIMAL NATURE — Animals, indeed the rest of human life, are not human. They do not know that they know. You can’t ask a dog to join you for coffee next Thursdays and expect that he will show up. You can”t count on a monkey to cook Duck la’orange.  Why is that?  The nature of an animal is to be what it is.  You can related to a tree as a living entity says Martin Buber, renowned Jewish philosopher and creator of the “I-Thou and I-It” approach to relationship. You just have to let the tree be a tree and you be you. You can’t make the tee into something it is not.

https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/iandthou/summary/

On this Easter, Morning Prayer Psalms states in the Canticle of Daniel, Chapter 3.

Bless the Lord, all you works of the Lord. 
Praise and exalt him above all forever.
Angels of the Lord, bless the Lord. 
You heavens, bless the Lord.
All you waters above the heavens, bless the Lord.  
All you hosts of the Lord, bless the Lord.
Sun and moon, bless the Lord.
Stars of heaven, bless the Lord.

I have had a problem with “Stars of the heavens” blessing the Lord.  How can the world of matter and time, energy and elements all praise the Lord?  They do so by being what they were created to be, fulfilling their destiny, even though inanimate.  Animal nature praises God by being what they were intended to be. Can we humans do no less? For someone to act according to our animal nature instead of our human nature is called sin. We revert back to our animal roots and heritage. Humans do not have an animal nature because God raised us up beyond acting like an animal.

Ever wonder why humans alone are the only ones in the whole universe with reason, the ability to reflect on matter, time, and energy and ask why, how, when, where, and what? Our destiny is one that was originally set to last forever except for the sin of Adam and Eve. Christ restores the convenant relation with God to such an extent that we become heirs of God’s kingdom.  It is with this enthusiasm and mindset that the Easter Pascal Mystery proclaims, “O Happy Fault” of Adam and Eve. The joy of the Resurrection is real and on-going as members of the Church Universal (one, holy, catholic, apostolic). It is why we call it the GOOD news, why we will give up all we have and follow Christ, why we try to love God with all our minds, all our hearts, all our strength, and our neighbor as ourselves. (Deuteronomy 6 and Matthew 22:37). The Resurrection is the nuclear fission of our spiritual journey, producing energy from our interface with the heart of Christ Jesus.

Animals don’t go to heaven. It is not their nature, but it is your nature.  Before you get all bent out of shape, realize that you have the power, just like Jesus has with you, to bring your pets, indeed anything that you link to the will of the Father, to heaven with you. It is only in, with, and through Christ that any of us can live forever. John 11:25-28 gives us a hint of  the path to forever.  Jesus has come to console Mary and Martha over the death of their brother, Lazarus. He teaches them: “I am the resurrection and the life.^[f] Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, ^26 and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” ^27 She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah,^[g] the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”  At this celebration of our salvation, Jesus is reminding us that, we too, must prepare our hearts to live forever.

RULES OF NATURE (BEING)

Think about the three levels of nature (divine, human, animal). One is higher than the other. Animals are not human, whatever you define that to be.  There is a reason ontongy recapitulates philogeny. Animals may be living but they are not sentient, they do not know that they know.  Animals do not automatically get to heaven.

https://2000clicks.com/graeme/langwisdomsayingontogenyrecapitulatesphylogeny.htm

Humans do not automatically get to heaven, either, but with the exception that we have a choice. One of the reasons for Baptism, other than being adopted by God, is that it takes away Original Sin, into which all humans are born because of the sin of Adam and Eve. The reason we have reason, seems to me to be because we can realize our future and prepare now to live Forever. Humans are not animals. God is neither human nor animal in nature, but has three distinct persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). All is these concepts are for humans so that they can at least have some notion of who God is. One of the reasons God had to become man is because He loved us so much he had to explain to humanity how to seek first the kindgom of heaven so that the priorities are correct. God’s nature is so far beyond our true understanding and comprehension that we must use imprecise words like “nature” and “person” to describe the love that is a person, three persons, to be exact.  Here are a few “rules” that may help (or confuse you) explain the levels of nature.

Each level of nature is autonomous and the lower one cannot move higher to the next one. What sounds like a mouthful of marbles means we can be god by adoption, and animals cannot be us. Adam and Eve tried to move up to this level and offended God (a concept used so that our poor human understanding can make sense of it). That is the archetypal sin of Adam and Eve and one that is number one even in our own time. “You are not me; I am not you; God is not you, and you, most certainly, are not God.” ==Michael F. Conrad

So, how can we get to heaven? Here is what happened. God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son to be one of us. (John 3:15-18; Philippians 2:5-12) Jesus is both God AND man. As such, he apologized to the Father for the sin of Adam and Eve (Romans 5) and allowed all of us to have the possibiiity of moving to the Kingdom of Heaven.  Heaven is God’s playground and He can allow anyone He wants to play there. We are of human nature but God has adopted us to be sons and daughters and heir of the Kingdom, such was His love for us. Jesus only give us one command: love one another as I have loved you.  Of course, that is everything there is.

God did not make the animals heirs of the Kingdom. God did not make the angels divine nature. St. Paul writes in Hebrews, 1:

In Baptism, God lifts us up from our human nature to be able to live forever in Heaven, even though we are not God. Jesus is God. Jesus is our Mediator. Jesus lifts all things up to Himself …Forever. This is how the three types of nature interact with each other. In the divine plan of salvation, thee resurrecction from the dead means we have the HOPE to live Forever. Therefore, as a Lay Cistercian, looking at all of these ideas about resurrection, salvation, adoption, love, sacrifice, and deeth, I want to focus on loving God with all  my heart, all my mind, all my strength, and my neighbor as myself. (Deuteronomy 6 and Mattthew 22:37).

With this season feast of our salvation and adoption as sons and daughters, we once more  place our hearts next to the heart of Jesus and humbly ask God to have mercy on us, grateful that God has graced us with his blessings and energy.

SIX WAYS TO APPLY NATURE TO HOW I VIEW REALITY

I always like to apply the principle to examples that flow from it. When I do Lectio Divina on Philippians 2:5-12, I grow deeper and deeper into the way in which all things fit together to God’s glory. It is no wonder that St. Thomas Aquinas said, when asked about all the great things he had learned about God, “All of this is so much straw, compared to what it really is.” Praise be to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. The God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages. Amen and Amen. –Cistercian doxology.

The following thoughts are about how nature influences my thinking on certain topics, such as:

• The purpose of life
• The purpose of my life
• What reality looks like
• How it all fits together
• How I can love fiercely.
• How to die well.

If you want additional thoughts on these six questions everyone must answer before they die, I wrote a book entitled, Six Thesholds of Life. You will find it in the Store section of this blog.

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF LIFE? —

The purpose of life for an animal is to be what it is, to live,procreate, sustain itself, then die. The purpose of life for a human is to act its nature, to be born, live, find authentic love, discover meaning then die. For one who chooses to be an adopted son or daughter of the Father, it is all the above plus, to love God with all our heart. our minds, our strength and our neighbor as ourself. For God, the purpose of life is to be who he is. Because the higher nature created the lower natures, the purpose of life must be one consistent with who God is. It is God’s playground and He sets he laws. We did not create the animals, the divine nature did.

WHAT IS MY PURPOSE OF MY LIFE? —

Animals don’t get to choose what their nature is. Humans can choose between being god or choosing to do God’s will.  The center of your life is that which, if you took it away, everything else would fall. It is the one principle upon which your future is based, the ground of your being, the reason life makes sense. For me, it is Phil. 2:5. I realize I won’t know everything all at once and that meaning fill unfold for me as I realize all the linkages to everything else that is. Jesus, being both divine and human, gave me a pathway to follow. I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, Jesus tells those who love him. Follow me and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart. Meekness here does not mean weakness but the realization that my pupose is in tune with God’s purpose.This is called resonance rather than the way the world thinks which is called disconnance.

When the late Stephen Hawking looks out at the totality of all that is, he uses his immense intellect and lifetime of learning to measure what is and speculate on what could be. When I look out at reality, with my poor knowledge of everything, hoping that the words of the Word to us are true, I use not my own feelings and intellectual linkages of all that is but that of Christ, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. It takes the pressure off of me to unlock the door of my destiny. The divine nature is the measurement for all of reality (physical, mental, and spiritual) and not mathematics, physics, chemistry, even logic. The true measurement of God is Philippians 2:5, the emptying of self, not clinging to the divine, choosing the chaos of Original Sin, although there is no sin in the divine nature. For this reason, every knee must bend in the heavens, on the earth, and all creation to the glory of the Father. What a wonderful inspiration for we humans, caught in the depths of our own fantasies, to save us from ourselves and open the door to Forever.

WHAT DOES REALITY LOOK LIKE?

Reality for the divine nature is eing 100% of divine nature. God is one. With God, there is no past, no future, only present. With God, there is no two, only one. With God there is a tick but no tock. God lives in the eternal now, existing with pure energy, pure knowledge, pure love, and pure service. God is love. Having said all of this, anything we can do to describe God must be done through Christ because Christ is God. He came to SHOW us how to live our lives in such a way that we have a chance of living in the eternal NOW with God. No one has seen the Father but the Son, or anyone to whom the Son has reavealed him. (Matthew 11:27)  In my thinking, Christ gave us a glimps of God. We can’t see God but we can see Christ. Christ is both divine nature and human nature, the only one is all of reality who can tell us what we can’t see. Christ told us only one thing we must do, “love one another as I have loved you.” Everything we do is built to support that command, the one command that comes from God, the one command that comes from Christ. As a Lay Cistercian seeking God in all that I do each day, the Rule of St. Benedict, Chapter 4, Tools for Good Works, helps me to measure myself against the Life of Christ. I always come up short and in need of conversion of life, each day. I am happy to say with St. Paul in Philippians 3:8-26:

• The effects of having a human nature is that I must pray that I not enter into templation each day.
• Each day, I must read the Tools for Good Works in the Rule of St. Benedict and pray that I might be converted to do just a little bit better than before. Some days I advance, some days I regress.
• Each day, I must remind myself that heaven is my destiny.
• Each day, I must reaffirm that I profess nothing to the love of Christ.
• Each day, I must take up my cross and try to follow Christ. I do not have a Simon of Cyrene to help me carry it but I do have my Lay Cistercian faith community and the monks to support my efforts, when I join with them in Eucharist and Liturgy of the Hours.
• Each day, as part of my human nature, I seek to find the meaning of love, exemplified by the Magnificat of Mary to the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, and fortified by the blood of martyrs, such as the Seven Cistercian Martyrs of Our Lady of Atlas.  https://www.lovingjustwise.com/martyrdom.htm If you get a chance, look up this inspiring story, one that says a lot about our noble, human nature.

For some, reality is only what you can see and measure. That is part of it, but only one part. There are three parts to reality, all three distinct, all three needing to have their own instruments of measurement. Divine nature is beyond all three universes yet all three universes are linked by the divine. The Father is creator of all matter, all time, all that is. All nature glories the Father by being. It is only humans who disobeyed the order of nature and wanted to be God. We place all humans in the archetype of Adam and Eve, but it is much more complex and mysterious that just a story. It tells of what it means to live in our reality but it also says that there is a part of reality that is invisible beyond measurement, beyond physical energy, that of the energy of pure love. God just is. The equation for God is 3=1.

Acting your nature as an animal is being consistent with who you are, in this case, an animal. You are not human. The gulf between human nature and animal nature is wide. The gulf between God and man is too great for man alone to bridge the divide. One of the reasons Christ had to come to earth as one of us is this: the bridge builder between God and man. Jesus became one of us so that we could be with God Forever, but consitent with our nature. We are not God.  We do not have divine nature, even though our human nature has been adopted by God so that we could be heirs of the kingdom of heaven.

Perhaps in a billion or so years, when science has developed the capacity to formulate the energy of God into the equation of reality, we might begin to have a glimmer of what is. Right now, we use Faith (the trust that the words of Christ to us are true in John 11:21-26. Trust or Hope is all we have, but, like the command for us to love our neighbor as ourself, it is all there is.

HOW DOES REALITY ALL FIT TOGETHER?

Once I have begun to discover the ramifications of what reality looks like, how can I makes sense of it all? In my Lectio Divina, I thought about several things to help make all reality one.

THERE IS BUT ONE REALITY WITH THREE DISTINCT UNIVERSES, PHYSICAL, MENTAL, AND SPIRITUAL.

• I don’t stay up at night wondering about how all of this fits together.
• I do know that there is but one truth, one which is the same for science, philosophy and spirituality.
• I do know that there is a difference of thinking in science and that we are only beginning to explore the realm of quantum mechanics (micro reality) and how it interacts with relativity (macro reality).
• I am not smart enough to know how this is, but all signs point to the future that we will move beyond what we know now to something more profound in the future.
• Spiritual universe is in constant interaction with the physical and mental ones. All are one, interacting with each other. The measurements each universe are different and the realities very different. I know that not all spiritual systems lend themselves to such adaptation. Not all thinking leads to the truth. Humans have reason for a reason. Not all humans have the same discernment of the mystery of life. Their conclusions are therefore at odds with the truth.
• Christ tells us he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. The problem is, not everyone has principles of spirituality that agree on what that is.

EVERYTHING RELATES TO EVERYTHING ELSE

In trying to come up with one theory of all that is, the mistake people make is in assuming that all realiy is just what we can see, such as physics and the Grand Unified Theory (GUT). I am not a physicists and don’t pretend to know how this plays out over time. What I do hold is that all of these attempts to unify reality into one theory that explains how thing are miss the point because reality is not just matter, time, space and energy, but have a dimension not considered, spirituality. Unless you capture the totality of reality, you are only looking at part of the elephant, like the blind men of India describing an elephant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_everything  Unlike some people who try to limit science, I think we are on the right path of discovery but lack the ability to see and meausure all that is.  I think you can measure what is spiritual, but it demands assumptions not universally accepted, and probably never will be. The principle with which I measure spirituality is the Christ Principle, the energy of love, but not human love. This love is essentially unmeasureable, the energy of God. We can tap into it through the Church and the interactions of our hearts with the heart of Christ but it is a mystery. A mystery is the deepest part of our human experience, just beyond our ability to see it clearly. We see it as though looking through a foggy window. This is part of the reason I like to use the haunting photo of a cup in the frame of a foggy window. I know there is something on the other side of the window because Christ tells me it is so, but I can’t describe it scientifically. I know that it makes sense, based on the historical context of the Resurrection and the fulfillment of human nature. 1 Corinthians 13:12.

For me, I am content to know that everything fits together because God is one and I am one with God through the Christ Principle. Without the Resurrection from the dead and ascension to the Father, none of this matters, and we, like the animals, live, eat, procreate, grow old, and then die. I am more than an animal.  Our natural state, for those who choose, is now a Spiritual Ape, not merely human, but living in the world but not destined to be there…Forever. All of this has to do with Hope, as in Philippians 3:18-21.

HOW TO LOVE FIERCELY?

This fifth question each person must ask themselves does not only end up with the correct answer. There is only one correct answer. Adam and Eve took the test and failed to pass. Christ took the test and passed because, in part, he is not only the question but the answer to the meaning of what is fierce love.

ENERGY AS THE ONE CONSTANT IN ALL THREE UNIVERSES

When I do my Lectio Divina on Phil. 2:5, one thing always strikes me. This is love, not as a human would have it using human nature, it is divine love, love that comes from God’s nature, 100% of his nature. It is the love of the Trinity for each other, love that is infinite, energy that would fry our neurons if we even could approach it, like we would do if we got closer to the Sun. This is the pure energy of love, that of which Pierre de Chardin spoke about in his writings, The Phenomenon of Man.

A few website you might like to access to learn more about this phenominal person.  https://teilhard.com/about-me/ and, https://www.teilharddechardin.org/

“The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides, and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, we shall have discovered fire.” From “Toward the Future,” 1936, XI, 86-87

We, who are of merely a human nature, cannot appreciate the fierce love God has for us. We don’t possess the capability or the capacity to have pure knowledge in our minds. Christ is our mediator, a filter, a capacitor that allows us to get a glimps of the mystery of faith. It is a glimps that I may have had a couple of times when I was in the fourth stage of Lectio Divina, contemplatio. All I can remember is a strange feeling of peace and contentment, one where I did not struggle to believe, a place of happiness at just being in the presence of Being. This is one of the reasons I want to be  a Lay Cistercian and continue to explore the practices and charisms of the Strict Observance Cistercians (Trappists).  This is one of the reasons I selected Philippians 2:5, “…have in you the mind of Christ Jesus,” as my purpose in life.

For me, the only constant in all three universes (physical, mental, and spiritual) is energy. It takes a different form in each universe depending on its nature.

SPIRITUAL UNIVERSE:  energy– this is the energy of love, a sign of contradiction with the physical and mental universes, a cloud of unknowing rather than knowing, the emptying of being God to take on the nature of a servant, the death and resurrection of Christ to show the depth of His love, the gentleness of overshadowing Mary with love without killing her human nature, the infinite mercy of God to deal with humans who constantly rebell against what is truth. This is the Law of God.

MENTAL UNIVERSE: Human energy — this is energy of a world that exists  in both pysical and mental universes under the influence of Original Sin, a place where we must struggle to learn and build up our knowledge of what is, how to live with each other without killing each other off, struggle with our purpose in life, having reason to be able to choose what is. Human energy is the power of the human mind to learn, but also the collective knowledge of those who have gone before us and wondered about why things are. This is the Law of Human Reason.

PHYSICAL UNIVERSE-  Natural energy — this is the energy that exists both as humans affect the nature world, as in knowing more about medicine and improving our ability to fight diseases, but also the energy that exists in nature not affected by humans, such as the natural progression os what is in planets, galaxacies, and also in matter, times, and energy itself. This is the Law of Nature. Everything is born and dies.

Energy, each universe having part of the one continuum, has energy. Being divine in nature, God is above the mental and animal natures. God can influence human history through Christ, his Mother, the Apostles, and, not the least of all, us.

WHAT HAPPENS TO US WHEN WE DIE?

This is at the heart of the Resurrection moment, the end result of Jesus going through all that suffering and betrayal, the fulfillment of what God started in the Garden of Eden. God wants all of us, all of us, to have a chance to live Forever. Humans, just using human nature and animal nature could not achieve that. It took God’s emptying himself to take on our nature that allowed Christ to teach us and show us how to prepare ourselves for what Heaven is like.

Humans are not designed for Heaven, which is why Jesus had to become one of us to show us how to prepare to live Forever. Forever is not among the experiences or concepts we can fully appreciate. We do not know what living in an eternal NOW is like. We can’t even manage space travel without unknown consequences, much less live in a place where all there is, is all there is, without space, time, and matter. It is remarkable that anyone would even want to go there at al, much less give up their lives and die to get there. This is the sign of contradiction at work again.

Are you powerful enough to keep yourself from dying? Why not? What kind of power would it take to keep you from dying, or conversely, living Forever? Humans don’t have the power or the technological intelligence needed to live Forever. God does, because God live Forever. The great act of love (emptying self) to allow humans to live Forever (Phl 2:5-12) is at the heart of the Resurrection and Ascension to the Father in glory. It means we are adopted sons and daughters and heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven. What Heaven is, is not clear to be. I know I want to be there. I hope in the words of Christ to his faithful ones who have not seen and yet believed. I trust that there will be some sort of containment field in Heaven to shield us from pure energy destroying our minds and hearts. Jesus said there are many mansions in his Father’s house.

Let’s summarize. God is God. Humans are human and everything else that lives is animal nature. Divine nature created human nature and animal nature (all all matter, time, and energy).

EXAMPLES OF ACTING YOUR NATURE

What follows are some of my thoughts about the three types of nature (divine, human, and animal) as they apply to some key concepts of our Faith.

WHO IS GOD?

Divine nature -  God is the one who is. God is one in nature but three in persons (Father, Son, Holy Spirit). Jesus has both a divine nature and a human nature and exists on the level of God.

Human nature — God does not have a human nature. Jesus Christ, God’s Son has both a divine and human nature. He is one with God in his divnity and humanity.

Animal nature– God does not have an animal nature.

WHO ARE ADAM AND EVE?

Divine nature -  God is the one who is. God is one in nature but three in persons (Father, Son, Holy Spirit). Jesus has both a divine nature and a human nature and exists on the level of God. God made the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve are not God although they wanna be.

Human nature — God does not have a human nature. Jesus Christ, God’s Son has both a divine and human nature. He is one with God in his divnity and humanity. Adam and Eve have human nature, not divine nature. Adam and Eve do not have an animal nature, although they are Spiritual Apes. Adam and Eve were created to take care of the human and animal nature, not the divine nature.

Animal nature– God does not have an animal nature. Adam and Eve do not have an animal nature.

LEARNING POINTS

• I am not you; you are not me; God is not you; and you, most certainly, are not God.  –Michael F. Conrad
• Man was created to live in Heaven. Adam and Eve committed the Original Sin, wanting to live in a nature that was not their own. Because of that, someone had to atone for their sin. The act of disobedience is measured against the one offended not the one offending.
• God had to atone for the sin against God. Jesus took on the nature of a servant/slave to reconcile humanity with the Father.
• Jesus is both God and Human (Phlippians 2:5-12).  Jesus had to suffer, die and be resurrected as the price of the atonement.
• The Resurrection, according to the Scriptures, is the ultimate sign of the mystery of Faith, the proof for those who believe, that God’s words to use are true.
• Without the Resurrection, Faith is dead and without merit. God is not God, if there is no Resurrection. All we do on earth will end up in death, without the Resurrection. If there is no Resurrection, the words of Christ as just philosophical meanderings, a good way to live your life, but not capable of allowing us to live in the Kindgom of Heaven.
• Christ makes all things new in each age, just as he did when he walked the earth.
• St. John says that the Scriptures: “…are recorded so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believe this you may have life through his name.” (John 20:30-31)
• The Resurrection allows humans to act their nature. It is the fierce love that God had for us that He sent His Son to move us from Human Nature to being adopted sons and daughters of the Father and heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven.

READ THE FOLLOWING SCRIPTURE AND COMMENT ON IT 

The purpose of the Resurrection is for you, member of the Body of Christ, to fulfill your destiny as a human being, “…to know, love, and serve God in this lifetime and be happy with God in the next.” (Baltimore Catechisms, Question Six)

For some, the Resurrection is the ultimate stumbling block, a sign that Christ is just a passing reed shaken by the wind, a seed planted on rocky ground, a fig tree that never bore fruit.

What is the Resurrection for you and your journey? Looking back at all that you read in this reflection on the Resurrection, how does everything fit together?________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Praise be to God the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. The God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages. –Cistercian Doxology

One of the things I think about, when pondering the infinite mysteries of the Resurrection of Christ is how it answers the question of why would God leave being God and take upon our human nature. Christ was like us in all things but sin. Yet, he became sin to allow us to be adopted sons and daughters of the Father, and his brother.  This is what it means to love others as Jesus has loved us. Not one of us would leave being a human being to become an animal, such as a golden lab in order to allow all animals to go to Heaven.  Christ did that for us. All we can say is:

Praise be to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit now and forever. The God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages. Amen and Amen. –Cistercian doxology

Here is a different take on Holy Week.

I have had this experience only once or twice in my lifetime, both times they were frustrating. I am speaking of knocking on the door of my house but it is locked from the inside and I don’t have the key. Only one way in, you must break a window or break down a door. In my Lectio Divina (Phil 2:5) this week, I thought of this scenario from my past as it applies to the Resurrection.

Think of it. In the Garden of Eden, we were locked out by God because Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s instructions, preferring to be their own god. The results are what we know as Original Sin, dying, suffering, pain, work, being accountable for our own destiny. God has the only key. One of the most disasterous effects of this break of love and convenant with God is that we cannot enter Heaven with this mark on our souls. Compounding the problem is we cannot remove this mark by ourselves. We need someone from inside the room to open the door and let us in. In a nutshell, this is the story of our salvation, begun in Genesis and fulfilled in the New Testament convenant with the life and death of Jesus, our Savior, our Master.

It took a God to open the door from the inside. The problem with this is God the Father is the one offended by Adam and Eve and cannot open the door unless someone knocks from the other side. That person must be human, not God. So, God saw that we messed up so terribly and that it would take a miracle to untangle this Gordian knot.

Read Philippians 2:5-12. This tells of God sending His son to earth to take on our sinful nature (God’s nature is divine) and knock at the door on behalf of all humanity. The price to open the door was for Jesus to voluntarily give His life to ransom us from death and to open the doors of Heaven. In this Holy Week, we look at the extent that God loved all of us and how much Jesus would endure to allow us to be adopted sons and daughters, heirs of the kingdom that Adam and Eve has abandoned.

Today, twenty centuries later, we still approach the unapproachable face of the Father through the Son, with the grace of the Holy Spirit to help us. Holy Week is the time each year we focus on the love Christ had for us. Eucharist is the gift of Christ to the Father, giving honor and glory. We are blessed to be able to tag along in a small way and lift up our hearts and minds to God. How blessed we are because of the mercy and kindness of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. To them be glory now and forever. The God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages. Amen.

There are only six or seven thinkers who have provided me with systems of reasoning that shape who I am today. In this sense, I assimilate different philosophies, patterns of comparitive religion, trends at looking at what makes up total reality, all forming my view of what is real. One of these great men is the late Stephen Hawking. I am in awe of his mental capacity and his views about reality, based on his scientific approach.  He has shaped my thinking about the scope of what reality is. Here are excepts about my thinking, influenced by his Brief History of Time.  My conclusions, as you will see, are not consistent with his thinking about God.

The following ideas are excerpted from my book, The Three Rules of the Spiritual Universe. You can access this book in the Store part of this blog. In my Lectio Divina/Meditations/Contemplations, I was presented with these three ideas about the spiritual universe.  They are big picture themes of the Spiritual Universe, not rules to limit inquiry or innovation. You may have more rules, these are the ones I use.

“There are several rules or laws of the spiritual universe,
just as there are laws of the physical universe. One of these
laws is The Rule of Threes. The Rule of Threes states that
there is only one reality possessing three independent
and distinct universes. The three universes are one, yet
quite separate. The three universes are the physical, the
mental, and the spiritual. The Rule of Threes is important
because you will not see all of reality by just looking at
the physical or mental universes. To see life from a deeper
point of view, you must use the Rule of Threes. You won’t
get to Heaven unless you have aligned all three universes
properly.”  –Michael F. Conrad, Ed.D.

TO DISCOVER THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, YOU MUST USE THE RULE OF THREES

RULE ONE: THE RULE OF THREES

There is only one reality containing three separate universes. God only
speaks spiritually, not in English.

RULE TWO: THE RULE OF REVOLVING CENTERS
Humans default to their animal nature without mental and spiritual help.

RULE THREE: THE RULE OF OPPOSITES
In the physical and mental universes, what is true are
power, greed, self-indulgence, influence,
sex, riches, and fame. I am the center of the physical and mental universe. In the spiritual universe, the opposite is what is true.

THE THREE RULES OF THE SPIRITUAL UNIVERSE 

1. THE RULE OF THREES  Humans have reason for a reason. The purpose of life is to look at every day with fresh eyes, even if they are sleepy. Those who are spiritual see with three universes, the physical sight, mental enlightenment, and spiritual wisdom. All truth is one, but with three layers or universes, each quite distinct.
2. THE RULE OF REVOLVING CENTERS
Humans are spiritual animals, but animals nevertheless. While in the physical universe, there is a constant battle between the spirit and the flesh. It is only with spiritual
energy from God that humans can consistently and persistently keep their centers intact. To aid humans, the Master gives us help, both individually and collectively.
3. THE RULE OF OPPOSITES What may seem true in the physical universe is just the opposite in the spiritual universe. When you are weak, then you are strong.
If you wish to be a leader, you must serve all. If you wish to get to Heaven, you must be as a little child. With this rule, you learn to speak spiritually.

THOUGHT: TO DISCOVER THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, YOU MUST USE ALL THREE RULES

You are capable of living in three realities or universes simultaneously. Think about that statement. If you are human, you automatically live in two universes. Some of us never progress to the third universe, the spiritual plane of existence.

1. The physical universe — all matter, all chemical elements, all physics, all that lives
belong to this universe. On this level, humans are just a species of animal.

2. The mental universe — only humans live on this level. All humans begin their lives in the Garden of Eden, where pleasure is the norm. This universe is one of reason. Only humans can reason. Only humans have a mind to find out their destiny. They have their life span to learn how to get to Heaven. They have reason for a reason.

3. The spiritual universe — this is the Kingdom of Heaven where all dreams do come true. God has invited us to share this universe with him. What a deal! This universe begins when you put God at your center. The only way to enter this universe is by a free use of your will. Humans are spiritual apes, only capable of fulfilling their destiny with God’s help.

CONSIDER THIS IDEA VERY CAREFULLY!
How many universes can you live in at the same time?

You are born into the first reality, that of the physical universe. All matter lives in this universe. Humans alone have evolved into the next universe or mental reality.
We evolved, learned, and gradually discovered meaning. The third universe is strictly voluntary. It is the reality of the Spirit. You can’t measure it. That does not mean it can not be measured. It is the universe of faith informed by reason. Our challenge, as humans, is to integrate these three realities as one, in order to make it through the threshold of death into Heaven. Some of us believe this to be true, while others do not. Life is a discovery of what is meaningful. Humans use their minds to soak up reality
and try to make sense out of it. Spirituality is a way to put value and meaning in the proper perspective. Each universe is given to us to solve the mystery of our destiny.
These three universes are three parts of the grand mystery. Humans must figure out this mystery in order to move on to their final destination. It is the ultimate Monopoly
game. In this game, we learn what to hold onto and what to sell. Our purpose is to gather as many riches as possible. We are made for Heaven, not earth. We are made for Forever, not just for eighty years or so. Play to win!

YOU WON’T NOTICE THREE UNIVERSES BECAUSE THEY HAPPEN SIMULTANEOUSLY

1. Not everyone believes in three universes. Most of us just ignore the signs God gives us.
Some become bored and fall away from their core principles.
2. The Scientific reality is what you can measure. Is it correct? Of course, it is.
3. Philosophical reality is reason. The mind deduces what is not logical, what is visible and invisible. Is it correct? Of course, it is.
4. Spiritual reality uses belief in a reality that is not seen. Is it correct? Of course, it is.
5. So, how can all three levels of reality be correct? They are each looking at one part of
reality and not the whole. Reality is one yet has three dimensions or universes. The three are one. The one is three.
7. The ultimate challenge in life is to know your purpose. That purpose is somehow bound up with three dimensions or universes.

THE ULTIMATE CHALLENGE REALITY HAS THREE DIMENSIONS

THOUGHTS FOR FOOD

• The ultimate challenge is not conquering more land in the name of some country. We are running out of land. It is not judging which religion is correct.
• All religions think they have the keys to the kingdom. Only one of them has the lock.
• It is not stating which philosophical systems best describe the world. The ultimate challenge humans face is to learn the distance between these three universes in terms of truth.
• There can be only one unified theory of reality.
• If God is one, so are all three universes or realities.

3=1 is the formula to Forever.

Astronomers tell us that dark matter may make up most of the known universe. We can’t see it, but we think it exists. See the website: https://astron.berkeley.edu/~mwhite/
darkmatter/dm.html Dark matter has faint mass.  What we don’t know about the universe is more than we know. The same can be said about the interface between the physical universe and spirituality. The physical universe is evolving, but so is the interface between the mental universe, and that of the spiritual universe. Humans are slowly growing towards the collective purpose for which they evolved if they don’t kill each other first. Darwin was correct to notice the evolution of the species. His problem was that he just did not look far enough. We have the physical universe to thank for the condition that allows us to live at all. We have the mental universe to thank for the condition that allows us to wonder and learn from our collective wisdom. We have the spiritual universe to thank for answering the questions of why we are here, and the direction of our destiny. The authors of Genesis were not scientists but rather storey tellers and poets, marveling at the order of all that they saw. Darwin was only looking at the physical universe with the power of the science of his time. You are able to look at all three universes and seek the purpose of why you are here. Some of us only see two universes.

HERE ARE SOME LEARNING POINTS

1. Like the parable of the blind men and the elephant, some can see three universes and some only see two universes. When they say they want one unified theory of reality, they assume only two universes and not three. It makes a big difference in the outcome and most of the time time, scientists and those who are spiritual are talking past each other.
2. Each of the three universes is a separate reality with its own rules or laws governing it. You can find the laws of the spiritual universe in Deuteronomy 6 and Matthew 22:34.
3. The elephant in the room question for all three universes is: who can tell you what is correct? Are you the final arbiter of truth? If so, we have as many truths as there are people. So, the truth is not one, but whatever you think it is.  That is relativism. Science, correctly, in my opinion, gets away from relativism or subjective thinking by using mathematics, physics, and other sciences to look at reality to prove what is true. The fatal flaw for scientific inquiry and conclusion is, they don’t account for all reality, just physical and some mental reality. It is not that Darwin was incorrect in his hypotheses about the Origin of the Species, so much as he did not include the whole invisible world of love and meaning and the effects of that upon evolution.

How does the late Stephen Hawking influence my thinking, when he is an avowed atheist? First of all, I don’t like labels. I prefer to think of him with affection and great esteem for the work he did in cosmology and physics. What he said was absolutely correct. Where I differ with him is his notion of what constitutes reality.  I set forth my three rules of the spiritual universe because I want to show that reality is more than just matter, energy, time, gasses and deterioration. It moves forward not backwards. It is composed of physical universe, mental universe, but also the spiritual universe. Dr. Hawking was correct in what he said, using the knowledge he had, but did not see the whole of reality, that of the invisible universe.  I am not talking about Dark Matter, which scientists say we cannot see but think it is there. I means a whole complete universe where God lives. We don’t even have a good way of talking about it. Christ came to SHOW us how to get there. Stephen Hawking saw, but he did not or could not see all of reality because of his assumptions, i.e., that what is real is what we can measure.

Love is the most powerful energy in the universe (three universes, that is), yet you won’t see it or measure it with the tools of only the physical and mental universes. Christ came to fulfill in us that which was lacking and that was a way to “see” God through Him. No one can “see” God. The pure energy of God would fry your neurons and you would not only be blind but die.  What Stephen Hawking did for me was to do what he does better than anyone, to look at what is and ask why. The fact that he did not see the whole of reality gives me hope that what Christ taught us was so true. “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”  I hope to meet Stephen Hawking in Heaven and chat with him about what he has learned since going there.  I thank him for his contribution to reality and honor him for his insights into the totality of what is. He is one of our best minds.

May his soul, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of Christ, rest in peace. Amen

If you had three wishes, what would they be? In my Lectio Divina (Phil 2:5) I fumbled across these ideas when thinking about Jesus.

My three wishes would be radically different than if I selected them six or seven years ago. I am coming off Leukemia (CLL) and cardiac arrest (2007) which probably shook me to my spiritual foundations and caused me to re-evaluate my life in terms of worth and meaning.  Here are my three:

1. I am content to apire to be a Lay Cistercian, realizing that I will never be able to love God with all my mind, my heart, and my strength plus love my neighbor as myself in this lifetime. With St. Paul, I am just in process of moving from self to God.
2. Have in you the mind of Christ Jesus (Phil 2:5). Every day, I take up my cross and seek God.
3. Seek first the kindgom of Heaven and all else will follow. This is a strange question which calls for an even more radical answer. Putting the kingdom of Heaven first means I try to be conscious of the fact that I am not God. My spouse is not first, my daughter is not first, the Lay Cistercians are not first, I have just begun to realize the significance of placing God first. It is not easy because the world resists any attempts to share that first spot. If God is first, then everything else is number two. If I reverse that, I won’t get to Heaven. The world will overtake me with its false promises and so called spiritual gurus that become me to follow them.

These three wishes are all to be able to place God first and me second. It is a mindset that I share with others. As  one who can only hope to aspire to be a Lay Cistercian, the practices and charisms of humility and obedience to God’s will ground me with a North on my compass of life. It doesn’t make life easier. It doesn’t take away temptation to be God. It doesn’t keep my road from being rocky. It does means I know the Way, the Truth, and the Life and with God’s grace try as best as I can to make all things new. It is a process of becoming, not of attainment in this lifetime.

Jesus only gave us one command: love one another as I have loved you.  Of course, everything is second to that commandment.

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

The “Me” generation can’t seem to find the prespective that says, “Thy Will Be Done.” Instead, they are “What’s in it for me?”  Sad.

In my Lectio Divina yesterday, (Phil 2:5), I asked myself the question, “What’s in it for me?” I know, Lectio takes you to places you never thought you would be. In this case, it is an appropriate question because I know the answer. I say the word, “know” because it is not something you reach, then slough off and go on, but rather it is a process of attainment which you never completely reach in this lifetime.

As a Lay Cistercian, it is an easy answer. Conversion of life.  My purpose in life is: “Have in you the mind of Christ Jesus.” You never reach it with all your heart, your mind, and your strength because perfection in this life is beyond your reach. In this life, you need Christ as your companion to help with perspective and energy for the journey.

THE IMPORTANT OF CONVERSION OF LIFE
As a Lay Cistercian, one of the learning moments I have had is the fact
of on-going improvement in my moving from self to God. I am the same person with a caveat, I am beginning to purposefully convert my life to be more Christ and less me. I just keep doing it each day without worrying if I grow or not.

I can’t see myself trying to convert my life to be more like Christ by practicing
Cistercian spiritual techniques, trying to conform to Chapter 4 of the
Rule of St. Benedict, going out of my way to drive five hours (one
way) to attend the Gathering Day at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in
Conyers, Georgia (near Atlanta), without growing better or moving
closer to Christ. I have moved closer to Christ. How do you know?

• My spiritual attention span is much expanded. I don’t get into the game of saying, How much?
• I look forward to being before the Blessed Sacrament in the hopes of making contemplation.
• I have an increase of tempations not to attend Eucharist, Liturgy of the Hours, and not to write down this blog and my reflections in books.
• If you always are what you always were, then you can’t be what you should become.

All the techniques of Cistercian spirituality, all the ancient and proven practices for moving from self to God, even the Tools for Good Words, Chapter 4 of St.
Benedict’s Rule, are not ends by themselves. It makes no sense to put
yourself out, sometimes at great discomfort and inconvenience, without
producing some form of change. Sometimes this change is minimal,
sometimes it is stunning. The mindset is: have in you the mind of
Christ Jesus. (Phil. 2:5)
That in all things, may God be glorified. –St. Benedict

Can you think back to the year 2007 and tell me what you were doing on March 1? You did something, if you were living, not so? What was it that made this date so special? How about the other dates you have experienced?  They come and they go and are forgotten. Does that mean they were insignificant and a waste of time? On March 1, did you do something that would somehow change your future for the better?

I have a problem even remembering if I took my heart medication in the morning, much less what happened on March 1, 2007. I could say that about any date. I don’t know if I had lunch with someone, went to bed early, watched television, or read a book. Does that mean the sum of my life is meaningless?

When I was thinking about my Lectio Divina passage (Phil 2:5) the following thoughts came to my mind. What good is my past life, such as a day long ago that I can’t even remember very well?  Did I start the day out with my Morning Prayer? Did I do anything in that day to bring me closer to God? All these days in my past seem to be easily forgotten. Do they help me get to Heaven, if I can’t even remember what happened?

If you have not read about the myth of Ariadne’s Thread, do so now. Google it.  I thought of something similar, except my thread was golden and it was to help us through the Labyrinth of life and not that of Mithras.  Here are my reflections:

THE GOLDEN THREAD

When each of us are born, we find ourselves in a Labyrinth of false passages and turns that all seem the same. Life is one of no hope, no exits, just the same routine of trying to find meaning in a maze that all looks the same.  John Paul Statre wrote a play describing this feeling. It is called No Exit.   https://archive.org/stream/NoExit/NoExit_djvu.txt This is Original Sin, where the only path is one which is negative, and leads to nowhere.  For those Baptised, through faith, the Labyrinth is still there, still has a maze of differing ideas about what is true and meaningful, still with difficulties in walking down the parh. There is a difference with those who are Baptized. First, there is Hope that you can get out of the maze. You are still going to have to endure the stress of finding your way out of the Labyrinth, but now you have a Golden Thread to help you. At Baptism, you were presented with a Golden Thread by Christ. He tied it around your heart and He tied the other end around His Heart. When you reach the age of spiritual maturity, i.e., you realize that there is a Labyrinth and that you have a Golden Thread that links you to Christ, you can begin your journey. Christ won’t make the journey for you but He will make it with you, guiding you by the Golden Thread. If you follow this thread (Scriptures, Body of Christ, Eucharist, Forgiveness and Mercy, and loving others as Christ has loved you), you can get out of the maze, even if you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. The Golden Thread won’t stop you from dying, it won’t make your journey any easier to walk, it won’t be a conveyor belt on which you get and get off when you die, it won’t help you get rid of your faults and failings, it won’t save you from cancer or alcoholism, but it will save you because you are linked indelibly in Baptism with Christ Jesus, His Heart to your heart. This is why I think contemplation is important for me as an aspiring Lay Cistercian. I want to love God with my whole heart, my mind, and my strength, and thus love my neighbor as Christ as loved me. When Christ says, I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, think of the Golden Thread that links your heart with the Heart of Christ. This is our way out of the Labyrinth of despair and sin, our way out of trying to be god, our reliance only on our own fallible self for salvation.

LEARNING POINTS

• If you can’t remember what you did on any date, much less March 1, 2007, it does not matter. What matters is that anything you did that you link to Christ with the Golden Thread, you can take with you to Heaven. Remember, the other side of the Golden Thread is tied to the Heart of Christ, the Lamb of God..
• This thread cannot be broken by matter or time or elements of heat and fire. It is sometimes called the Covenant in the Old Testament or loving others as Christ loved us, in the New Testament.
• The Golden Thread is Faith. You do not deserve it, nor merit it by anything you could do. Christ gives it to you at Baptism to help you through the maze of life. Matthew 11:28-30. Learn of me for I am gentle and humble of heart.
• The Golden Thread binds all of us together as the Body of Christ. Each one of us receives a Golden Thread at Baptism, no matter what your Faith. God judges the hearts of anyone else and He can give them a Golden Thread, if He chooses. He is God and not you. “I am not you; you are not me; God is not you; and you, most certainly, are not God.”  –MFC
• There is only one Golden Thread which binds all of us to Christ. This is the Church universal, the flock of Christ, and the community of saints that we pray about in our Creed.
• This thread does not belong to any of us, any Church, any clergy, and laity, and religious. We should only be concerned that Christ paid the ultimate price for this Golden Thread to the Father for the sins of Adam and Eve. The Father gave the gift of  the Golden Thread to the Son, and the Son gives it to us, all humanity is included. What we do with that Golden Thread  will be up to us. Some will see it; some will not recognize it. We do not judge anyone but Hope that all be One in The One united with the Golden Thread.
• Contemplation and the Cistercian practices and charisms help me to negotiate the tricky paths of the Labyrinth by focusing on being as near as I can to the Heart of Christ.  Even if there were no God, which there is, this would be a great way to live out your life, in the Hope of the Resurrection. Read John 11:25-27.
• This Golden Thread reachess beyond death, beyond the grave to where Christ now exists. I want to be with the Heart of Christ…Forever.

Praise be to the Father and the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now and forever. The God who is, who was,and who is to come at the end of the ages.  Amen and Amen.  –Cistercian Doxology

Every year I hear the same thing, Memento, Homo, quia tu es pulvis, et pulveris reverteris, although it is likely said in English, “Remember, Human, you are dust and into dust you shall return.”

For many, many years, this statement has jolted me back into my humanity from the fantasy land of politics and secular materialism.  It is interesting to note that the word for Adam, as in THAT Adam, means dust. We return not just to dust, as in corrupting into  our most basic elements, but back to our original parent, the origins of our humanity, the person who changed our destiny.

Here are some random thoughts about mortality, destiny and other esoteric thoughts I only think of when pressed.

• Our destiny is Heaven, but it now takes our effort to make it there.  No free rides, Take up your cross daily and follow me. No conveyor belt discipleship.
• We all came from one person, so we believe, and we return to dust from which we came, There is a cycle of life.
• Baptism takes away Original Sin, the sin of our first parents, but it does not take away the effects of that sin. We are tempted to sin,  We must die. We must suffer pain, as in my Leukemia. We just work for our bread, and our salvation.
• We wiil die, then what?
• Ash Wednesday is cold water in our face to say, Wake up! Your Redemption is at Hand.
• Ash Wednesday is a day of mourning for our humanity and also a day of atonement for our sins.

FALSE WORSHIP AND FRUITLESS FASTING

Read the following Scriptures from Isaiah 58. It is the first reading in the Liturgy of the Hours, Office of Readings for Ash Wednsday. https://divineoffice.org/

First reading
From the book of the prophet Isaiah
58:1-12
Concerning fasting that pleases God

Thus says the Lord God:
Cry out full-throated and unsparingly,
lift up your voice like a trumpet blast;
Tell my people their wickedness,
and the house of Jacob their sins.

They seek me day after day,
and desire to know my ways,
Like a nation that has done what is just
and not abandoned the law of their God;
They ask me to declare what is due them,
pleased to gain access to God.
“Why do we fast, and you do not see it?
afflict ourselves, and you take no note of it?”

Lo, on your fast day you carry out your own pursuits,
and drive all your laborers.
Yes, your fast ends in quarreling and fighting,
striking with wicked claw.
Would that today you might fast
so as to make your voice heard on high!
Is this the manner of fasting I wish,
of keeping a day of penance:
That a man bow his head like a reed,
and lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Do you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the Lord?

This, rather, is the fasting that I wish:
releasing those bound unjustly,
untying the thongs of the yoke;
Setting free the oppressed,
breaking every yoke;
Sharing your bread with the hungry,
sheltering the oppressed and the homeless;
Clothing the naked when you see them,
and not turning your back on your own.

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your wound shall quickly be healed;
Your vindication shall go before you,
and the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer,
you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am!

If you remove from your midst oppression,
false accusation and malicious speech;
If you bestow your bread on the hungry
and satisfy the afflicted;
Then light shall rise for you in the darkness,
and the gloom shall become for you like midday;

Then the Lord will guide you always
and give you plenty even on the parched land.
He will renew your strength,
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring whose water never fails.
The ancient ruins shall be rebuilt for your sake,
and the foundations from ages past you shall raise up;
“Repairer of the breach,” they shall call you,
“Restorer of ruined homesteads.”

Read the New Testament counterpart of Isaiah.  Matthew 25:31, 34, 35

LEARNING POINTS

Can you answer these questions, looking at the two Scripture quotes:

• What are both Isaiah and Matthew trying to tell us about moving from just doing fasting and penance and doing the Corporal Works of Mercy?
• Do you see a connection between moving from a legal intepretation of what is good to an interpretation of the heart?
• What does loving Christ as he loved us mean, in terms of both passages from Scripture?
• Does Lent mean giving up watermelon and chocolate or does it mean more. How much more?  What are you called to do?

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

When I think about it, while dwelling on Philippians 2:5, one of the few things Christ told us to do was the admonition to love one another as He as loved us. How simple! How utterly profound. If I want to love God with all my heart, all my soul and all my strength, and my neighbor as myself, I should know and love as Christ has loved us.  Here comes my problem.  How does Jesus love us? After all these years, am I going to be the victim of my ego and make Christ in my image and likeness, or is there a deeper meaning to what Christ says? I like to think there is a deeper meaning.  Here are some thoughts I had during my Lectio Divina on what it means for Christ to love us.

EMPTYING SELF: The simpler the prayer, the more authentic it is. The most profound act of love is found in Philippians 2:5. It is the voluntarily emptying of self for the other. God emptied himself for all us, me as an individual, and all of us, believers or not, that we all have a chance to love to the fullness of our nature. As a Lay Cistercian, these eight words in Philippians are my purpose in life, my center.  Christ emptied himself first and then bids his followers to follow his example. This means I must deny myself and take up my cross daily to follow Christ in whatever challenges the day brings for me.

I WANT TO BE WITH YOU: Philippians 2:5 again.  Wanted to be with us, even though Christ would not know each of us by name, God does, and Christ is God. Jesus loving us means we should do no less than to love everyone. For me, that takes on wanting everyone to go to Heaven. Not everyone may make it there, but that is God’s decision, not mine. Opening up the heart to the heart of Christ means I long to be with Christ, just as He longs to be with me. I look forward to my Lectio Divina and Eucharist because it is there that I can communicate with Christ and He with me.

I WANT TO SHARE WHO I AM WITH YOU: In marriage, the covenant of relationship between man and woman, means I share with who I am with you, physically, mentally and, most of all, spiritually. Spiritual sharing is the most difficult but depends on how well you do with physical sharing and mental sharing. Part of the genius of Jesus is that he left us a way to share Himself with us, despite the passing of each age. The simplicity of the message of love is like the body, and the way in which we adapt is like clothes we put on. Each age has different customs but there is always just one simple message, love one another. I don’t know if I will ever truly know who Jesus is just as it is impossible to love with all my heart, but I can try to begin each day with the goal of loving others and seeing the world as Christ would see it, giving glory to the Father in the Eucharist, asking for mercy and forgiveness in Reconciliation, Seeking to make all things new over and over in the context of a living Body of Christ, the Church.

I WANT TO SHARE THE DARK SIDE OF LOVE AS WELL AS THE LIGHT SIDE: Christ bids us to not only love those who love us back (light side of love) but love those who persecute you even if they kill you.

FORGIVE OTHERS AS YOU WANT THE FATHER TO FORGIVE YOU.   Don’t condemn others but rather have mercy on them as you want the Father to have mercy on you. Here is the part that many people conveniently leave out, that you should go and sin no more.  Your behavior is not to be condemned, if you see that you are in need of change and redemption. The difficult part is to commit not to do that behavior again, which most people either don’t do or won’t do.  Another way to say this is, don’t condemn the sinner but condemn the sin. We sinners must recognize that what we do is not consistent with Jesus loving us and therefore change our behavior. The dark side of love is accepting what Christ’s love is and then acting upon it. Jesus told us to love our neighbor as our self. If we hold that adultery is okay and that love means you can have indiscriminate sex with your mother, your sister, your friends, your enemies, in fact anyone, then you really don’t believe in what God is telling us what love means.  The love of Jesus is a stumbling block for those who consider themselves god.

PRAYER IS LOVE: The purpose for why Jesus, Son of God, came to earth was to save us from being locked out of Heaven…Forever. His mission in life was to give glory to the Father, I might add, as only God can do, yet represent all of us, as only Christ could do. Read John 17, the priestly prayer of Christ. “…eternal life is this: to know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Reflect on this beautiful passage in John in your Spiritual Reading.  I suggest you read it several times in silence and solitude, the silence that comes from being open to God’s silent wisdom, and the solitude that comes from you loving others as Christ, as only you can. Prayer is lifting up the heart and mind to God. It is knowing, loving and serving others because of the love that fills our whole being when we realize in Philippians 2:5-12, the depth, the height and width of Christ’s love for us. We can do no more, nor can we do any less.

GIVE YOUR LIFE FOR ANOTHER: If we want to love others as Christ loved us, we must be willing to give our life for another. To make sense of this statement, I don’t think about a soldier laying down his life for another, although that is certainly heroic and the ultimate sign of love. in the secular world The love of which I speak is not dying for another person but living your life for others as Christ emptied himself and glorified His Father in sacrifice of his death and resurrection, for the sins of all humanity. Lest you go off the charts in being confused, think about this. We do not celebrate or honor a dead God, ones like the secularists serve, but Jesus who lives today. Christ gives his life to the Father every time we come together to proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes again in glory (Eucharist) and in the prayer of the Church, the Liturgy of the Hours, or in the silence and solitude of our heart in Lectio Divina. We make Christ present when we love others as He has loved us.

LOVE: WHAT THE FLOWER CAN TEACH US  If you want to find our what love is look to nature. Think of yourself as a beautiful flower  whose whole purpose is to be a flower. Things come naturally, you don’t have to even worry. You bloom, take in nutrients, have bees come around to pollinate your species, smell delicious to bees and insects, then die. This is the natural order.

Humans also have a natural order. Our nature is to be human, like our prototypes, Adam and Eve. We find ourselves in a world where we can’t live forever, where there is pain, suffering and misfortune based many times on our choices. But, there is also happiness, love, peace, joy, goodness and thoughtfulness. We are the conduits of both good and/or evil for the world around us. The world is good, we are good, but we have suffered the effect of the relational sin of Adam and Eve and must pay the price until we die.  The Genesis principle is, for me, a very challenging tale of where humans find themselves and where we are headed.

The Church uses the natural order as the basis for morality and values. It also takes into account the effects of Original Sin. We are born of two parents, grow up with nutrients of knowledge and values, reproduce, but we are different from the animals. We have the capacity to know that we know, to find meaning for a reason, to be able to expand our senses and minds to include love from God that sustains us for the trip to Forever. Humans are not destined for earth. Earth is the incubator for growing and learning how to love, for it is love that is the language of God and the nectar of Heaven.  The reason for the Church, the living  Body of Christ is to feed us, cloth us, shelter us from that which does not lead to love, and allow us to love others as Christ has loved us. We don’t automatically go to Heaven, as if we had no free will, but we have the words of Christ in Matthew 11: 28-30, Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened, and I will give you rest. Shoulder my yolk and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart and you will find rest for your souls. Yes, my yolk is easy and my burden is light.

Jesus is our mediator with the Father, but he is also our Brother and has given us the gift of adoption to be sons and daughters of the Father. This he has not done for flower, even as beautiful and fragrant as they are. Why is that?

LAY CISTERCIAN MEANING AND LEARNING POINTS

As one who only aspires to be a Lay Cistercian, I try to have in me the mind of Christ Jesus. I say try, because I struggle to fight the influences of the secular world to make me into God, to say that, afterall, everyone has an opinion as to what is right and who God is and you should not force others to believe what you do. There are elements of truth in that statement, but a fundamental flaw. Do you know what it is?

• What I have learned is, keep your prayer simple.
• Venture inside yourself to find meaning and purpose, but only if you can get the answers from God and not your own Ego.
• God is love. Heaven is a place where there is only love that exists between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
• We have our whole lifetime to try to discover what love is, the sustaining type of love that “moth does not consume, or rust destroys.”
• Humans by themselves could not reason to the purpose of what God has in store for us using mere human knowledge and logic. Science does not tell us what is meaningful but what is. Science is not bad, just not appropriate to make the next step with what love is.
• God told Moses and Isreal how to live in a way that would get them to Heaven, but the people continued to rebel.
• God had to show Israel through Christ what love meant, by giving glory to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, the god who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages,
• Jesus gave us the command to love one another as He has loved us so that we could continue his purpose on earth and bring others to a knowledge of how to get to Heaven so that they could experince love.

What are the requirements to be a Lay Cistercian, or a follower of the Master so that you can learn how to love as Christ loved us? As our late Spiritual Advisor, Father Anthony Deliese, OCSO, told one of our members, “You must be a sinner.”  And I would add, “and want to grow from self to God with God’s love for us.” That in all things, may God be glorified. –St. Benedict

For me, I have chosen to use silence, solitude, work, prayer, and community to help me conclude my personal journey to find out how to love as Jesus loved us.

Praise be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit now and forever. The God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages. Amen and Amen.  –Cistercian Doxology

One of my favorite prayers is the ancient mantra, Jesus Christ, Son of David, have mercy on me. The important thing about short prayers is they are like drinking concentrated orange juice. They may be too compact and strong by themselves. They need the water of repetition to make an impact.  Like layering Kleenex tissues together and asking someone to try to tear them, repetition provides a mantra-like atmosphere for prayer and may lead to a deeper level of contemplation.

Try this out.  Sit in silence (I prefer to do this while driving long distances across town) and say the following over and over. My Jesus, have mercy. Do this over and over, without interruption, stopping. The mantra element of this short prayer means you may take ten or even fifteen minutes of reciting it without interruption. It you do find yourself thinking about something else, you must begin again.  Saying a mantra is not easy. I have yet to master it fully, but I give it the old Hoosier try again and again, like shooting hoops in my back yard.

A wonderful book entitled Monastic Practices by Charles Cummings OSCO, has a chapter on Short Prayers, one of which is the Jesus Prayer, popular as a mantra from the Middle Ages, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Father Cummings also writes about Centering Prayer, popularized by the Medieval text, Cloud of the Unknowing, and also Buddhist prayers, as well as the place of short prayers as means to move from self to God..You should read the whole document, Cloud of the Unknowing, a document about mysticism, but be warned it is lengthy and assumes ideas not always expressed in the text.    https://www.catholicspiritualdirection.org/cloudunknowing.pdf

LEARNING POINTS

1. Short prayers, recited alone are a good way to re-focus on Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior (Ichthus).
2. Short prayers, recited in a mantra, are effective in allowing the mind and the spirit to focus on the love of Christ.
3.  Short prayers are one of my favorite ways to set the tone for Lectio Divina (reading, meditation, prayer, and contemplation). I use it as the prayer part to ready my heart to sit next to the heart of Jesus, should He choose to sit next to me. While I wait, I recite the mantra above, or some other variation, such as Jesus Mercy, or Maranatha (Come, Lord Jesus). The important part is I invite Jesus to come and sit by me, if he finds me worthy.

The short prayers in Catholic spiritual direction are important ways to tune up the mind to receive Christ is our hearts.

Praise be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now and forever. The God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the Ages. Amen and Amen –Cistercian Doxology.

Who determines who goes to Heaven? Is Hitler in Heaven? Is Hugh Hefner in Heaven? These are thoughts I had recently, when I did my Lectio Divina prayers and meditated on Philippians 2:5.  Don’t ask me why I thought of Mr. Hefner. It just came to me. Here is what I thought.

Who determines who goes to Heaven? Are just those baptized in Heaven and no one else? Is our Church the sole purveyor of tickets to Heaven and the rest of us are doomed to whatever? Does God have the power to allow someone in Heaven, if they have sinned or have not been baptized with water and the Spirit, even if we say they should not be there?

One of the great tricks that Satan plays on humans is to trick them into thinking that they are the sole interpreter of what God does or does not do.  No one knows the human heart except God, and no one, no church, no clergy can tell who is in Heaven or not.  What you can say is, you must be baptized with water and the Spirit to enter the kingdom of Heaven. What that means in practice is God. realm  Heaven is God’s playground, not yours, and He can let in anyone He wants for any reason. God makes the rules in His playground and He can let in anyone He wants. The ooly way to change this idea that you are judge, jury and executioner, is to be God. Adam and Eve tried that. Christ’s death and resurrection gave us power over our death and the hope of the resurrection. (See John 11:25-27.)  Only God is judge over humans, not you, not me, not Mr. Hefner.

Adam and Eve wanted to control and manipulate God to their image and likeness and you know where that led. I must think twice before I just others as to who is going to Heaven or not. I am not God, nor do I want to place limits on God.  That is First Commandment stuff we are talking about. Read Matthew 7: 1-3  “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?” 

When I was in my 20’s, a young preacher thought he would gain a trophy by converting me to the religion of Christ. He was a good man and seemed sincere, so I had pity on him and did not do to him what he was doing to me. I just smiled and said, “Peace be with you you.” It nearly drove him crazy and he screamed at me that I was going to Hell because I did not believe that Jesus was Lord. I would never condemn him for believing in Christ Jesus, nor for praying to the Holy Spirit for enlightenment.  In the same way, I would never say that Hugh Hefner is in Hell. What I would say is, “I hope God is merciful to both him and me, especially me.”  I don’t know what ever happened to that minister. He thought he was righteous.

When each of us dies, as we all will, we will have a particular judgement. The Catholic Catechism states it like this:

 THE PARTICULAR JUDGMENT

“1021 Death puts an end to human life as the time open to either accepting or rejecting the divine grace manifested in Christ.⁵⁹²Â The New Testament speaks of judgment primarily in its aspect of the final encounter with Christ in his second coming, but also repeatedly affirms that each will be rewarded immediately after death in accordance with his works and faith. The parable of the poor man Lazarus and the words of Christ on the cross to the good thief, as well as other New Testament texts speak of a final destiny of the soul–a destiny which can be different for some and for others.⁵⁹³

1022 Each man receives his eternal retribution in his immortal soul at the very moment of his death, in a particular judgment that refers his life to Christ: either entrance into the blessedness of heaven-through a purification or immediately, — or immediate and everlasting damnation.“

My focus here is not on if Hugh Hefner is in Heaven or not, but rather on those who consider themselves righteous and interpreters of who goes to Heaven or Hell. To look at this in detain, I turn to Matthew’s Chapter 23  and the sevenfold indictment of the scribes and Pharisees for a cautionary tale about those so eager to condemn others like Hugh Hefner. Let God do the judging and you keep asking for mercy for yourself.

It was not a particularly good time in my life in 2010. My application for laicization had been on hold for 18 years, since Pope Saint John Paul II decided not to grant priests dispensation. I felt like I still wanted to be useful to the Church, but was cut off from doing anything overtly religious.  Maybe that is another blog. I made a decision to explore being an Anglican, in the hopes of being ordained a priest for them. I had heard that Anglicans can become Catholic priests while being married.  So I gave it a try.

My intention in writing down these ideas is not to prove this or that religion is good and another one is bad.  I had always been Roman Catholic and did not have the experience of another faith home.  I did want to resolve my situation at the time and see if I could still practice the ministry of priest.  I chose Anglican not Episcopal because their physical Church was closer.

I could not have been more warmly greeted and accepted as who I was, someone on a journey to seek God.  In many ways, I owe my being Roman Catholic to the laity of the Anglican Church and the generosity of its clergy. I will be forever grateful to them.

I went through a year’s worth of instructions on what it means to be Anglican. I attended their worship services on Sunday. I went to parish socials to mix with parishioners. If it was just a matter of being with good people of faith, I would be Anglican today.

During the period of instruction, I kept thinking how wonderful it would be to serve these people in ministry. My time at morning services was good and familiar. All the things I grew up with were there, the large crucifix, the altar, the candles, the Votive Light that we call the Elijah candle, the smells, the order of the service. If I didn’t know better, I would not have known this service was Anglican and not Roman Catholic.  Yet, I had that undefinable something way down deep (and I mean way down deep) in my consciousness that keep me from giving my full self. That went on for nearly six months.

At the end of that time, my instructions were complete and others in my group were given the opportunity to join the community. So was I. It was a generous gift from them and I realized that I would be happy in community with all these believers. Yet, those troubling, nagging doubts were not going way.  I remember driving to a Sunday service and parking, then walking to Church.  I thought to myself, I can’t do this.  Maybe for someone else it would be okay, but I can’t do this. So, now comes the choice.  The choice was, there is no choice at all. I can’t do this.  If I did convert, no one would ever know, or even care about my struggle. I cared!  I was caught in not attending the Roman Catholic Church because I was unable to get a dispensation from my vows and having no other option. I chose the former, which I termed dark love.

Then, things changed.  My dispensation came through because Pope Benedict XVI was one again giving dispensations to priests and religious.

My reasons for not wanting to continue as Anglican were these:

I was not fully convinced that Anglican orders were valid. It might not be a problem for anyone else, but it was for me.  If Anglican order may not be valid, why should I want to be a clergy person for them?

When I asked about the authority of the Church, in terms of Apostolicity, I was told that there are three Anglican branches: traditional or Anglo-Catholic, Evangelical, and Progressive.  These three branches do not agree on things like Real Presence, Authority of Apostolicity, tradition of services, rituals, and women’s ordination.  I had problems with knowing that each clergy person, depending on their branch of Anglicanism, would give you a different answer to how they approach issues of Church, worship, authority, the grace of God. This might not be a problem for some, but it was for me.  I did not see their Catholicity, Apostolicity nor Oneness. I did observe their Holiness.

I believe that they are, depending on which Anglican Church you belong to (traditional, evangelical or progressive), 50 to 75% of what I hold to be passed on from the Apostles. I reconverted to being a Roman Catholic, my home, and reconverted again to being a Lay Cistercian. Do you see a pattern in there somewhere?

This is my journey, not yours, but I would only caution you. Just because your road to spirituality is rocky, doesn’t mean you are on the wrong road. In whatever remains of the time I have left, I plan to daily convert my life (conversio mores) to be more like Christ and less like me.  I have to fight for my core beliefs and not let the Church get away with abandoning me to relativism, worshipping false gods, and my being my own church. Ironically, as Luther said long ago, “Here I stand, I can do no other.”

Being a Lay Cistercian has been a big blessing. Accepted by the monastic community and fellow brother and sister Lay Cistercians is true community, like the early assemblies of Ephesus and Philippi.  My appreciation for the history and tradition of the Roman Catholic Church has grown exponentially, since I began to get rid of my pride and pledge obedience to God’s will for me.  One of the most significant events for me is Lectio Divina, which I describe as sitting on a wintry park bench, waiting for Jesus to come by, and, if and when it happens, placing my heart next to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

I pray for all the monks and Lay Cistercians of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery, Conyers, Georgia, I pray for all those in my prayer group at Good Shepherd Community, Tallahassee, Florida. I give thanks to God for the privilege of taking instructions to become an Anglican at St. Peter’s Community in Tallahassee. I am not only home, but, like Job, have more than I could have ever dreamed back in 2010. All I can say is:

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now and forever.  The God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages. Amen and Amen. –Cistercian Doxology

MY SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR EACH DAY

The following pages are samples of the horarium (hourly agenda) I use to organize my day as a Lay Cistercian. Everyone who practices the Cistercian practices and charisms, for those, not a monk or a nun, will have a different challenge to seek God. This is how I do it, but it does not mean this is how you must do it. I must tell you that I am retired and have time to devote to the practice of how to have in me the mind of Christ Jesus.  I am facinated with the new discovery of contemplation, although I am a mere novice to learning how to do it. My idea of contemplation, the deepest level of Lectio Divina (lectio, meditatio, oratio, and contemplatio) is picturing myself on a cold, lonely park bench in the dead of winter. I feel the cold, I try to warm myself with my coat, but the chill spreads to all parts of my body. I am waiting for the Lord, Jesus, the Christ, to come and visit. I know he will come this way, but it is I who must wait for him.  Waiting for the Lord takes humility. Believing that the Lord will sit down with me takes Hope. I picture Christ sitting down on the bench in my meditation, sitting down, smiling, having a firm shake and giving me a hug, and I feel his body next to mine, I see the twinkle in his eyes, warming me up. My heart is open to the heart of Jesus, the Sacred Heart, and I become warm again. This is a sign of contradiction, so common with everything to do with God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. I have never seen Jesus, but he told me, “…blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” John 20: 28-29.

On the park bench, it doesn’t matter if I know what Jesus looks like, what is important is that Jesus knows who I am and what I look like. On the park bench, He stopped by for a visit just for me. His only request is to do to others as I have done to you.  Here are some of the ways in which I would like to share what Christ has given me. By God’s grace I continued to be saved each day I take up my cross and follow Him. Each day!

My Center: Have in you the mind of Christ Jesus. –Philippians 2:5

Five or Six Practices to support my center: These are Cistercian practices, which I have adapted as a Lay Cistercian in my daily routine.

1. Silence—When I think of silence, I think of lack of worldly noise. But, it is more than just lack of external noises, like television, children playing, going to work, and traveling in a car. For me, I try to be conscious that all these sounds give glory to the Father through the Son, in union with the Holy Spirit. I try to make a space where I can reflect on my center with some degree of privacy. Silence of my heart helps me sustain the other Cistercian charisms and practices and so grow in fierce love. Respecting silence is not only just “not talking” but appreciating the silence of God. God speaks to us in the silence of our hearts, not with German, English, or any other human language. The language of God is pure love. Pure love is a mystery of faith but it does somehow include loving us with all our our nature (our hearts, our mind, and our strength). Deuteronomy 6 and Matthew 22:37 bids us to do the same to others, as well as loving our neighbor as our self.
2. Solitude— Solitude, for me, means carving out space and quiet time to focus on how to have in me the mind of Christ Jesus. For the Cistercian monks and nuns, solitude means carving out time and space that permits them to focus on loving God with their whole heart, whole soul and whole mind without external distractions. For the Lay Cistercian, we also concentrate on fashioning a little prayer nest but we live in the secular world and therefore embrace all the distractions as part of our prayer to the Father. St. Benedict says, “That in all things, God be glorified.”
3. Prayer—Prayer is lifting the heart and mind to God. As a Lay Cistercian, I actively put myself in the presence of God using prayer, both communal and private. Even if I sometimes feel that prayer is repetitious and rote, I have noticed that the more I try to grow deeper using prayer, rather than fighting the externals, the more peace there is in my spirit. It is resting my heart in the heart of Christ that helps me love fiercely.
4. Work—Work as the world sees it is a means to make money. Work with a spiritual approach is transforming the ordinary tasks of the day into those that give glory and praise to the Father. Work is prayer, if offered up as praise and glory to the Father. As a retiree, my work is almost exclusively devoted to writing and my blog. For whatever time I have remaining, I want to offer my experiences and talents to help parishes implement a contemplative option to their normal parish spirituality.
5. Community—Lay Cistercians gravitate towards communal gatherings to refresh the soul and to transform themselves deeper in the mind and heart of Christ Jesus. I commit to attending a monthly meeting of Lay Cistercians called a Gathering Day at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit. Even though there is great distance between us (250 miles one way), we link together as one in our commitment to each other because we are all linked through, with, and in, the mind and heart of Christ Jesus. Prayer is where you find it. So, too, is Lay Cistercian spirituality. I have several communities of faith that help sustain me in my quest to love God with all the heart, my soul, and my strength. My parish faith community is where I do most of my Lay Cistercian practices.

My spiritual goals for the rest of my life:

1. Take up your cross daily and follow Christ. The cross in this case is being consistent in spiritual practices. Although there is no penalty attached for not performing them, the more you want to have in you the mind of Christ Jesus, the more you will have what you wish for. Take what comes your way and transform it into Christ Jesus.
2. Solitude in the midst of community. Community here means a support and sustaining faith group, such as Lay Cistercians of Holy Spirit Monastery, Conyers, Ga. and Good Shepherd faith community at daily Mass and Liturgy of the Hours, with its ministries to the poor, the sick and those in need. Where two or three gather in my name, says the Master, there I am also.
3. Work to share my writings and adult learning about Cistercian spiritual practices.
4. Be open to the possibility of the manifestibility of all being! I want to be more conscious of my own capacity to love God with my whole heart, my whole mind, and my whole soul and my neighbor as myself (capacitas dei). I want to be open to radical hospitality, seeing Christ as my neighbor, seeking to be open to God’s message in nature, hoping for a small place in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Spiritual Practices I use to sustain my center:

As a Lay Cistercian, these are some of the practices, little nests of silence and solitude, I carve out of my routine, not because I need the discipline but because they place me in direct contact with the mind and heart of Christ.

Eucharist:  The Sacrament of unity with God through Christ Jesus with the Holy Spirit as Advocate. This is the bread of Heaven. This is the pure energy of God for my transformation. This is my destiny in one prayer of gratitude with the community of believers.

Lectio Divina: This ancient, monastic practice allows me to growing deeper in spiritual awareness, there are four steps. Read (lectio); Meditate (meditatio); Pray (oratio); Contemplate (contemplatio).

Meditation and Spiritual Reading: This practice gives me a time to focus on Scriptures and Spiritual Readings about how to grow deeper in Christ Jesus.

The Rosary:  Meditations on the life and purpose of Christ Jesus. One of my favorite practices is a mantra-like prayer to help me meditate on the high points in the life of Jesus. You grow beyond saying Our Fathers or Hail Marys.

Liturgy of the Hours: This practice, refined by St. Benedict c. 540 AD in his Rule of St. Benedict, organizes the monks to pray the Psalms seven times a day. I try to pray the Psalms at least twice a day. The key is consistency and prayer in common, if possible. It is the prayer of the Catholic Church every hour of the day, every day of the week, giving praise, honor, and glory to the Father through the Son in union with the Holy Spirit.

Eucharistic Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament: I believe that Jesus Christ is present, body and blood, soul and divinity, under the appearance of the bread. This is an ancient practice and one of the most revered of all practices. If this is indeed the living Christ, why would you not want to visit? This takes fierce love to practice.

Reading the Rule of St. Benedict, Chapter 4:  Each day, part of taking up my cross is reading Chapter 4 of St. Benedict, the Tools for Good Works. I offer this reading in reparation for my sins and for the strength to be strong next time I am tempted.

Work: My work, as in ora and labora, is to write down my ideas, many of them directly from my Lectio Divina prayers, and to continue my ministry to get contemplation practices out to the public.

Dedication of the Day: My offering each day for a different intention.

Monday: Penance: In reparation for my sins and those of the Church, those in my book of Life.

Tuesday: For all family, friends, teachers, those in my book of Life.

Wednesday: In honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Immaculate Heart of Mary, and St. Joseph, those in my book of Life.

Thursday: For all Lay Cistercians, Monks of Holy Spirit Monastery, Monks of St. Meinrad Archabbey, priests and religious of Diocese of Evansville, Monks of Norcia, Italy and those in my book of Life.

Friday: For an increase in God’s grace to love God with all my heart, all my soul, all my mind and my neighbor as myself.

Saturday: For all deceased, an increase in my faith through the Holy Spirit and for those in my book of Life.

Sunday: To give praise, honor and glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and forever, the God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages. Amen and Amen.

A PRAYER FOR PERSPECTIVE

1. Our Father, source of all goodness and fulfillment, we struggle so many times to see your will in what we attempt each day. We are most alive, most human when we look at you in the delicate way the sun greets each leaf in the morning by brushing it gently with the gold paint of dawn, the way the rose radiates subtle smells effortlessly to praise you far more than mere words, the way the seashore throttles the sands with clashing sounds, the way coffee con leche tastes with Cuban bread, the way you touch us with the unseen reality of your love. All creation gives you glory by their being. “That in all things, God be glorified.” Give us daily food for the journey, and you did your people in the desert. Give us good friends to help keep us honest about ourselves. Give us your Spirit to make the gifts real in treating others with unconditional love and faith. Allow us to forgive those who wrong us and pray for those who put us down for loving you. You are the gate through which we must pass on our journey to Forever. Show us the way to be gentle and humble of heart. Give us wisdom so that we can see what is unknown, know what is unseen, and love pure energy. With St. Paul, may we prefer nothing to understanding you and serving you with gladness all the days of our lives. When the Devil tempts us, may the angels that minister to you night and day also be our protectors from choosing our false self.
2. May you bless us with your spirit of mercy and penance, so that we might resist evil and our failures to love you with all our hearts, as you were once tempted in the Garden of Gethsemani.

END NOTES:  

To live the life of Christ as a Lay Cistercian is not without distinct challenges and responsibilities. If would be so easy just to say you want to be a Lay Cistercian and bask in the glow of what the monks and nuns do in their daily lives as if you wishing to be like them is actually like them.  Like the book of James points out, faith without works is dead. So too is a Lay Cistercian Journey without the struggle of trying to have in you the mind of Christ Jesus (Phil. 2:5). As the Fox in the book, The Little Prince, points out: it is time you take to be with someone that is meaningful.

As one who can only aspire to be a Lay Cistercian, it takes five years of practice (two years as a Novice, and three years as a Junior) before one makes final promises, and that is just to begin to run the race. It is the race itself that is meaningful, the time it takes to live out the Life of Christ in daily events, to see and share the love of Christ in community of believers that you may only see once a day or once a month, the daily habits formed by practicing prayers over and over, while all the time making them fresh and new each day, and all this to… “have in you the mind of Christ Jesus .” (Phil.2:5)

Is it worth the cost? For those for whom Christ has captured them, as St. Paul says in Philippians 3:7-16, “…I believe nothing can happen that will outweigh the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For Him, I have accepted the loss of everything, and I look on everything as so much rubbish if only I can have Christ Jesus and be given a place in Him.” 

That passage has begun to transform me from self to God, ever so slowly and unobtrusively, so that what had become routine and stale is now new and fresh with the realization that I have only begun to grasp  “…the breadth and the length, the height and the depth, until, knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond all knowledge,  (I am) filled with the utter fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:18-20)

Praise to the Father, to the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now and forever, the God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages. Amen and Amen. –Cistercian doxology

When I have my Lectio Divina prayer, I usually have follow up homework to do.  The Holy Spirit leaves me so much material on my plate that I am full time trying to digest all the ideas the come from just being in the presence of God. For the past seven or eight months, I have been trying to write down my thought lest I forget them and to share them with you. Sometimes, I like to look up what I think are deeper insights into my ideas so I use the Internet, particularly website that contain information I don’t have.

Here are ten contemplation websites I use most of the time to gain a deeper knowledge of my faith and the Church. They are in no order of importance or frequency of use.

1. NEW ADVENT.  www.newadvent.org  I like this website because it provides a core of primary source materials and encyclopedia entries.  If you look at the webpage in the top right corner, there are entries for Scripture, Encyclopedia, Summa Theologica, and Fathers.
   1. Exercise:  Under Fathers (upper right hand corner), look up Eucebius of Caeserea (c. 265- c. 340) and read part of his Letter on the Council of Nicea.
   2. Exercise: Under Fathers, look up Justin Martyr and read his Martyrdom of Justin et al. What sentence did Rusticus pronounce on Justin and his companions?
   3. Exercise: John Cassian (c. 360- c. 435) Read Chapter 1 of the Institutes. What are the eight principle faults monks struggle to overcome?
   4. Exercise: Look up Apocrapha in the Fathers section. This is a great place to read early writings not selected by the Church for inclusion in the Canon of Authentic Books (Scriptures).

2. VATICAN.  https://www.vatican.va/archive/index.htm.  Here are sources for increasing your knowledge about Catholicism.

THE BIBLE

CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

CODES OF CANON LAW

II VATICAN COUNCIL

JUBILEE 2000

OFFICIAL ACTS OF THE HOLY SEE

COMPENDIUM OF THE SOCIAL DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH
[Albanian, Byelorussian, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swahili, Ukrainian,Vietnamese]

Exercise: Where would you look up the addresses given by Pope Saint John Paul II at his

3. e-Catholic 2000:  https://www.ecatholic2000.com/saints/clist.shtml This is a very useful site for me.  I can look up Catholic authors, Fathers and Mothers of the Church, and various lives of the Saints.

4. US CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS: https://www.usccb.org/bible/index.cfm  Bishops are the official teachers of the Faith and shepherds of local churches. They are our link with our apostolic heritage and we trust them as keepers of what is true.  Here is the important part for you. The collective leadership of the Catholic Church in the US addresses current issues faced by this age, such as diversity, marriage and family issues, social just issues. You may or may not agree with their teaching (this is not dogma) but we all do well to take it seriously and heed their collective counsel.  There is also a Canadian Council of Catholic Bishops (https://www.cccb.ca/) which has jurisdiction for the Catholic Church in Canada.

Exercise: You want to find out about the latest teachings on marriage and family from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. Where would you look?

Exercise: Someone asks you to recommend a translation of the Bible that is approved by the Catholic Church. Where would you go to look up what is approved and what is not approved. Why care about this?

Exercise: You want to explore the thinking of Pope Saint John Paul II on The Theology of the Body given at his audiences. Where would you look it up in the USCCB?

• https://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/marriage-and-family/natural-family-planning/catholic-teaching/theology-of-the-body.cfm

5. ABBAYE CITEAUX:   https://www.citeaux-abbaye.com/en/the-cistercians-yesterday-today-tomorrow/premier-article-anglais. This is an important website, especially if you read French.

Exercise: Who are the four evangelists of Citeaux? https://www.citeaux-abbaye.com/en/the-cistercians-yesterday-today-tomorrow/spirit/the-auteurs-cisterciens

6. RULE OF ST. BENEDICT:  https://www.ben.edu/center-for-mission-and-identity/resources/rule-of-st-benedict.cfm

Exercise:  Find Chapter 4 of the Rule of St. Benedict and read it daily for 30 days. You become what you read and assimilate and it is true for reading Scripture as well.

7. THE CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH:   https://www.kofc.org/en/catechism/index.html  A catechism is a book containing all the dogmas (things you must believe) and teachings through heritage and tradition (things you should believe).  The outline is:

I. THE LIFE OF MAN – TO KNOW AND LOVE GOD

II. HANDING ON THE FAITH: CATECHESIS

III. THE AIM AND INTENDED READERSHIP OF THE CATECHISM\

IV. STRUCTURE OF THIS CATECHISM
Part One: The Profession of Faith
Part Two: The Sacraments of Faith
Part Three: The Life of Faith
Part Four: Prayer in the Life of Faith 
V. PRACTICAL DIRECTIONS FOR USING THIS CATECHISM

VI. NECESSARY ADAPTATIONS
Above All – Charity

Exercise: Look up the Seven Sacraments that Christ uses to give us grace and communicate with us through Faith. Why are there seven of them and not two?

8. CATHOLIC EDUCATION RESOURCE CENTER:  https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/

This is an informative website that I use from time to time as a contemporary snapshot of what is happening in the Church.

Exercise:  Where would you go to read an article on:

Whenever I read or listen to the Star Trek theme, “to boldly go where no one has gone before,” I always think of the one place where I don’t like to go– inside me.  As a Lay Cistercian following the practices of Cistercian spirituality, going inside me is the goal each day. That is called the contemplative approach to spirituality.  Contemplative monks and nuns go so far as to seal themselves off from the world so that can seek God within the boundaries of a monastery. In an age that favors making the self into God, going inside yourself to seek God may be hazardous to your health.  What if you don’t come out? I fear what I cannot control or manipulate–what is within.

My fears are several in number: fear of the dark, fear of the demons that exists within me that I have not yet exorcised, fear of being alone, fear of going to Hell. There are probably others that I have hidden in the recesses of my soul that may pop out at any time.

I told you that going inside me every day is what I strive to do.  I didn’t tell you that the act of going inside self is not an easy one. Here are some reasons I have discovered in my Lectio Divina of Phil 2:5.

I don’t like what I find. Unlike Lutheran teaching on the self, I don’t think of myself as rotten and corrupt in my nature, saved with the grace of Christ as syrup is poured over burned pancakes to make them taste good. I am wounded by the effects of Original Sin, but redeemed by the act of Christ on the cross and strengthened by faith in my Baptism and Reconciliation with the Father. I am an adopted son, one who, like the prodigal Son, has not always loved God with my full heart and soul, and strength, but one who continues to lead the Life of Christ according to the contemplative practices of Cistercian spirituality.  God gave his Only Son for me that I might have life now, and hereafter. (John 3: 26-17) In am responsible for what I find inside me, but not content if I do not have in me the mind of Christ Jesus (Phil 2:5). What attracted me to the Lay Cistercian approach to spirituality was its emphasis on emptying self to seek God. As St. Benedict says, “that in all things, may God be glorified.”

Each of us must exorcize our demons to free ourselves of thinking that we are God. When Jesus cast out the demons he would ask their name.  Some of our personal demons may be alcohol misuse, sexual fantasy, corruption of the spirit by thinking that I, like Adam and Eve, are God, envy, lust, hatred, mental illness to some degree, and generally, those ideas and behaviors that corrupt the spirit as found in Galatians 5.

Here is the point.  If what makes me what I can become is inside, if I must get rid of what I don’t like about myself is inside, then there must be a way to go inside the one place that I fear to enter and at least address those deficiencies that keep me from seeking God to my full potential. Not that I will ever finish the race in this life, as St. Paul alludes in Philippians 3:7-16, but I will seek to run the race as a Lay Cistercian, dutifully carrying out the practices of Eucharist, Lectio Divina, Liturgy of the Hours, Reading Scripture and  Reconciliation of my Baptismal commitment of making all things new. These are not ends in themselves but lead to a conversion of heart and transformation from self to God. This happens in the deepest part of me, a place where there is neither darkness or light but of enlightenment and love, a sanctuary of my heart which needs daily conversion.

My default is self not God. I live in a world that is touched by the effects of Original Sin. That means this is an imperfect place, one in which everything dies, everything rusts, everything eventually corrupts. My default is not God but me. I must transform myself through good works, those found in Chapter 4 of St. Benedict’s Rule, the Tools of Good Works. Why good works? Well, think about it, there are only good works, bad works and no works. Which ones do you want to do? More importantly, these are the good works that will transform us from self to God.  They are the Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy, living out Chapter 4 of St. Benedict’s Rule and doing Christianity. Forget about buying your way to Heaven through doing good works. We can’t buy our way into anything, even being a Democrat or Republican. The fact is, unless you do what Christ commands us, even if you have faith, you will be cast aside. There is only one command: love one another as I have loved you. Read the text from Matthew 25 about good works and how we will be judged?

This admonition of St. Benedict in his Chapter on the tools monks can do to move from self to God is one of my favorites. It gets to the ancient dialectic between the world and the spirit, as St. Paul frequently uses. Read Galatians Chapter 5.

Genesis is one of those great archetypal stories of why we humans find ourselves in a world where everything eventually dies and is there anything beyond that?  It is a marvelous account by probably at last four authors of what fidelity is, what betrayal is, the effects of that break in relationship and hope.  Jesus comes, not only to fulfill Scriptures, but also the longing in the human heart to live…Forever.

To differentiate that which is the world’s way and that which are God’s ways, we are washed with water and the Spirit. It washes away the world’s Original Sin (but not its effects) and gives us the promise of adoption as sons and daughters of the Father. It is Hope that the words of Christ are indeed the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Faith to be able to see what is unseen comes from God as a gift to us. We don’t deserve to be adopted. After all, Adam and Eve ruined our covenant. Christ re-established it by giving his life (Philippians 2:5-12). As one who follows Lay Cistercian practices, this is the very center of my life, the purpose of why I am here, the way in which I choose to love my neighbor as myself, the practices I try to follow in Chapter 4 to love God with ALL my heart, my soul, and my strength. Of course, I fail in each day, but I begin each day in the Hope that I will be a little better than before.

There is a duality of realities, once I am accepted by God as an adopted son or daughter of the Father. The Spirit guides me to see what is invisible to the world, to be more like God and less like me, to realize that I am a pilgrim in a foreign land, that I am in the world but not of it.

The struggle, basic to every human, is one where you are god or God is God. You make that choice in your way of treating others, of how you find purpose in life, or how you communicate with others.  To be a stranger to the world’s ways is to realize that your destiny is not one of this life, and that those behaviors you exhibit will not lead you to Heaven. When you read Chapter 4 of St. Benedict’s Rule, there is a blue print for the behaviors what lead to oneness with God. This is the genius of St. Benedict. The problem for me, as a Lay Cistercian, is, I must take up my cross daily and try to follow the Master.

Fortunately for me, Christ helps me to carry my cross by giving of Himself in the Eucharist, Lectio Divina, Liturgy of the Hour, Spiritual Reading, and work.

Praise be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now and forever. The God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages. Amen.  –Cistercian Doxology

This admonition of St. Benedict in his Chapter on the tools monks can do to move from self to God is one of my favorites. It gets to the ancient dialectic between the world and the spirit, as St. Paul frequently uses. Read Galatians Chapter 5.

Genesis is one of those great archetypal stories of why we humans find ourselves in a world where everything eventually dies and is there anything beyond that?  It is a marvelous account by probably at last four authors of what fidelity is, what betrayal is, the effects of that break in relationship and hope.  Jesus comes, not only to fulfill Scriptures, but also the longing in the human heart to live…Forever.

To differentiate that which is the world’s way and that which are God’s ways, we are washed with water and the Spirit. It washes away the world’s Original Sin (but not its effects) and gives us the promise of adoption as sons and daughters of the Father. It is Hope that the words of Christ are indeed the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Faith to be able to see what is unseen comes from God as a gift to us. We don’t deserve to be adopted. After all, Adam and Eve ruined our covenant. Christ re-established it by giving his life (Philippians 2:5-12). As one who follows Lay Cistercian practices, this is the very center of my life, the purpose of why I am here, the way in which I choose to love my neighbor as myself, the practices I try to follow in Chapter 4 to love God with ALL my heart, my soul, and my strength. Of course, I fail in each day, but I begin each day in the Hope that I will be a little better than before.

There is a duality of realities, once I am accepted by God as an adopted son or daughter of the Father. The Spirit guides me to see what is invisible to the world, to be more like God and less like me, to realize that I am a pilgrim in a foreign land, that I am in the world but not of it.

The struggle, basic to every human, is one where you are god or God is God. You make that choice in your way of treating others, of how you find purpose in life, or how you communicate with others.  To be a stranger to the world’s ways is to realize that your destiny is not one of this life, and that those behaviors you exhibit will not lead you to Heaven. When you read Chapter 4 of St. Benedict’s Rule, there is a blue print for the behaviors what lead to oneness with God. This is the genius of St. Benedict. The problem for me, as a Lay Cistercian, is, I must take up my cross daily and try to follow the Master.

Fortunately for me, Christ helps me to carry my cross by giving of Himself in the Eucharist, Lectio Divina, Liturgy of the Hour, Spiritual Reading, and work.

Praise be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now and forever. The God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages. Amen.  –Cistercian Doxology

This is a topic which can be misleading, if not put into context.  In my Lectio Divina a few weeks ago, Phil 2:5, I came across several thoughts that made me sit up straight and come to attention. I was thinking, if love is the purpose of life, Deuteronomy 6 and Matthew 22:37, is love always easy and happy, full of peace, with no anxiety or stress? Is love without pain or sacrifice of self? Right away, I thought of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemani. Matthew 26:38-40  This is genuine love but one that demands choice, a choice that is uncomfortable, the dark side of love. This dark side of one is not evil or bad or less love than the bright side. The dark side of love is not the same as dark love, but the reality that sometimes love demands great courage and sacrifice to remain true. You have heard of the phrase TOUGH LOVE.

• Dark love is like the marriage vow that says I will love you in good time and in bad, in sickness and in health, no matter how rich you are or how poor you may become.
• Dark love is the person who must give up everything to be with their partner or child, such as someone who has leukemia.
• Dark love is the mom and dad that sell all they have to keep their children health and off of drugs
• Dark love is what Christ had for us when he knew he would have to suffer and die for our redemption, He became sin for us, even though he was without sin.
• Dark love is the son who gives up his job to be able to feed and care for his mother with Alzheimer’s disease.
• Dark love is someone who puts up with verbal abuse and terrible personal discounts with someone who has Borderline Personality Disorder or Anger Mood disorder.
• Dark love is putting up with the hatred of children who accuse you of being in la-la land when you try to move from self to God.
• Dark love is Phil 2:5.
• With dark love, love does not count the cost or the suffering you must endure to be with someone who needs you.
• With dark love comes living out the sign of contradiction, taking up your cross daily, loving those who hate you, not returning evil for evil talk, and loving those who do harm to you.  Read Chapter 4 of the Rule of St. Benedict.

As one who aspires to be a Lay Cistercian, I view dark love as the price I must pay for the pearl of great price, the treasure I would sell all to possess, even though those closest to me don’t have a clue what that means for me.

These are just some thoughts from a broken-down, old temple of the Holy Spirit.

LEARNING POINTS

What would you do to keep your faith relationship with Christ intact?

In one of my more esoteric moments, or should I say what I think about after retirement, my thoughts go to how all reality fits together.  My book on the Six Thresholds of Life (see the BOOK section of this blog) has, as threshold number four, “How Does It All Fit Together?”

What is the “it”?  To answer this, I have had to assume that there are three distinct and separate universes all existing together in unity, each with its own evolution, each one with its distinctive ways to measure reality. They are symbiotic, needing each other to answer the ultimate equation of life, not just in visible reality but invisible reality. Crazy, isn’t it? I have been attempting to develop one theory of reality but have been unable, mainly because my assumptions do not support what I can deduce from what I see around me.  Here are a few of my assumptions:

1. Threshold three of my book states that there are three distinct universes (physical, mental, and spiritual). I could not come to an accommodation to make one single reality. It did not make sense when I tried to answer questions about the purpose of life and the spiritual assumptions I hold. Most people live in two universes, that of the physical world (visible) which finds meaning through the mental world (visible and invisible reality)
2. I have no problem with science being scientific, nor the mind finding meaning based on what we collectively observe and reason. I had, and still have a problem with limiting my notion of reality to just finite reality (everything has a beginning and an end). If you take a look at the Drake Equation, you can see a formula to determine the probability of life existing on other worlds, not sentient life, I might add, just organic molecules. Read it for yourself on: https://www.astrodigital.org/ astronomy/drake_ equation.html There are lots of assumptions on this equation that are “iffy” but it does give a good way to look at life on other planets like ours. My background is Biology, so I am attentive to looking at things from a scientific perspective and don’t want to mix theology and science together, a totally useless exercise of my mind.  The two are totally separate and flourish quite well with their own assumptions and measurements. In looking at one reality, I don’t mix what I have found to be unmixable. There are each separate universes. Here is the point. Science and spirituality try to make sense out of where we find ourselves in time using the mind. Using scientific methodology to discover what is invisible is impossible–it doesn’t do well with literary assumptions and philosophical propositions. To find one theory of reality, I keep the scientific and spiritual separate because they describe very different realities and don’t use the same measures to define what is real.
3. The question for me is, how do I make sense out of what is both visible and invisible without violating my reason, my assumptions, and my experiences. How do I formulate a purpose of life and my purpose in it? How can I find out what love is and how do I love fiercely? How can I possible comprehend what is beyond my mental and spiritual powers to see and hear what is true?

Well, my life has, for the most, part been a failure in the professional and personal realm. I am not rich or famous. I did not reach my goal of loving with all my heart (Deuteronomy 6). Those around me think I am a failure for being spiritual or for writing blogs and books that no one reads (granted I have no money for promotion). Yet, I know what the purpose of life is. I know what my personal purpose is in that life. I know how reality looks and acts. I know how reality all fits together as one. I know how to love fiercely, even if I don’t always do it. I know what comes after death.

If you wish to read more about these quirky ideas, look up my trilogy called Spiritual Apes in the Store section of this blog, a three volume set of thoughts about reality and where I find myself within its borders.

Retirement can be a blast if you don’t limit yourself to conventional thinking and acting.

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The following are thoughts from my most recent Lectio Divina on Phil 2:5. St. Benedict states to his monks in Chapter 4 that they should prefer nothing to the love of Christ. Here is the quote from Chapter 4 of the Rule of St. Benedict.

9.   And not to do to another what one would not have done to oneself. 10. To deny oneself in order to follow Christ. 11. To chastise the body. 12. Not to become attached to pleasures. 13. To love fasting. 14. To relieve the poor. 15. To clothe the naked. 16. To visit the sick. 17. To bury the dead. 18. To help in trouble. 19. To console the sorrowing. 20. To become a stranger to the world’s ways. 21. To prefer nothing to the love of Christ.

I asked myself, what if I really preferred nothing to the love of Christ. How would that look in the way I live my life? What would be the ways I would have to live that I am not doing now?

THE CHRIST PRINCIPLE

Putting Christ as the center of your life can be dangerous to how you look at life. Dangerous in the sense that you have to rearrange your priorities.  Here are some of the things I had to do to attempt, and I stress attempt, to prefer nothing to the love of Christ.

• To prefer nothing about something is to state that EVERYTHING is measured, is treasured by the Christ Principle. A principle, as I learned in back in 1960, is that which proceeds from anything in any way. An example of that which always made sense to me is the hub of a bicycle wheel with spokes being everything that flows from it.
• Practically, I try to think of the totality of all that is and see Christ as the center or purpose for all of it. In the morning, when I get up, I make a Morning Offering to Christ asking to give glory to the Father through Him in union with the Holy Spirit. If I prefer nothing, then I must do something to place Christ EACH DAY as my center, and remind myself that I do all for the love of Christ.
• When the world tempts me to be my own god by doing my will instead of seeking to love God with all my heart, my mind and my strength, I need to re-center myself on what is important.
• And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye. Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince.  To prefer nothing to the love of Christ, I must daily focus on that love, nourishing it (practice daily Cistercian practices of Lectio Divina, Reading Chapter 4 of the Rule, Eucharist, Liturgy of the Hours), wanting to deepen it more and more,(desiring to move from self to God), finding ways of sitting next to the heart of Christ and just listening (contemplation).
• If you love someone, you will give up all you have to follow him or her. For religious, it means joining a monastery or an order; for married, it means seeking to make those old wedding pictures new; for those single, it means finding meaning with Christ as your center, however that plays out.  You don’t have to be a monk or a nun to follow St. Benedict’s Rule of preferring nothing to the love of Christ. All you have to be is a sinner trying and failing to love God with all your heart, your mind, and your strength and your neighbor as yourself (Deuteronomy 6 and Matthew 22:37)

Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/antoine_de_saintexupery

A danger in using this approach is being so fanatic that you go “Jesus crazy” and so frenetic that you think you are the sole representative of who Jesus is on earth, both past and present. This is making god in your own image and likeness. Love usually careens down the middle of the road of life so as not to drive off into a ditch on the side.

If you are a new Catholic, you don’t start off by loving God with your whole heart. It takes time, in fact a lifetime, to try and fail and try and fail. Pace yourself in the race of loving Christ with other runners. All of us fail when compared to Christ. Peter did. Paul did. John did. Benedict did. Dominic did. Pope Francis does. and so do you.

You are not me; I am not you; God is not you; and you, certainly, are not God.  –mfc

The following reflections come from my Lectio Divina meditations on Phil 2:5 and are solely my ideas. I am only a broken-down, old temple of the Holy Spirit, not a theologian, spiritual director for anyone, nor an expert in anything. I wondered what it would be like to construct my own church in these days of promiscuousness of ideas about right and wrong and the proliferation of values that only admits that each person has the right to believe what they want and that what they believe is right.  What follows are five reflections on how I would construct a Church in which I could function as a Lay Cistercian.

One of the unintended consequences of the reform movement in the 15th Century is that there was a subtle switch to the individual alone as the source of all things spiritual.  In effect, everyone is their own church,

• throw out veneration of the Saints,
• Eucharist is not the Real Presence of Christ,
• there is no Mystery of Faith,
• no one can tell you what to believe,
• the Church is not Holy it is corrupt,
• what was taught before is, certain beliefs aside, so much rubbish,
• humans are rotten in their nature, saved by the blood of Christ in Baptism,
• and all you have to do is believe with all your heart and you will get to Heaven.

THE REFORMS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT TO THE NEW TESTAMENT

The challenge of the Apostles and new Testament communities was taking what was essential about Jewish thought and adapting it to a universal system of beliefs all centered around Christ. In the beginning, believers did not know what that was. The introduction of Christ to the non-Jews was a hot topic in the days after the Ascension of Christ. So many people believed in their own teachings about Christ that the emerging Church universal had to adopt a Creed (Apostles Creed) to keep both Jews and Gentiles on the same page.  One thing is for sure, the struggle for Truth was not without its difficulties and even caused factions that played the fame, “My Jesus can beat your Jesus.”  Yet, the transition from Old Testament was accomplished without destroying the teachings of the Prophets and customs, in reality, the New Testament was built upon them, merely enhanced and fulfilled.

TWO WAYS OF CHURCH BUILDING

I count two ways to build a church and one of them has five steps.

WAY ONE: Jesus founds the church on Peter and trusts the instincts of this sinful man who betrayed him to use the Holy Spirit wisely.

This passage was added to Matthew for a reason.  Matthew’s Gospel is all about authority, beginning with the chronology of Jesus, the authority of Jesus to be God, the authority of the church to be the Body of Christ.

This type of building Church becomes a community of communities who move forward in time, stepping in it from time to time, recommitting over and over to loving Christ, and carrying the baggage of centuries on their collective shoulders. What is core never changes although the message takes on different nuances with each century. The teachings of this Church, the Body of Christ, His flock, are added to, not subtracted from the core message, as it plods on through centuries of growth and mis- steps, always backing up to embrace what is the authentic life and the true way through the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

WAY TWO: The second way to form Church comes from sheep who are not of His flock, but who sincerely believe they are doing what God wants.

Any of these other sheep can, and have, formed church based on what they experience today. I can form my unique church just by picking up a Bible and saying:

STEP ONE: I am the center of all reality.  What sounds like a good idea, and one espoused by many free-thinkers today is, fraught with consequences that do not lend themselves to stability and unity. If everyone is their own church, the possibility that everyone is there own god is also real. If you are the center of the spiritual universe, you can make a church in your own image. If you don’t like this or that idea, you should be free to disagree with it and change it, if it does not suit your pleasure. If you are going to begin your own church, it all begins with you believing that you are the center of all reality. Of course, you will disagree with that, but you can’t build a new church without destroying that which went before.  And here is a thought about the need for reform. Not all reforms are destructive. Making all things new in your life and in the collective life of the Body of Christ is not only needed to move from self to God.  Then, what kind of change are you talking about?

Think about this idea. Genesis 3, tells an archetypal story of Adam and Eve (the two are one) committing the original sin (breaking a trusting relationship with God). They made themselves God, or so they hoped. It was after many years of Israel wandering the desert of ignorance to purge the collective guilt of a people that Christ, from the root of Jesse, became human to repair this relationship between God and man (Philippians 2_5-12).  He redeemed us through the voluntary sacrifice of his life on the cross, shedding his blood for all of us for all time, fulfilling the sacrifice of Abraham with his son, making reparation to the Father for the original sin of disobedience and pride, restoring all things as One by giving glory to the Father, in, with and through Himself.

There can be only one Center of all reality for believers, that of Christ (Phil. 2:5-12). When creating your own church, you assume that you have the right and obligation to reform (that is, you have insights that no one else has had, or that the Holy Spirit has given to you). Anyone can be their own church, just as anyone can be their own god. After all, you are the center of the universe and all reality must be as you say.

2. STEP TWO: I am the rock of my church.  No one can challenge me.  After all, I broke away from something to found something that I thought was better.  There is no one to take my place.  I have ultimate say over what I teach and how it is taught.

3. STEP THREE: I control history from now to the Apostolic times.  I don’t care what went before me.  I can pick and choose from all the religious cafeteria selections of the past and make up my own plate of goodies.  After all, I am the church. I don’t need to be in touch with history as it comes forward through time, some of it being good, some of it being discarded. I simply read the Bible and take what I like about it and discard other parts. I don’t care if they contradict history or the heritage as it comes forward through time.

4. STEP FOUR: My opinion beats your opinion. My Jesus can beat your Jesus because your belief is false and mine is not.  I had a retired Protestant minister tell me that the Catholic Church began with the Edict of Milan in 313 AD.  I asked him what went before and he said the Apostolic Church. I told him he needs to read more.  He did not like that statement, but it is true. A careful reading of the Apostolic Fathers in the first three centuries would open your eyes to the context in which the not yet assembled Scriptures were forged in the fires of controversy.

5. STEP FIVE: I am the descendent of Adam and Eve No one, not even God, can tell me not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. I am a victim of Original Sin, and prone to be my own god, if not careful. I proclaim that my god is on my side, avoiding the saying by Abraham Lincoln, that he would rather be on God’s side rather than God be on his side. Hell is full of Adam wanna be’s, false prophets,  all sincere, all shocked that they do not have legitimacy and authority, all protesting that god is their god.

Having said all of this, as a Lay Cistercian, committed to following a particular way of life that leads to preferring nothing to the love of Christ (St. Benedict’s Rule, Chapter 4), anyone who glorifies God or says Jesus is Lord cannot be totally evil. They are just not of Christ’s flock. God is the just judge of all human hearts.  Don’t judge others, let God judge those outside the Church and you don’t judge those inside the Church.

Praise be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and forever. The God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages.  Amen and Amen. —Cistercian Doxology

9.   And not to do to another what one would not have done to oneself.
10. To deny oneself in order to follow Christ.
11. To chastise the body.
12. Not to become attached to pleasures.
13. To love fasting.
14. To relieve the poor.
15. To clothe the naked.
16. To visit the sick.
17. To bury the dead.
18. To help in trouble.
19. To console the sorrowing.
20. To become a stranger to the world's ways.
21. To prefer nothing to the love of Christ.

I love this Chapter 4, so much so that I read at least part of it daily as my spiritual reading. As one who aspires to be perfect, these statements of formation actually can lead to transformation from self to God.  That is why I like them so much. #10 especially intrigues me. Deny yourself is what the Scriptures says. Luke 9:23 “Then he said to them all, If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”

This is not an easy road to follow. Those who think they get on a conveyor belt when they are Baptized and get off in Heaven automatically, are in for a rude shock. Being a follower of the Master is a struggle. Christ tells us “Take up their cross daily and follow me.” Do you know how heavy a cross is? Daily? Follow me?  I thought about this passage, when I was told I had cancer. Christ bids us to take up our crosses just as he took up his cross (his life and death) and follow him. This is not the action of a passive God. God said, “Do what I do. Follow what I do.”

I studied enough  psychology in College to be dangerous.  What I learned was the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  It was all about me, all about fulfilling myself, making myself better. One of the unseen consequences of this thinking is making myself into God.  To renounce oneself, in this context, makes perfect sense for me, especially since I realize the true meaning of Original Sin, the imperfection in which I live. I can’t change Original Sin but I can try to resist its effects, number one being I make myself into God.

The big struggle, the big battle we face is making ourselves into God, the very first command God warned us to avoid. God won’t do it for me, but gives me all the helps I need to succeed, with his grace: humility, obedience to God’s will, seeking God first, the insight to see that I must carry my burden and follow  Christ, just as he carried his burden. St. Benedict’s Rule focuses those who follow his Chapter 4  on preferring nothing to loving Christ. That is so difficult to do. The wisdom of community means I have people of similar spiritual orientation that help sustain me as I try to take up my cross and follow Him.  When I am down, they are usually up; when some of them are down, sometimes I help out because I am up. In all thing, God is glorified.

Being a Lay Cistercian means my community of faith is so important for my balance and stability. Being a Lay Cistercian means my struggle with the effects of Original Sin can be to my advantage. It is the  “daily” in the take up your cross daily and follow me that is important. Daily! Who can sustain that? No one without Christ. Being a Lay Cistercian means I practice my instruments for good works DAILY.  Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose, but I am still in the race.

Praise to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. The God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages. Amen and Amen. –Cistercian doxology.

“You are what you eat’? This phrase has come to us via quite a tortuous route. Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote, in Physiologie du Gout, ou Meditations de Gastronomie Transcendante, 1826: https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/you-are-what-you-eat.html

In conducting my Lectio Divina, I would like to think that I am what I read. Here are some of my Lectio Divina reflections, based on Phil 2:5.

• From the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaks, says the Scriptures. (Matthew 12:34) If that is so, what I put in my mind enters my heart and comes out via how I behave and what I say.
• Lectio Divina uses, as its focus, a reading from Scripture. Why? Scripture possesses words that are about God and how we should behave as disciples. We don’t always do what Scripture says, so there is constant need for penance and reparation for our sins of omission and commission. In short, those who seek God must be penitential. You will know they are penitential by what someone says and how they describe reality.
• If I focus only on God with all my heart, my strength and my soul, and love my neighbor as myself, I fulfill the purpose of life. Of course, I don’t do that 100%, being unable to sustain the focus on God without temptations from the Evil One to be God myself.
• If I read Lee Child novels about Jack Reacher, I find them fascinating fiction but they do not nourish my spirit and give me the energy to live as a pilgrim in a foreign land. What I read make my mind focus on what the author intended, to weave a story of intrigue and imagination with a plot that has a hero, dangers, overcoming those dangers, and eventual resolution (although not always a happy one). Scriptural readings produce what they signify. If you read about Peace, it changes your heart. Fiction does not do that, at least it hasn’t for me.
• When I do Lectio Divina, I want to become what I read. I am not there yet, but I want to be. I can’t sustain being good in a world of Original Sin. I must have Christ to make all things new each day. Each day is like the beginning and end of the universe, because it is the universe in which I live.
• The more I move from self to God, the closer I come to achieving the purpose of life …to know, love, and serve God in this life and be happy with that God in the next. (Baltimore Catechism, Question 6) Reading the right materials is critical for placing me in a position to contemplate along side of the heart of Christ.
• Reading novels and other books on science, medicine, history, literature all make the mind happy. Reading Scriptures and doing Lectio Divina not only make the mind happy but also the heart.
• The mind seeks what is true. The heart seeks what is meaningful about what is true. Contemplation is sitting on a park bench on a cold day and waiting for God to show up. If He does, your heart is warmed by the heart of Christ, the mind of the Father, and overshadowed by the blanket of the Holy Spirit. You are home. You are safe. You are. From the fulness of the heart, the mouth speaks. Remember Matthew 12:4 in the previous statement?  Christ also said it is not what goes into our mouths that is evil but what comes out from the heart. What influences the heart is what you read. Contemplation, not just reading a good book, means I seek to sit next to another person (Jesus) and listen for his heart beating, then try to be one with Him. In the silence and solitude of that snowy day, sitting alone on a park bench, I find rest for my soul and energy to make all things new. I sit on that park bench when I attend the Eucharist in the company of other believers, I sit on that park bench when I receive others as Christ (Rule of St. Benedict). I sit on that park bench when I read Chapter 4 of the Rule of St. Benedict daily. I sit on that park bench when I do Lectio Divina and Liturgy of the Hours.
• On a personal note: I do not look at National television news of politics or analysis of political parties of any type. There is too much hatred there, too much detraction, calumny, deceit, falsehoods, and just plain painful vendettas on either side of the political spectrum. I am watching ESPS and FX1 sports and history channels, Antique Archeology, The Last Alaskans, instead of politics. If you are what you read, then you must also be affected by what you see on television. I find that I am more at peace and happier than before, when I just cringed at reports about Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Bless them both.

Praise be to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now and Forever. The God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages. Amen and Amen. –Cistercian Doxology

Brother Michael, OSCO, one of our Junior Instructors, gave us many wonderful insights into Lectio Divina, one of which was, “Pray as you can.” For a monk in a monastery, the setting helps him or her to focus on Christ without distraction with a schedule devoted to praying the Liturgy of the Hours, Eucharist, Lectio Divina, reading Scripture, study of the works of monks and nuns throughout Cistercian history. For one who can only aspire to be a Lay Cistercian, such as myself, I do not live in a monastery, so the question becomes, “Can anyone practice Cistercian spirituality which stressed silence, solitude, work, prayer, and community, while living in the secular world?” My answer would be yes, but with three caveats.

1. Don’t try to be a monk. Be yourself. Pray as you can and where you can. Look for opportunities for silence and solitude, such as waiting for a dental appointment, going to Trader Joe’s and waiting in the car, driving to and from anywhere, attending daily Eucharist and Eucharistic Holy Hour.  Make room for Jesus.
2. If your parish does not have these helps to contemplative practice, you can get a group of like minded people together and begin to implement them slowly. Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am, says Jesus.
3. Don’t rush to flood your mind with words and Scriptural readings. Although good, your mind needs time to assimilate the impact of these ideas. Carve out a time for Lectio Divina, which is only taking a sentence or phrase and saying it over and over.  Make a place for Jesus in your heart.

Simple is better. Don’t try to pray too much or both your mind and your spirit will be unable to process the many ideas. Take one idea and try it over and over and over. I have, as my purpose in life, and also my Lectio Divina saying, Philippians 2:5, “have in your the mind of Christ Jesus.: Those eight words have been my mantra since 1964. You know what? I still have not exhaused the depths of that one phrase, such is the wisdom of God.

Don’t be a fanatic. Learn from Christ for he is meek and humble of heart. Meek here does not mean weak. You don’t have to push your thinking on others. Our only mandate from Christ is to love one another as He has loved us. Of course, we will never reach the end of that charge from The Master.

Remember the saying, “I am not you; you are not me; God is not you; and, most certainly, you are not God.” –Michael Conrad

Here are some lectio divina ideas I have written down as a result of my contemplation of the Second Threshold of Spiritual Awareness, “What is the Center of My Life”.  These are conversations I have had in the presence of God. My purpose in life, the Second Threshold is: “Have in you the mind of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 2:5  These eight words form the basis of my books and blogs. It is the center of my life, against which I have measured my spiritual success and constantly found myself wanting.  As St. Paul says, I still strive to reach the end of the race and need daily assistance from God’s pure energy to enable me to maintain my faith.  In no particular order, here are some of the thoughts that came from the Holy Spirit as I have struggled to listen and learn.

1. My son, just because your road is rocky, doesn’t mean you are on the wrong road. “Come to me all you who labour and are overburdened and I will give you rest. Shoulder my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart and you will find rest for your souls. Yes, my yolk is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30  Life is not always easy and those who follow my commands may sometimes think nothing has meaning. Refresh your mind. Refocus on having the mind of Christ Jesus and all else will fall into place. I will help you if you follow in my footsteps.
2. My son, just as Adam and Eve fell out of favor with me, it took Jesus to become human to redeem that which Adam lost. Romans 5:12-21, I Corinthians 15:45-49. Pride was the first sin, the original sin which Adam and Eve passed on to us. Jesus came to buy us back with the price being giving up his life freely so that we could become adopted sons and daughters once again. My son, follow the words of St. Benedict who said, “That in all things, may God be glorified.” That is your purpose in life, the First Threshold through which you passed when you were twelve years old.
3. My son, when, on October 6, 2014, you were told that you had leukemia, my first words to you were the same that I gave to Mary, my mother. “Mary, do not be afraid; you have won God’s favor. “ Luke 1:28-31 Remember? Do not be afraid, because I am with you. I know that humans are frightened of a future they cannot see or sense.
4. My son, you cannot have both peace and hatred in your heart at the same time. If hatred and anger are in your heart, all your actions follow. If you seek first the Kingdom of Heaven, everything else follows. You must have the peace of Christ in your heart so you can see with “the ear of the heart”, as St. Benedict says in his Prologue. I know you realize this and strive daily to take up your cross. The temptation to hatred and anger at others because they are not you is great and takes daily conversion of heart. I am with you as you journey to share my energy with you.
5. My son, you have my energy to Hope in the Resurrection and life…Forever. In order for you to live in my presence, I created all humans in my own image and likeness. Don’t think of physical form and space or time. So that you could be with me, I sent my only son to show you how to live now, so that you could continue those relationships after you die. My son died on the cross to free you from the limitations of matter, space and time. You are not meant to live on earth past eight years or so, if you are lucky. With me, you live…Forever. Hope means you believe what I have spoken through the Prophets, The Church, the holy lives of Saints, that you have a place in my heart where all your cares and tears will be wiped away.
6. My son, I have not left you as orphans, but rather as my adopted sons and daughters. I can’t wait to show you what has been prepared for you from before the Big Bang of creation.
7. My son, the old covenant has matured into the new one. The key principle of the New Testament is found in the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 6 and Matthew 22:34. Love is the key that unlocks the door of true happiness and meaning.
8. My son, do you struggle over a seeming contradiction between mercy and principles in Scripture? Love one another as I have loved you. Remember, the woman caught in adultery had no one to condemn her, but I told her go and sin no more. Do not remain in sin and on the wrong path but seek the truth and love without ceasing. Forgive your neighbor seventy times seven times.
9. My son, whenever you pray in my name, be you sleepy, float off the subject, or become bored with thinking about me, know that this is part of prayer, the lifting of the heart and mind to God. It is your heart that is joined with my own heart that brings me great joy and happiness.
10. My son, always give glory to the Father, as I have done. Join with me and the Holy Spirit in giving praise, honor and glory to the One Who Is, Who Was, and Who Is to Come, at the end of the ages.
11. My son, I know you are sinful and do the things you do not want to do from time to time. Strive to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. We give you the energy and love you need to sustain you and keep yourself focused on the way, the truth and the life. It is the anxiety and struggle to believe that glorified God as much as the saying the words.
12. My son, people, even those close to you, may tell you that you live in la-la land, are not living in reality, that all you want from other people  at Church is attention, that you don’t mean what you say, that you are a failure in all that you do with me. Rejoice and be glad on that day, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.
13. My son, remember that… “I am the resurrection and the life.  That if anyone believes in me, even though he dies he will live and whoever live and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26)
14. My son, I want you to be with me where I am, so that you may see the glory you have given me before the foundation of the world. (John 17:24)

* All Scripture quotes are taken from the New Jerusalem Bible.

FIRST IDEA:  Why are there no churches named  for the Apostles? The Old Testament had twelve tribes named for Joseph’s brothers. The early church was the continuation of the Old Testament, yet there are no local faith communities that bear their name.  There is the community of Ephesians, Colossians, Corinthians, Hebrews, etc… but no Church of Peter, Church of Paul, Church of Apollos.  Why is that? What were they trying to say by not naming a community assemblies after a personality?  What was their rationale?

SECOND IDEA: One of the ideas I have found helpful in dealing with some criticisms that the Church does not focus enough on Christ but more on rules and regulations of the Church, is the following simple but profound exercise. What are the facts?

When you go to the Eucharist, how many times can you see Jesus represented or highlighted for your reflection and contemplation? In my Lectio Divina meditation on Phil 2:5, I found my thoughts focusing on seeing Christ before me as I entered my parish church of Good Shepherd, Florida. I tried to list all the times I saw Christ placed at the center of my thoughts and prayers as I tried to move from self to God.  Here are some of my thoughts:

1. The doors are gateways to the new temple of Jerusalem, the local expression of the Body of Christ.
2. I take holy water when I enter and make the sign of the cross, the sign in which I was baptized to new life in Christ, the sign of my redemption, the sign I will receive as the last thing I see on earth. This is the sign of contradiction, Phil 2:5 states we all should have in us the mind of Christ Jesus. The reason we should do so was that He emptied himself from being God to take on our sinful nature. The reason he did that was to reconcile us with the Father. The water of life refreshes my soul.

When I was growing up, the smartest man, as well as the most talented man I ever knew was Orville Kahl? Ever heard of him? It is doubtful you have, unless you are from Vincennes, Indiana and lived in the 1950-60’s.  Orville was my dad’s age. A shy guy, he married one of the Brown girls and set up shop, as I first knew him, fixing radios and eventually selling Muntz TVs.  At the time, Muntz TV (1950-60’s) was the top of the line television,  I remember that it had a clear picture, when our tiny 13″ television set had very grainy and black and white pictures, at least when we watched Howdy Doody or Texaco Hour.  Orville lived and died in a tiny town (population 20,000) virtually unknown by anyone.  He was not particularly religious but had good values.

Here is my point in bring up Orville.

• I thought of him when I was in my meditation for Lectio Divina (don’t ask me how I got there).
• I thought of how God loves all of us, even the Orville’s of the world, the forgotten of men, the unpopular, the unsuccessful, the childless, the despised of his or her community. I thought of how so many people in history have gone before us, each with a story to tell, an insight into life, a lesson learned.
• I thought of the many Cistercian monks and nuns who have gone before us, those whose names are written in the Book of Life, kept by Christ Himself, the unknown soldier, the martyrs for the faith, the thousands killed in the Holocaust, those whose bodies were strewn along long roads, winding throughout time. God knew each one by name, even if they did not know His name.
• I thought of how many saints are in Heaven (only saints get to Heaven), Saints are those who are especially venerated because they tried to have in them the mind of Christ Jesus.
• I thought how each life is unique and precious to the heart of Christ and how he died for each one of us so that we may be loosed from Original Sin and accept our adoption as sons and daughters of the Father.

You are worth it, says Jesus. I only ask that you love others as I have loved you. Is that too much to ask that we love the Orville’s of the world, even if we don’t know them, even if they have died and gone on before us. Well, that is the challenge we face, if we call ourselves by the name of Christ. We can do no more than that, nor can we do any less.

Praise be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and forever. The God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages. Amen and Amen,  —Cistercian doxology

One of my six thresholds of life is, What does reality look like?  There could be many different ways to see reality, all of them held sincerely by their advocates, and many of them are correct.

If a scientific-oriented person looks at reality, he or she might see only what is verifiable. This faith stuff is too subjective and wishy-washy.  These folks don’t believe in what they can’t prove through science or logic. They see the physical universe or the visible one they can see using the mental universe of their minds to find meaning. Nothing wrong with this approach, as far as it goes.

Then, there are those who don’t believe in anything they can’t verify through logic and common sense. They believe in reality as being time, matter, energy, and what they can attain through logic. They see the mental universe and that they try to find meaning in the physical universe. Nothing wrong with his approach, as far as it goes. But does it go far enough. Does this approach describe all of reality?

Without trying to oversimplify a very complex and profound problem, there are those who believe in all the above but add a dimension of invisible reality, whom some call spirituality. This is the part of humanity that is essentially what makes us human, but we can’t see it. It is the collective summary of our heritage, but we don’t all agree on what that is. In his book, The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry writes about a boy he called the Little Prince. Here is some of the text:

As the Fox in the book, The Little Prince, says to the Little Prince,  And he went back to meet the fox. The fox speaks of love and the price it costs.

“Goodbye,” he said.

“Goodbye,” said the fox. “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

“What is essential is invisible to the eye,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”

“It is the time I have wasted for my rose–” said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.

“Men have forgotten this truth,” said the fox. “But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose . . .”

“I am responsible for my rose,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

REFLECTIONS ON LOVE AND ITS COST

• The greatest love is one where you empty yourself for another, either by dying for them or by loving others as Christ has loved you.
• In marriage, intercourse makes babies, but love makes a marriage. Love is allowing the other person to be themselves without wanting them to be you. Love is taking time with the other to make them happy. Love is holding the other, even when times are tough. Just because your married road is rocky, doesn’t mean you are on the wrong road.
• Dark love is when your human side wants so much to flee responsibility for the other but your spiritual side warns you to be patient and stay the course. Jesus was tempted in the Garden of Gethsemani and said, not my will be done but your will be done. Adam and Eve were tempted in the Garden of Eden and said, only my will be done, not yours. When your spouse has a serious mental or physical illness, you stay with them, even though you know it will cost you your affections and you may be abused verbally and called names.
• Love is taking time with your other so that you may grow together centered around Christ.

Faith helps you to recognize reality through knowledge, love, and service. Hope helps you to sustain your faith when reality looks bleak and barren of meaning. Love helps both faith and hope in producing God’s own energy to lead you to life Forever. Original sin bound us to this earth in death, Christ’s resurrection freed us from Original Sin, our Baptism is a response to the resurrection through water and the Spirit. Church is the living Body of Christ today which we access through silence, solitude, prayer, work, and community. Reality is what is, and what is depends on your vision of either two universes (physical and mental) or three universes (physical, mental, and spiritual). One way you will not see, you will not hear, nor will you attain adoption with God. One way is the truth, the way, and life Forever. Your choice!

Praise be the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and Forever. The God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages. Amen and Amen. –Cistercian doxology

Academia stresses the need for testing to determine proficiency or even mastery in a particular subject.  Not to be outclassed, here are a few questions that you have to answer, sooner or later.

1. WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF LIFE? Call it philosophical or just plain common sense, in our heart of hearts, all humans yearn to know what they know.
2. WHAT IS MY PURPOSE IN LIFE? Based on what life is all about, it important for you to know why you are here, your reason for existence,  I also call this my center, the one principle from which all other principles and values flow in any way.
3. WHAT DOES REALITY LOOK LIKE? Depending on how you answer this, you might have assumptions about life that are quite different from your neighbor. For example, if you live in just the physical and mental universe, you won’t be as likely to see invisible reality as real. That can be a big problem if you are spiritual.
4. HOW DOES REALITY ALL FIT TOGETHER? All reality fits together, although we don’t know exactly how. The problem is compounded when you add invisible reality into the mix. Whose invisible reality?  Truth is one, not multiple, although we use reason to peel back the layers of profound knowledge, reason alone will not account for invisible reality, the realm of Faith and Hope and Love.
5. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO LOVE FIERCELY? If you answered the first two questions, you will have the answer to this question, although it is more obscure. If you can answer this question, you can move on to the final one.
6. YOU KNOW YOU ARE GOING TO DIE, NOW WHAT? If you have answered all these questions correctly, and some of them take a lifetime to acquire, you know the answer to this question.

I have answers to all these questions which you may find in my book, Six Thresholds of Life, contained in the Store section of this blog.

Did you pass?  Did you fail?  You may want to look into these six questions, your life depends on it.

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

I offer you the results of my meditations on parts of the Rule of St. Benedict. As one who can only aspire to be a Lay Cistercian, the Rule of Benedict has shaped my spirituality towards a more contemplative leaning. https://www.osb.org/rb/text/rbejms2.html#4

Each of these short reflections come from my own desire to move from self to God. I use the Cistercian approach to the Rule of St. Benedict, although there are certainly other applications of the holy rule, such as Benedictine and Carthusian approaches. The one I use comes from Cistercian sources.  The Rule of Benedict is how to organize monks in groups to work and pray together using the Psalms and Lectio Divina on a consistent basis to seek God. Cistercian monks and nuns add silence and solitude to the Rule of Benedict to put a distinctive contemplative spin on living in the community.   https://www.trappist.net Carthusian monks use the Rule of Benedict but live out the Life of Christ as hermits, yet still in a community of monks or nuns, called Charterhouses.  https://www.chartreux.org/en/index.php

Benedictine, Cistercian and Carthusian movements use the Rule of St. Benedict as the core of their spiritual living. They both date from the Eleventh Century, the time of St. Bernard (Cistercian) and St. Romuald (Carthusian). Cistercian practice is further divided into Regular Observance )https://www.cistercian.org/abbey/history/the-Cistercian-order/modern-challenges.html) and strict observance, or Trappists, in the Eighteenth Century. All of these traditions exist today, as well as many Benedictine monks and nuns. www.saintmeinrad.org

Since this is the first in a series of meditative reflections on the Rule of Benedict, I have taken the liberty of being a little more historical. My reflections will begin with Chapter 4, Instruments or Tools for Good Works.

1) In the first place to love the Lord God with the whole heart, the whole soul, the whole strength…
(2) Then, one’s neighbor as one’s self (cf Mt 22:37-39; Mk 12:30-31; Lk 10:27).

I am happy that St. Benedict has, as his first tool or instrument for good works, love. I noticed that this same admonition by Jesus for his followers is also contained in the Old Testament in Deuteronomy 6. Jesus came, not to break and fracture the old, but fulfill it. I get a sense of that in these passages.

Loving with all my heart is impossible because of original sin. I said that to one of my friends and he rather heatedly disagreed saying that we can give all, each time we love. Our assumptions, evidently are not the same.  My take is that I can approach all as a human being, but I cannot sustain it.  Most of the time I reach 40 to 50 percent of what I can do before some other sound or interruption tears me away from gaining in love. In this way, it is much like contemplation. The tough part of contemplation for me is isolating myself from interruptions and phone calls long enough to sustain a thought.  That is why I like to go to the chapel at Good Shepherd in Tallahassee, Florida and sit before the Blessed Sacrament or, even better, stand as sentinels in Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament To the world, all this is poppycock. To me, it is an instrument or tool to gain good works, in this case, honor, and glory to the Father through the Son in union with the Holy Spirit.

Loving God with all my heart and soul and strength is like throwing darts.  I must confess to being terrible at throwing darts but I instinctively want to do so each time I take up a dart. Rarely do I hit the bull’s eye or center, but I keep trying and trying.  To me, this is what I do with trying to love God with ALL my heart. The condition of original sin means I exist in a world that does not recognize God as the center of all that is.  For me to place God as my center takes spiritual energy, energy I don’t have by myself, energy that comes from outside of me, energy that can move mountains, energy that can sustain me until I fulfill my destiny. This energy or grace is freely given and is a gift I do not deserve. It was won at a great price, the love of Christ for the Father, the only human, outside of Mary, who would actually love with all their heart, their soul, and their strength, and even then, Christ was tempted to not to do so.

This passage from Chapter 4 of St. Benedict’s rule is one I Hope for (upper case H), yearn for, long for, and wish I had it.  It shows how far I need to go to be perfect, as my Heavenly Father is perfect. I wish I had perfection but each day starts at zero again and again. By the time I build up to the end of the day, it is time for Night Prayers (Compline) and vigils.  What gives me Hope is Love. What gives me Love is Hope. What gives me strength each day is doing the Cistercian practices of silence, solitude, prayer, work, in the context of the larger Lay Cistercian community, so that I might grow a little closer to God from self.

I wrote a book, actually, several of them which you can access by looking at the Store tab on the front page of this blog, in which I talk about the Six Thresholds of Life that I had to encounter as I plodded along my path of life to where I am today. The first threshold is a question: What is the purpose of life? The answer, in my mind, is, what is God’s purpose for humans is, particularly for those who call Jesus Lord. The answer is Matthew 22:47 and Deuteronomy 6. It is the same as the first tool for good works by St. Benedict, asking his monks to prefer nothing over loving God with all their hears and mind and strength. Easy to say, a lifetime to keep attempting to do. This purpose makes it all worthwhile. When the world tells us that we waste our time by all this foolishness, we respond that the foolishness of God is greater than the wisdom of humans, that the proof of a life well spent is not the money, fame, fortune, or power that you accumulate, but the riches of family relationships, and your relationship in love to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. “What is essential is invisible to the eye,” says the Fox to the Little Prince.  Indeed!

THE THREE SISTERS

Once, there were three sisters whose father had a very rich endowment as his heritage. He told his daughters he would give it all to the one who could tell him how to safeguard his money and property so that we would not lose it to debtors, lawyers, and politicians. He told them to come back in a week with their proposals. When the day of presentation arrived, the three daughters appeared before him, each carrying a box. The father looked both amazed and perplexed at what he saw before him. The three boxes were identical in shape, size and color. He told each daughter he would take them into the next room and they could tell him how to keep his money safe. The three daughters went into the room with her father and gave him the box.  He opened all three boxes and to his amazement they were all empty. The father said to his daughter, “how is it that you gave me an empty box when I asked you show me how to keep my money and property safe and secure for my old age?” The daughter told him, “Father you have given use everything we have, but more importantly, you have given us who we are.  Since childhood, you taught all of us to love God with all our hearts and if we did that, we would never be without true riches. Last night we all sat down and came up with the same answer to your question. What is in the box is our collective answer to your question” “But there is nothing in the box,” said her father. “Look again, “said his daughter, “there is everything in the box and yet there is nothing in the box. It is the answer to your question. The reason we could not put anything in the box is that there is no way to safeguard anything so fragile and fleeting as power, riches, property, titles, or fame. What is left is what we can take with us to Heaven. That does not corrupt. That is the answer we have for you, Father.” “My daughters,” said the Father, “how stupid of me to think of such a terrible question to ask. Because you all have given me the answer that is right but the one that is not convenient, you shall all inherit everything I have, and you have the love of a broken-down, old man. Thank you all.”

Love is the energy of the spiritual universe, love that can never be less than it is, love that can always be more than it is when joined with the love of the Son for the Father, love in which we share as adopted sons and daughters. The only way we can approach loving with all our hearts is by placing our heart next to the heart of Christ and letting everything that is, be.

Praise be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, the God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages. Amen and Amen. –Cistercian doxology

This Christmas, my wife and I are not exchanging gifts. It’s not that we can’t afford to do so, but rather the meaning behind those gifts has been so secularized that anything approaching the reason we remember Christmas has long been supplanted by the tenents of commercialism. Here are some of my thoughts about what Christmas means to me this year.

One of the things experience does is give you the ability to bring more meaning to any reflection on contemplative spirituality. One can hardly comment on being a Lay Cistercian unless you are one. Similarly, the sum of what I think about Christmas the celebration depends on my willingness to make it a part of my spiritual heritage, this year, but also all those Christmases in the past.

For me, Christmas is about another year of trying to have in me the mind of Christ Jesus. The Church calendar year, built around the life of Christ, begins with Advent, or preparing the way for the Lord. Both Advent and Lent are penitential seasons, or times to reflect on who you are, where you are going, and how to get there in an age that glorifies the self over God. These seasons always come before a great event so that we can prepare our hearts to stand next to the heart of Christ.  As a Lay Cistercian, I try to make a special effort to do something outside of the ordinary Cistercian practices during these seasons to get my heart ready. This year, my focus was on Lectio Divina and trying to convert these ideas into blog format.  I tried not to be seduced by the allure of material things and gifts, although we did give some gifts to our daughter.  One of the great take-aways from Advent as Christmas looms is the realization that my purpose in life, Phil 2:5 is again the reason for my moving from self to God with the help of others, such as the monks and Lay Cistercians of Holy Spirit Monastery. Christmas is a time of humility for me because I think of the great love God must have to love sinful persons such as ourselves. Christmas is a story of a child’s birth but it is also the birth of our redemption, and the birth, one more time of the Christ Principle, one that is to be lived out each day as we take up our cross and plod on our journey to Forever.

Again, we remember in spiritual celebration the Christ Principle, from which all that is flows in any way, the center of all reality (physical, mental, spiritual), the Alpha and the Omega, the Sign of Contradiction, the Son of God.

Praise be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, the God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages. –Cistercian doxology

One of the most practical, yet profound, statements about how to practice contemplative spirituality comes from Brother Michael, OCSO, monk of Holy Spirit Monastery, Conyers, Ga., and one of our Junior Lay Cistercian instructors. He made a presentation on what it means to be a Cistercian. He told us, “Pray as you can, not as you can’t.”  What seems like a rather trivial phrase, at first glance, is actually quite profound, especially as it pertains to Lay Cistercian spirituality.

Monks seclude themselves from the distractions of the world. This does not shield them from distraction but helps them to focus on loving God with their whole heart, their whole soul and their whole strength and their neighbor as themselves. Lay Cistercians try to emulate the Cistercian practices and charisms of the monks and nuns but are less protected from the intrusions of work, family, friends, even church ministries. Distractions or temptations that this is a waste of time or too difficult to do are constantly assaulting the Lay Cistercian. It is in offering up the temptation that is part of prayer. Pray as and when you can. Here are some of the ways I pray in snatches.

TRADER JOE PRAYERS — I go to Trader Joe Supermarkets a lot, or rather my wife goes and I drive her (that’s what retired old, broken-down Lay Cistercians do best). My point is I do my Lectio Divina while waiting in the car. Twenty minutes of silence and solitude in the car (no radios) is just what I need to focus on the moment. Pray as you can.

EUCHARISTIC ADORATION – I attend some part of a holy hour each weekday at my parish. We have the good fortune to have Eucharistic Adoration, exposition of the Blessed Sacrament for an hour a day. One of the other parishes has 24 Eucharistic Adoration.  How rich is that?

WAITING FOR THE PHYSICIAN — I go to the physician a lot for follow up. Since having cardiac arrest in 2007 and Leukemia (CLL type) in 2014, I find myself at the physicians’ officers more than most.  I take my Liturgy of the Hours with me and read a mid-day prayer or Chapter 4 of my Rule of St. Benedict. Saying Chapter 4 over an over puts me in a fame of mind for doing good works.

YOU ARE WHAT YOU PRAY — I say little prayers every day to tell God that I am grateful for his grace and mercy. These little prayers are just spontaneous ways to express what is in your heart. My favorite is: Jesus Christ, Son of David, have mercy on me, a sinner. I say it over an over while driving in the car. It does not cause me to be distracted and produces grace for me to convert myself from self to God.

I don’t consider myself a fanatic about all this contemplative practice stuff, but I can recognize that the more I focus on Christ, even as a Lay Cistercian in the world, the more Christ can fill up in me that which I lack. It is the capacitas dei or the capacity for me to hold more and more God and less and less me.  If I have a bad habit, such as being lazy when I want to do Lectio Divina or participate in the Eucharist, I must replace it with good works, such as denying myself and my secular temptations to pray as I can.

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

This subject has both bothered me and confused me for some time. Perhaps it is because I have just renewed my appreciation for the wisdom of the teachings of the Church, even though I had been trained and steeped in the tradition for most of my life. Here I have just rediscovered a whole new dimension of my faith (which was there all along) while others rejected the very system of faith that I have just come to hold so dear. I count my recent call and response to be a Lay Cistercian of Holy Spirit Monastery in Conyers, Georgia to be both a blessing and a responsibility to share this with you (as in a blog or in my book on spiritual depression).

As part of my Cistercian practice of work, I write down my ideas for anyone or no one to read and assimilate. The five Cistercian practices are silence, solitude, prayer, work, and community.  This work part is keeping my mind active (something needs to keep me active at 77 years of age). I don’t plan on sitting around and watch QVC commercials that I love but would never use, for the rest of whatever life has in store for me. I want to be proactive, so I work.

Rather than write this blog under the flag of false colors, I want to state, up front, that anything I say or write should NOT be taken as a discount of the right of anyone to believe anything they want. It is my attempt to frame the question and possible answers for my own awareness. Falling away from the faith actually means you have something to fall away from.  Either you had faith in the beginning and it has become irrelevant or had it and lost it.  Either way, many, even in my family, no longer live as though Christ is anything other than a passing fancy. Their heritage they received from their parents has long been abandoned. The sacrifices others made so that they could sustain their faith have long since been forgotten. In some cases, they have replaced it with another religious belief system, while others have nothing at all to fill in the void. What causes me such discomfort is that I have rediscovered what I think they lost and never found.

A GIFT THAT LASTS FOREVER

In order to allow us to be adopted sons and daughters, our Father gave us the ability to accept adoption and with it all the responsibilities of that choice. We have not chosen God, but God has selected us from before the creation of all that is. In fact, all that is, is. There is no tock to the tick, no two to the one. Faith is from the Father and we don’t deserve it. It is the invitation to be with Him…Forever. It means God will protect us when we go to Heaven and live in a foreign land. The best way to do it is to send His Son to show us the way. God says, if they see it and hear my son, they will respect my wishes. Remember the parable of the owner of the vineyard?  (Luke 20:9-19) They killed the son of the owner of the vineyard. Jesus said the meaning of this parable was that He is the stone upon which the foundation is built, a clear reference to the Church. Faith has three components. The three are one.  Does that sound familiar? Faith, hope, and love. Faith is sharing in the love of the Father for the Son in unity with the Holy Spirit. Faith is the grace to Hope that the Holy Spirit will sustain both me and the community of faith as we struggle to have in us the mind of Christ Jesus (Phil 2:5). You have one gift Faith, but the three are one. Read St. Paul’s thoughts in I Corinthians 13: 1-13. What is greater than faith? Love. You can’t have Love without Faith, or Faith without Love.

If faith is a gift, then that gift can also be taken away, either by God or by non-use.  The Book of Job is a textbook story of how God can take away all the things the world thinks is important, but Job still has faith in God and remains unshaken. If Christ tells us anything, it is that we are to treat others as we would have God treat us. If we want mercy, we must be merciful to others. Faith, then, has to do with God’s energy and God’s energy has to do with activity, doing something. Faith is not an intellectual exercise.  Read Galatians 3 for some additional insights.

FAITH IS NOT MERELY AN INDIVIDUAL BELIEF IN WHAT CHRIST SAYS

Whoa!  Although the individual is the ultimate receptacle of faith, faith also exists in a community of the Church, as in the Body of Christ.  What does that mean in English? Anyone Baptized is not just being immersed in water as symbolic of a washing away of Original Sin, but also being embraced by the Church as a newly adopted son or daughter. Christ told us, you have not chosen me, I have chosen you. (John 15:19) “If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world—therefore the world hates you.” This passage encapsulates nicely what my own belief is, Christ not only came to fulfill the Old Covenant but also to turn spirituality upside down, a sign of contradiction to the Gentiles (secular thinkers). Remember, the Church universal is composed of all those who have died before us in faith, those struggling with faith in this world, and those awaiting the purification of their lives in Purgatory in Hope.

Look around you today. Do you see how the world hates you? It hates God, It hates anything to do with obedience to God’s will. It hates having God as the center of your life and lauds instead the cult of the individual. It hates you because you believe in something they don’t acknowledge as real. They do not believe in the hereafter nor even the Kingdom of God within. It discounts those who practice their faith in a community of faith as weak and irrelevant.  It does not believe that God would lower Himself to talk to humans. (Philippians 2:5-12) We, who have been adopted by the faith of the community and acknowledged by our own commitment, live in a foreign land with foreign values. We are created or predestined, to be with God Forever. To sustain us in our journey, we have many ways to survive, helps from Jesus Himself, for those who know how to use them. The only thing God, through Christ, asks of us is to love one another as He has loved us, to love with all our hearts, our minds, and our souls, and our neighbor as ourselves. (Deuteronomy 6 and Matthew 22:37)

Faith is a gift from God. God does not give us a gift and then abandon us to our own sinful defaults. When we don’t use the means God gives us to keep our faith from atrophying, we die. We can lose the faith. I call this spiritual depression.  All of us have our dark times of the soul when life seems lifeless and spirituality is seem like a waste of time. That is part of the struggle. If taking up your cross each day was easy, there would be no struggle to believe–every day. That is one of the reasons I like Cistercian spirituality. I have a spiritual system in which I can become accountable to something outside of myself. I have a routine, I have made God my default instead of secular thinking, I can survive in a foreign land of apathy to God, antagonism to God’s teachings, and secular relativism (everyone is right in their beliefs because they have the right to believe what they want).

HOW TO RETURN TO GOD

1. Turn your face towards God and not away from him.
2. Realize that taking up your cross is not easy. Love is the only reason to bear your cross. Having Christ walk with you helps you makes it bearable, but still not easy.
3. Be humble of heart. “You are not me; I am not you; God is not you; and you, certainly are not God.” –mfc
4. Place your heart next to the heart of Christ and wait in silence and solitude.
5. What is essential is invisible to the eye. (Little Prince)
6. Just because your road is rocky, doesn’t mean you are on the wrong road.
7. Read the Parable of the Sower (Luke 8:4-18) What does the grain tossed on shallow ground mean?
8. Ask for Faith and you will receive it, though perhaps not as dramatically as you would hope. Be patient.
9. Rejoin a community of faith. Faith is buoyed by the faith of other believers.

Praise be to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. The God who is, who was, and who will be, at the end of the ages.  –Cistercian doxology

Faith, like love and service, can dry up, if not used.  I have talked with many people who have lost their faith or had occasion to just stop believing in anything related to Christ and how to love.

I don’t know about the motivation behind someone just giving up on their heritage. I do know I went through a period of dryness and lack of practice of the faith.  This included not attending Eucharist, or praying at all and thinking that it was the Church’s fault that I was in such a mess.  I now know that it was my responsibility to get back in contact with God, just as it is the responsibility for married couples to stop facing away from one another and face towards each other. Here are some thought about how I overcame the temptation to abandon Christ, based on my Lectio Divina meditation (Phil 2:5).

1. I never really abandoned Christ, but I kept blaming him for my feeling of alienation.  Of course, Christ never abandoned me at all but kept me in the palm of his hands.
2. When I thought that I was the center of the universe (idolatry), I naturally would place God second.  When I placed God second, I naturally blamed him for my misfortunes, although they were indeed my misfortunes. When I blamed God for my misfortunes, I had no room to love or seek forgiveness. After all, I was the center of the universe and did not need forgiveness.
3. When I was tempted to abandon God, there was no room in my heart for mercy or love. To use a phrase from St. Paul, the funny thing about love, it can’t exist in the same room with “fornication, gross indecency, and sexual irresponsibility; idolatry and sorcery; feuds and wrangling, jealousy, bad temper, and quarrels; disagreements, factions, envy, drunkenness, orgies and similar things. I warn you now, as I have warned you before that people who behave like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.” (Galatians 5:16-26)

So, how does one move from inheriting the Garden of Eden to living in the Kingdom of Heaven? You have to clean out that room of hatred an the other evil ways that keep the Spirit of God from wanted to enter and prepare the way of the Lord, like John the Baptist. This takes consciousness that God is God and you are you. That God is not you, and more importantly, YOU ARE NOT GOD. With simplicity of heart, faith can make your faith grow once more to re-claim your adoption as sons and daughters. In the Catholic Church, this usually happens in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, called Confession after one of its phases. There is also a phase called conversion of life, where you renew your baptismal commitment to the Trinity and have a firm purpose of doing sin no more (of course, you know that you will sin again, but you will try, with God’s grace, to focus on love and sweep out the room of all that is evil. In essence, it is an act of the will to place your heart, once more, near the heart of Christ.

For me, this was all it took. I was facing away from Christ and I turned around to face Him.

I was my own God, then I accepted that God was God and I was me.

I used Chapter Four of St. Benedict’s rule as the ruler for my behavior. It didn’t take love for me to convert my hatred to love. Do not overcome evil with evil, but overcome evil with good, says the Scriptures. Actually, I didn’t do anything, just turned around to be in the presence of God. This is the conversion that happens each time we receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation. It is not only a confession of sins but a profession of faith. God does everything, as He always does. He knows the secrets of our heart, our innermost thoughts, our doubts, our temptations to drop our Faith.  He just holds out his hands to us and says, “Welcome home again,” like the father of the Prodigal Son.

You can lose faith only if you abandon your relationship with God. God will never abandon you, or turn away from you even though you are tossing and turning on the waves of doubt and unbelief, even though your sins are as numerous as the stars in the Heavens. Christ is the good shepherd who will care for his lambs at the price of his own life, even if it means dying on a cross to save us from ourselves.

I learned this phrase in the Eighth Grade at St. Francis Xavier School in Vincennes, Indiana in 1951. It comes from the Baltimore Catechism and it is the lynchpin (cornerstone) of all of my spirituality. It answers the question, why are you here? The answer seems rather stoic and mundane but it packs a wallop of a punch. The answer is, “The purpose of life is to know, love, and serve God in this life and be happy with God in the next.”  I am no theologian but more of a practitioner of spiritual applications, but I wrote forty-five books based on this theme.

In this blog, I will limit my remarks to serving God in this life. One of the most striking lessons from the New Testament is the admonition of Christ to love one another as I have loved you. I still try to love God with all my heart and soul and strength and my neighbor as myself, but keep coming up short.  I get to 50% sometimes, to use an analogy of filling up my glass with God’s energy. Most of the time, I say the words but do not do the words as I think Christ would have me do.  To me, that is why I am sinful, not that I go around committing major sins all day long, but because I can’t sustain love except in waves, sometimes good and sometimes very weak.  This brings me to looking at the dark side of service. By dark, I do not mean sinful or even evil, but rather weak and prone to do that which I say I will not do. Dark service is the realization that not all people play with a full deck of cards and some people we consider friends will manipulate us to their own desires in the name of service.

FIVE CAVEATS OF SERVICE

1. Those who wish to follow Christ should not be gullible. We help people out when we should not do so. A good example is a hitchhiker on the side of the road. Remember the parable of the good neighbor? Priests, High Ranking Politicians all pass by this person hurt on the road. Christ tells of a foreigner that did not even know the victim on the road who helped him, even to paying his bills.  If you are a young, unmarried woman, I would not advise you to stop and help anyone you do not know. That is dangerous.  They could be posing as hurt just to play on your sympathies.  If service to others puts you in danger, don’t do it.
2. Not everyone is a good and honorable person. Be care whom you help. If you know your neighbor or your neighbor knows them, that is one thing. Be suspicious of others until you know their motives. Caveat Christor. Don’t help those who will eventually harm you, even if Scriptures tells us to do so.
3. Be on guard against manipulators. You feel sorry for someone so you volunteer to babysit. This becomes the beginning of people taking advantage of you because you won’t say no. Say NO.
4. Don’t help people by yourself.  Do so as part of a community of faith. Being with others will mean you will be less likely to fall for false teachers.
5. Don’t volunteer for everything, anytime, everywhere. You will burn yourself out if you don’t pace yourself.  This might be the biggest temptation of new Church members. Your zeal will kill you if you don’t learn to say no.  Rule of Thumb: new Christians are like novices. They need lots of hand-holding and less direct work. To volunteer for everything may mean you lose your desire to be of service.

Be care of service to others. It can kill you.

What follows is excerpted from my book, The Lay Cistercian Journey. As a Lay Cistercian, one of the lessons I have learned is to have consistency of practice with my five Cistercian principles (silence, solitude, work, pray, community).  If you want to have Jesus as your Center (Phil. 2:5), you must work at it every day. The world will try to keep you from being consistent. That is the temptation to follow your will and not that of Jesus. It helps to know why you want to seek God, how you want to seek him, and what to do to find him. What follows is my plan to move from self to God, each day

HOW TO ORGANIZE AND FOCUS ON THE LIFE OF CHRIST

 MY SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR EACH DAY

The following pages are samples of how I organize my day as a Lay Cistercian. Everyone who attempts the Cistercian practices and charisms will have a different challenge to seek God. What follows is how I do it, but it does not mean this is how you must do it. I must tell you that I am retired and have time to devote to the practice of how to have in me the mind of Christ Jesus.

My Center: Have in you the mind of Christ Jesus. –Philippians 2:5

Five or Six Practices to support my center: These are Cistercian practices.

1. Silence—When I think of silence, I think of lack of worldly noise. But, it is more than just lack of external noises, like television, children playing, going to work, and traveling in a car. For me, I try to be conscious that all these sounds give glory to the Father through the Son, in union with the Holy Spirit. I try to make a space where I can reflect on my center with some degree of privacy. Silence of my heart helps me sustain the other Cistercian charisms and practices and so grow in fierce love.
2. Solitude— Solitude, for me, means carving out space and quiet time to focus on how to have in me the mind of Christ Jesus. For the Cistercian monks and nuns, solitude means carving out time and space that permits them to focus on loving God with their whole heart, whole soul, and whole mind without external distractions. For the Lay Cistercian, we also concentrate on fashioning a little prayer nest but we live in the secular world and therefore embrace all the distractions as part of our prayer to the Father. St. Benedict says, “That in all things, may God be glorified.”
3. Prayer—Prayer is lifting the heart and mind to God. As a Lay Cistercian, I actively put myself in the presence of God using prayer, both communal and private. Even if I sometimes feel that prayer is repetitious and rote, I have noticed that the more I try to grow deeper using prayer, rather than fighting the externals, the more peace there is in my spirit. It is resting my heart in the heart of Christ that helps me love fiercely.
4. Work—Work as the world sees it is a means to make money. Work with a spiritual approach is transforming the ordinary tasks of the day into those that give glory and praise to the Father. Work is prayer if offered up as praise and glory to the Father. As a retiree, my work is almost exclusively devoted to writing and my blog. For whatever time I have remaining, I want to offer my experiences and talents to help parishes implement a contemplative option to their normal parish spirituality.
5. Community—Lay Cistercians gravitate towards communal gatherings to refresh the soul and to transform themselves deeper into the mind and heart of Christ Jesus. I commit to attending a monthly meeting of Lay Cistercians called a Gathering Day at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit. Even though there is a great distance between us (250 miles one way), we link together as one in our commitment to each other because we are all linked through, with, and in, the mind and heart of Christ Jesus. Prayer is where you find it. So, too, is Lay Cistercian spirituality. I have several communities of faith that help sustain me in my quest to love God with all the heart, my soul, and my strength. My parish faith community is where I do most of my Lay Cistercian practices.

My spiritual goals for the rest of my life:

1. Take up your cross daily and follow Christ. The cross, in this case, is being consistent with spiritual practices. Although there is no penalty attached for not performing them, the more you want to have in you the mind of Christ Jesus, the more you will have what you wish for. Take what comes your way and transform it into Christ Jesus.
2. Solitude in the midst of community. Community here means a support and sustaining faith group, such as Lay Cistercians of Holy Spirit Monastery, Conyers, Ga. and Good Shepherd faith community at daily Mass and Liturgy of the Hours, with its ministries to the poor, the sick and those in need. Where two or three gather in my name, says the Master, there I am also.                                                               Work to share my writings and adult learning about Cistercian spiritual practices.         
3. Be open to the possibility of the manifest ability of all being! I want to be more conscious of my capacity to love God with my whole heart, my whole mind, and my whole soul and my neighbor as myself (capacitas dei). I want to be open to radical hospitality, seeing Christ as my neighbor, seeking to be open to God’s message in nature, hoping for a small place in the Kingdom of Heaven.

 

Spiritual Practices I use to sustain my center:

As a Lay Cistercian, these are some of the practices, little nests of silence and solitude, I carve out of my routine, not because I need the discipline but because they place me in direct contact with the mind and heart of Christ.

Eucharist:  The Sacrament of unity with God through Christ Jesus with the Holy Spirit as Advocate. This is the bread of Heaven. This is the pure energy of God for my transformation. This is my destiny in one prayer of gratitude with the community of believers.

Lectio Divina: This ancient, monastic practice allows me to grow deeper in spiritual awareness, there are four steps. Read (lectio); Meditate (meditatio); Pray (oratio); Contemplate (contemplatio).

Meditation and Spiritual Reading: This practice gives me a time to focus on Scriptures and Spiritual Readings about how to grow deeper in Christ Jesus.

The Rosary:  Meditations on the life and purpose of Christ Jesus. One of my favorite practices is a mantra-like prayer to help me meditate on the high points in the life of Jesus. You grow beyond saying Our Fathers or Hail Marys.

Liturgy of the Hours: This practice, refined by St. Benedict c. 540 AD in his Rule of St. Benedict, organizes the monks to pray the Psalms seven times a day. I try to pray the Psalms at least twice a day. The key is consistency and prayer in common, if possible. It is the prayer of the Catholic Church every hour of the day, every day of the week, giving praise, honor, and glory to the Father through the Son in union with the Holy Spirit.

Eucharistic Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament: I believe that Jesus Christ is present, body and blood, soul and divinity, under the appearance of the bread.My faith alone cannot make this happen. This is an ancient practice and one of the most revered of all practices. If this is indeed the living Christ, why would you not want to visit? This takes fierce love to practice.

Reading the Rule of St. Benedict, Chapter 4:  Each day, part of taking up my cross is reading Chapter 4 of St. Benedict, the Tools for Good Works. I offer this reading in reparation for my sins and for the strength to be strong next time I am tempted.

Dedication of the Day: My offering each day for a different intention.

Monday: Penance: In reparation for my sins and those of the Church, those in my book of Life.

Tuesday: For all family, friends, teachers, those in my book of Life.

Wednesday: In honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Immaculate Heart of Mary, and St. Joseph, those in my book of Life.

Thursday: For all Lay Cistercians, Monks of Holy Spirit Monastery, Monks of St. Meinrad Archabbey, priests and religious of Diocese of Evansville, Monks of Norcia, Italy and those in my book of Life.

Friday: For an increase in God’s grace to love God with all my heart, all my soul, all my mind and my neighbor as myself.

Saturday: For all deceased, an increase in my faith through the Holy Spirit and for those in my book of Life.

Key to any spirituality is being consistent with your practices.

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

When you wake up at 3:00 a.m. and try to get back to sleep, when you glance at your clock and murmer, “Oh no! Only three more hours to sleep,” when you look out the window to see if it is light yet, you have some appreciation of what a sentinel is.

Scripture captures this feeling of waiting and longing in Psalm 139: De Profundis  Clamavi Ad Te, Domine.

One of the familiar but obscure stories in the Book of Genesis is the one about the Tower of Bable. (Genesis 11:1-9) I consider all these stories as archetypal ones, setting forth the deepest and most fundamental truths about what it means to be human and what we could become if we use God’s mercy and love.  When I was thinking about how we humans don’t communicate with each other, I naturally thought about the language God would use to communicate with humans, becoming one of us. Philippians 2:5-12 speaks to this issue. In John 3:16, we learn that God so loved the world that he sent his only son to bring us the news that we were adopted sons and daughters of the Father. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.  God communicates using language, but many people don’t and some won’t translate this language into what is meaningful.  Let’s look at the different languages we use and how any of this can make sense about moving from self to God.

Most of my life, I have searched for one theory of reality that takes into account science, philosophy, and religion. One of the reasons this is so difficult to grasp is we use different languages. Physics is a language. Chemistry is a language. Computer programming has a language, depending on what program you use. It gets more complicated. Each nationality has a language. Christ spoke Aramaic, but his world used Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Most of us only know one or two of these social languages, if we are lucky. Each religion has its own language, or the assumptions underlying the words they use. Here are some languages that people use.

• Science
• Physics
• Mathematics
• Chemistry
• Cultural languages (English, Spanish, French, etc…)
• Internet
• Programming Code
• Religions (based on their assumptions)
• Cistercian Spirituality (also, Dominican, Jesuit, Franciscan, Carmelite, Augustinian, and other spiritual systems)

Of course, there are many more languages, but you get the point. Babel happens because people don’t know the language being spoken and make a judgment about what the words mean.

Here is something interesting to think about.  Jesus never wrote a book. Those disciples around him took down stories and wrote about behaviors that others exhibited when they followed the teachings of the Master (e.g. St. Peter, St. Paul, the early martyrs).  The purpose of the Scriptures (those ideas and behaviors for us to practice) were made “…so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and that believing this you may have life through his name. “(John 20:30-31)

As one who can only aspire to be a Lay Cistercian, I try to do Lectio Divina daily, attend the Eucharist, recite Morning and Evening Prayer in the choir at my church of Good Shepherd. Tallahassee, Florida, and read Chapter 4 of the Rule of Benedict, the Tools of Good Works. Essentially, I am learning the language of God, one spoken with Faith, Hope, and Love, one so simple, we can overlook it, one so profound that we fail to probe its depths, a language of love within a School of Love, Ultimately, we have what time remains on earth to learn the language of God, that of pure love, pure knowledge, and pure service.  Learning the language of God is done by doing what Christ taught us. Love one another as I have loved you. That is so simple but barely anyone can do it perfectly, yet that is what we are called to be.

So, do you still Babel?  As long as there is original sin, which means as long as we live on the earth, there will be Babel. No getting around it.  Ultimately, you must choose a reality in which to live. Either you place God as your center or something else (hopefully not you). If you place God as your center, there are many ways to believe but only one that is true. You must choose what you think is the correct approach, guided by reason.  One thing I try to practice myself but find extremely difficult is realizing that, with the coming of Christ, there is a new language, one which the world does not either recognize nor accept. If Christ has accepted you as adopted son or daughter, you must struggle to find meaning using this language. The reason we have Scriptures, the early Creeds, martyrs, writings of the early Fathers and Mothers in the first five centuries, is to clarify the language of Christ and have in us that very mind.  It is not an easy task to do with so much Babel going on around us, but it is our challenge and we do have the Way, the Truth, and the Life to help us if we know the language of love, hope, and service.

As a Lay Cistercian, with all that I know, believe, and practice, I have made my choice. I must try to love God with all my mind, all my strength, all my soul, and my neighbor as myself,(Matthew 22:37) I try not to play judgment games, such as “my God can beat your god.” As Martin Luther said, “here I stand, I can do no other.”

Praise be to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, now and forever. The God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the Ages. Amen and Amen. –Cistercian Doxology

What follows is a poem about my life. During one of my Lectio Divina meditations, I thought about what I have accomplished in my life. By all the measures that the world has for success, I have been an abject failure. I never made lots of money from work, I was never in a position of leadership at the top of any organization. I failed at what I do best, trying to arrange people together to learn from each other. My positions of employment did not want what I had to offer so I only used less than 5 percent of my talents.  I was rejected for promotion or hire on twenty-one occasions, for reasons I don’t know, but suspect as being age-related.  I failed at the few attempts at starting my own business.  I don’t have many friends who call me or visit me, so I must be a failure as a person. I am besieged from all sides to stop writing books or blogs because it is too expensive and no one reads my stuff. I am told that I am a failure because I live in la-la land, the land that is not real, and that being a Lay Cistercian is just to gain attention for my pitiful personality.  I am a failure because I did not choose to place fame, fortune, power, glamour, adulation, position, or honor as the center of my life. By any measure of what it means to be successful in life, I am a failure.

Yet, what the world considers foolish, the wisdom of God makes perfect.  During a lifetime of struggling to have in me the mind of Christ Jesus (Phil. 2:5), I have learned that the same Jesus is merciful and most patient with my sinfulness.  Not that I always go about sinning, but am prone to struggle to keep the tools for good works in Chapter 4 of St. Benedict’s Rule. https://www.osb.org/rb/text/toc.html#toc  That is my failure in the spiritual world, and I embrace it eagerly.  Here are six thresholds that I have discovered. They are my successes. Not that I have achieved them, but am in the processing of exploring them.

• I know the purpose of life. (Deuteronomy 6 and Matthew 22:37)
• I know my purpose in life (Phil 2:5)
• I know what visible and invisible reality looks like.
• I know how all reality fits together as One.
• I know how to love fiercely, even if I don’t always get there.
• I know how to die well.

Having said all of this, here is the poem of my life.

The Poem of My Life

I sing a song of life and love…

…sometimes flat and out of tune

…sometimes eloquent and full of passion

…sometimes forgetting notes and melody

…sometimes quaint and intimate

…often forgetful and negligent

…often in tune with the very core of my being

…often with the breath of those who would pull me down, shouting

right in my face

…often with the breath of life uplifting me to heights never before dreamed

…greatly grateful for the gift of humility and obedience to The One

…greatly thankful for adoption, discovery of new life of pure energy

…greatly appreciative for sharing meaning with others of The Master

…greatly sensitive for not judging the motives of anyone but me

…happy to be accepted as an aspiring Lay Cistercian

…happy to spend time in Eucharistic Adoration

…happy and humbled to be an adopted son of the Father

…happy for communities of faith and love with wife, daughter, friends

…mindful that the passage of time increases each year

…mindful of the major distractions of cancer and cardiac arrest

…mindful of my center and the perspective that I am loved and must

love back with all the energy of my heart and strength, yet failing

…mindful the energy I receive from The One in Whom I find

purpose and meaning…Forever.

To The One who is, Who was, and Who is to come at the end of the ages, be glory, honor, power and blessings through The Redeemer Son in unity with the Advocate, Spirit of Love.

From The One who is, Who was, and Who is to come at the end of the ages, I seek hope that His words about the purpose of life are true, that He is the way that leads to life…Forever.

With The One who is, Who was, and Who is to come at the end of the ages, I seek the fierce love so I can have in me the mind of Christ Jesus, my personal purpose in life and my center…Forever.

 

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

The following excerpt is from a manuscript I am writing, entitled THRIVING IN THE PRESENCE OF PURE ENERGY: A Lay Cistercian reflects on invisible reality, the Mystery of Faith and Eucharistic Adoration. In my writings, I write about Christ as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. As part of the truth, I write about how we can know something is true from Christ and not just the whims of our spiritual fantasy, or as I like to call it, cotton candy Christianity (tastes good but no nourishment). You can look this up at www.newadvent.org

HOLINESS IN THE MIDST OF ORIGINAL SIN (HOLY)

The second of these ancient marks that identify the truth is an invisible one. Christ is the head of the Church and we are the members. Because of our head, we are holy. Remember, our head does not have the nature of being merely human, but also has a divine nature, human and divine natures. The holiness of God enables the Church to be Holy, not any of its members.

The question associated with the sign of contradiction for the second mark of the authentic truth is how the Body of Christ can be Holy, while its members are suffering from the effects of original sin and need the Sacrament of Reconciliation on a regular basis to make all things new?

Critics of the Church point out that there have been many Popes who were sinners. No doubt about it. They write that there were times when the focus was not on obedience to Christ but obedience to the Church hierarchy. No doubt about it. On the other hand, Christ, the head of the Church, which is his living body on earth, in heaven and in purgatory, continues to try to have in them the mind of Christ Jesus (Phil. 2:5) We indeed are sinners and in constant need of God’s mercy to help us with our unbelief, as St. Thoms Aquinas says. There are those who reject the Catholic Church because they see its members sin. The Body of Christ is made up of sinners like me who try to transform themselves from self to God. Some succeed while others do not. I try to have in me the mind of Christ Jesus each day but fall short many times. With God’s grace (energy) I hope I get up and try again…and again….and again. Each person will be judged according to their deeds.

On the Feast of the Solemnity of Christ the King in November, there was wonderful reading about judgment and living out the commands of Christ. Read John 25

31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory.  32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats,  33 and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.  34 Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world;  35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me,  36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’  37 Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink?  38 And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing?  39 And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’  40 And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family,[g] you did it to me.’  41 Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels;  42 for I was hungry, and you gave me no food, I was thirsty, and you gave me nothing to drink,  43 I was a stranger, and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’  44 Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’  45 Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’  46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”(NRSVCE)

 

We are holy when we do the things Christ told us to do, to be his disciples. The mystery of faith is how these two opposites can function. The answer is, they cannot live in the secular world (physical and mental universe) but are possible in the Kingdom of Heaven (physical, mental and spiritual universes).

The takeaway from this mark of the Church is twofold: First, any of us, all of us need to have a penitential spirit of reform within us. The Cistercian and Carthusian movements in the eleventh century were reforms of the Rule of St. Benedict. They did not rewrite it or discount is effectiveness to move from self to God, but they did wish to have a stricter and more primitive interpretation of the Rule. That is different from blowing up the dam because you do not like it.  Secondly, all of us are holy only because God is holy. In, with, and through Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior, (Ithcus) we can approach the Father. No one approaches the Father unless he or she is Holy (holy here means redeemed by the blood of the Lamb of God). How fortunate we are that God is so merciful to a church on earth full of sinful people who sometimes veer off the beaten path and stray. The Good Shepherd is there to go after those who are lost and hopeless. If we are indeed holy, as you just read in the Scripture passage above, you will feel a responsibility to first seek mercy and forgiveness for yourself, then for others around you.

Have you ever thought that the reason Jesus puts so much emphasis on mercy, has forgiveness as a center of the Lord’s Prayer, and founded  the Church to become the conduit for mercy and forgiveness, is that He realized that we who try to follow the teachings of the Master are NOT holy but live in a world with the effects of original sin..We have a constant need to make all things new. The gift of Baptism takes away the one original sin but not its effects and welcomes us as adopted sons and daughters of the Father. The gift of Reconciliation takes away the sins we commit in our daily living out the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy, and when we fail to love God with all our hearts, our minds, and our strength and our neighbor as ourselves. In my life, that means a constant call to holiness and repentance and a reparation for my sins. As one who aspires to be a Lay Cistercian, I must be a penitential person every day of my life, recognizing that the struggle between holiness and sin is going on even as I write this. This is the daily call to move from self to God that the Cistercian disciplines and practices help me to achieve in my own small way. With St. Paul, I can say,

“…Not that I have become perfect yet; I have not yet won, but I am still running, trying to capture the prize for which Christ Jesus captured me. I can assure you, my brothers; I am far from thinking that I have already. All I can say is, I forget the past and I strain ahead for what is still to come. I am racing to the finish for the prize to which God sals us upward to receive in Christ Jesus. We who are called ‘perfect’ must think in this way. (Philippians 3:12-15)

Praise to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now and forever, the God who is, who was, and is to come at the end of the Ages. Amen and Amen. (Cistercian doxology)

Several years ago, someone told me, “Thank you for your service,” when I told them I had been a U.S. Army Chaplain. No one had ever said that to me before.  I can remember being very touched by the comments.

Two days ago, I went to the Leon County Tax Collector’s office to pay a property tax bill. They have a number system and I was number 123. I pressed the button and got two numbers, 123 and 124.  At the time they were on number 87. It took me nearly one hour and forty-five minutes to go from 87 to 123. There was an old gentleman who sat near me waiting for his turn.  He had number 190. I thought to myself he would have to wait for three hours to get service at the window. I gave him my extra ticket number 124 just moments before my number was called. I had never seen him before and I think I will ever see him again.

I went to the counter #8 and the woman was very hyper because of the multitude of people in the waiting room.  When she had finished giving me a receipt for my property tax check, I told her “Thank you for your service!” She was visibly touched and moved by what I said.

I thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if everyone would thank people for their service, meaning not just for helping them once, but for their lifetime of commitment to public service or health care? If you agree, just begin to tell people this simple greeting. You may not make a big difference in the world, but you will make the world of this person in front of you a little

On Sunday mornings, after going to church services, many people eat out at the favorite diner or restaurant. I like to see family eat together. This scenario reminded me of one of my Lectio Divina meditations on having a meal with Christ, a.k.a. The Eucharist.  I got to thinking of how we who have not had the privilege and honor of meeting Jesus in person can actually have breakfast with Jesus. That is exactly what happens when we go to Eucharist.

It is always difficult when the founder of a movement or a religious order dies. I am thinking of Mother Theresa in particular and how her community had to go on without her enthusiastic spirit to help them.  The same could be told of the Apostles in the upper room. Jesus came to them again. They must have been flushed with excitement to see Christ once again in the flesh, although they knew his body had died. The rumors of his resurrection from the dead were fresh and spread among the disciples. What stood out for me in this upper room experience was the statement, “Blessed are those who do not see yet believe.” (John 20:29) I like this passage because it is the way I believe. What Jesus handed off to the Apostles happened 2000 years ago, yet we have the same Christ in front of us, not in memory but in reality. How is Christ made real in these our days of unbelief and actual hostility to the message of Christ to love one another? As usual, the answer was right under my nose, when I had breakfast with Christ at Eucharist.

Here are my thoughts.  It all begins well before I go to Eucharist.  There is the period of temptation that floods me with ideas such as you don’t need to go today, just lay in bed for twenty more minutes, or why waste your time going to la-la land, or even the famous one about you can meet Jesus on the golf course as well as you can at church?  Every time I try to be in the presence of Christ, I am tempted. Every time!

The reason for Church is a gathering of the faithful to proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes again.  Church is not only a building but the living Body of Christ in this age. The Church universal is composed of those who have died and gone before us in Faith, those who struggle with the effects of original sin while still on this earth, and those awaiting purification for their sins.  It is a sign of deeper spiritual awareness when you can see Christ in those around you, particularly those with whom you disagree or who are repulsive.  St. Benedict has that idea in his Rule, Chapter 53, The Reception of Guests. “All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, for he himself will say, I was a stranger and you welcomed me. (Matt 25:35).

• When I go to join the assembly of the Faithful, be it anytime, I approach the table of the Lord with fear of the Lord. I only sit on the very last bench at church, which I call the tax collector’s seat. I dare not look up to the altar but keep my eyes lowered while saying all the time, “Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
• I look at the presence of Christ displayed in the Stations of the Cross, where I can focus on Christ and the price he paid for my redemption.
• I look at the crucifix on the fall wall and I think of the cross as a sign of contradiction, the sign of ignominy used as the instrument of our salvation and reparation.  Cistercians do not have statues or images other than that of Holy Mother. In their church buildings, they do not have stained glass with images, but just patterns of light.
• The altar itself is that likened to what Abraham tried to sacrifice his son, Issac but God intervened and he sacrificed a lamb. Christ is the Lamb of God sacrificed each Eucharist on this very altar. The faith of the church and my own faith tells me He is real just as he was in the upper room before the Apostles. We bow to the temple altar of the New Jerusalem because from it ascends the honor, glory, and praise to God the Father, through God the Son, with the Holy Spirit. We poor mortals tag along with Christ and offer our poor prayers and petitions in, with and through Christ.
• After you are dead, no one will remember that you praised God on the golf course instead of attending Eucharist, except Christ,

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

It is one of those curious ironies of the secular age in which we live that Black Friday, the shopping day after Thanksgiving, is more important than Good Friday.  Of course, Good Friday was never important, even before the rise of the electronic age, our dependency on all things on-line.

• Good Friday denotes the price Jesus paid to buy us back from the results of Original Sin, alienation from the Father.  Black Friday is the price we will go to any lengths to pay just for an additional 10% off a refrigerator that we probably don’t need.
• Good Friday is the day that Christ suffered death for us so that we could regain our adoption as sons and daughters of the Father. Black Friday is the day that we suffer inconvenience by getting up at 6:00 a.m. to stand in line to wait for bargains that do not add value to our journey to Forever.
• Good Friday is the sign of the cross, the contradiction that makes a crucifixion a sign of healing rather than punishment.  Black Friday is our obcession with all things material and our question for wealth of things rather than values of the Spirit.
• Good Friday is a day of atonement for our sins against God and each other, a way to reaffirm that we wish to love God with all our heart, our souls, our strength plus our neighbor as ourselves. Black Friday is a day of materialism, a way to reaffirm that we still suffer the effects of original sin.
• Good Friday is a day when we think of the love Jesus had for us. Black Friday is a day when we think of the love that we have for ourselves.

That in all things, may God be glorified. -St. Benedict

We all live in a world that has been contaminated by Original Sin, the archetypal sin of Adam and Eve that defines the condition in which we live. Our theology tells us that we are all born with Original Sin which keeps us from participating in the bounty that Jesus restored to us by his death on the cross and resurrection. Baptism, an act of faith of God in us with our response, wash away this Original Sin, but there is a catch.  The effects of the sin remain. We must die, there is behavior not consistent with who God is. We receive the Ten Commandments but struggle to keep them. With Christ, things become clearer. We now have a Mediator between us and God, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. True to the effects of Original Sin, we don’t all agree on what that is. There is confusion, conflicts, and positions that are contrary to the teachings of the Master.  One thing about religion, there always were conflicts, especially in the early church.  Google the various heresies. In the midst of this confusion, I find myself wanting to focus just on having in me the mind of Christ Jesus. (Phil. 2:5).  I have chosen the Cistercian approach to life (silence, solitude, prayer, work, and community) as a way for me to move from self to God. Along the way of my journey, there are great teachers that can help me struggle with living the Life of Christ. One such person is Pope Francis. Here is what he had to say about increasing love.

Pope Francis on Fasting and Prayer

Here are some penitential practices for all year long.

Pope Francis proposes these 15 simple acts of charity as concrete manifestations of love:

1.  SMILE. A Christian is always cheerful
2. Say THANK YOU for little things (even if you don’t have to).
3. Remind others how much you LOVE them.
4. GREET with joy the persons you see every day.
5. LISTEN to other people’s stories without prejudice, and with love.
6. STOP to help. Pay attention to whoever needs you.
7. Try to RAISE the spirits of people around you.
8. CELEBRATE the qualities or success of others, thus avoiding envy or jealousy.
9. SORT OUT the things you no longer use or need, and give them to those in need.
10. Be ready to HELP when you are needed so that others may rest.
11. GIVE CORRECTIONS with love, do not keep quiet out of fear.
12. Maintain good relations with those around you.
13. Keep clean the things you use in the house.
14. HELP others overcome obstacles.
15. CALL, and call on, your parents more often.

THE BEST FASTING:

• Fast on offensive words and transmit only sweet and tender words
• Fast on dissatisfaction and fill yourself with gratitude.
• Fast on anger and fill yourself with meekness and patience.
• Fast on pessimism and be filled with optimism
• Fast on worries and be filled with confidence in God
• Fast on laments and take pleasure in the simple things of life.
• Fast on stress and fill yourself with prayer.
• Fast on sadness and bitterness, and fill your heart with joy.
• Fast on selfishness, and be filled with compassion for others.
• Fast on unforgiveness and vendetta, and be filled with acts of reconciliation and forgiveness.
• Fast on words and fill yourself with silence and readiness to listen to others.

If we all practice this style of fasting, our everyday will be filled with peace, joy, trust in each other, and life.

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

Do you have to use the restroom, when you die and go to Heaven? Do you have claustrophobia in Heaven? Will you be able to go to the Emergency Room? How can you travel from place to place? Who fixes your food?  These and thousands of other questions about Heaven we neatly tuck away in some far corner of our mind and never ask about how this can be.  What is Heaven, anyway? Who would want to go there?

Heaven is the only place where we don’t know what is in store for us but we want to go there and sell all our possessions to obtain it.  As a human being, we live our whole life in the physical universe (matter, time, energy) but we access it through our five senses as interpreted by our brain (mental universe). As the philosophical dictum says: what is received, is received according to the disposition of the recipient. In English, that means everyone looks at the world through a lifetime or their unique experiences and learned values. To enter the spiritual universe, it takes an act of the will, one that is a gift from God to us.  What is in the spiritual universe on earth is what is in Heaven.  Have you found it yet?

The problem comes in when you miss the train because you hold a set of values that don’t lead to Heaven or when you put a false center in your life.

As one who aspires to be a Lay Cistercian, I have made a commitment to follow the Rule of Benedict and use the Cistercian practices and charisms to ensure I am close to the heart of Christ. Through silence, solitude, prayer, work, and community, I want to discover Heaven on earth and transform the physical and mental universes through the spiritual one. To do that, I have to transform myself into the Life of Christ. To do that, I must love God with all my heart, mind and strength, and my neighbor. To do that, I must daily have in me the mind of Christ Jesus. (Phil.2:5) I am far from that perfection.

Here are some of my thoughts about Heaven as a result of my Lectio Divina.

• I know that Christ went to prepare a place for us in Heaven (Ascension) and to make all things new with the Father. (John 17)
• I know that Christ would not want us to be in a Heaven in which there is no love, the pure love of the Father for the Son.
• I know that, even though on earth I can only communicate via my senses, that God makes up in me that which I lack to love with all my heart.
• I know that Heaven is not like earth yet the kingdom of Heaven is within me right now if I can only access it.
• I know that the Kingdom of Heaven is what I bring with me in terms of transforming nature and my mind to recognize that everything is One in Christ.
• I know that, whatever time I have left, I want to give glory and praise to the Father and the Son, now and forever, the God who is, who was, and who will be at the end of the Ages.
• Like the Little Prince, I recognize that “what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
• I realize that I can solve the mysteries of the Universe from dark holes to dark energy, but if I can not live the Mystery of Faith, I gain nothing.
• I realize that what the world sees is not what is important to get to Heaven.
• I realize that I am not the center of the universe.  This thinking is idolatry, the most prolific and committed sin in all ages, the continuation of the sin of Adam and Eve, and one that I must guard against all my life. It is not without reason that the Ten Commandments has Idolatry placed first among all the sins of the spirit and that sins of the flesh are wrong but quite human.
• “You are not me; I am not you; God is not you; and most certainly, you are not God.” –mfc
• I know that the big struggle is Satan convincing me that what I am doing is worthless and a waste of time, that the historical Jesus never wanted to be God but it was made up by his followers, that the Resurrection never happened, that Church is corrupt because people in it commit sins, sometimes horrible ones, that, when you die, you die and there is no Heaven, that transformation from self to God is a waste of time because there is no God, that what I do now as a Lay Cistercian is a bunch of fantasy, that I live in La-La Land and not reality, that I am worthless and a failure as a person, that placing my heart next to the heart of Jesus is sheer fantasy–nothing really happens, that the Holy Spirit is a figment of my imagination.
• I realize that all of this comes about through Faith informed by Reason.
• I realize that the purpose of Scriptures is for us to read how to get to Heaven and not how the Heavens go. (John 20:30-31)
• I know that there are four dimensions to Church: Truth, Knowledge, Service, and Prayer. To become encumbered in just one dimension is to lack the fullness of Faith and miss an important aspect of how to love Jesus.
• I realize that most people leave the Church because they want something more and don’t know how or where to find it. I know that G.K. Chesterton said, “People leave the Church not because it is found tried and wanting, but because it has never been tried at all.”
• I know that you must dig to grow deeper into the Mystery of Faith.  Digging is hard work and not for the faint-hearted. One you make a Baptismal commitment, you will struggle against original sin and the Evil One your entire life. Those who persevere to the end will be saved. The Church is there to help with support, focus, and especially a spade to dig deeper, but it will not dig for you. Grow up!
• Reading I Corinthians 13, I know that… 
  

  The Gift of Love 13 If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly,[b] but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. (NRSVCE)

  So, what is Heaven like? If, through contemplation, your heart is ever close to the heart of Christ, you will know the answer in its fullest sense. God is love.

  Praised be to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and forever, the God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages.  Amen and Amen. –Cistercian Doxology

At the core of what it means to be a follower of The Master is doing what he taught. Spirituality is not a head thing as much as a head and heart thing.

St. Benedict, in his Chapter 4 of the Rule, wanted monks to do what Christ taught us.  He lists practices that those follow can use to have in them the mind of Christ Jesus (Phil. 2:5). I read at least five of these practices every day in the hopes of becoming more like Christ. Loving is about doing something, first with your own temple of the Holy Spirit, then with others to complete the words of Christ, where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in their with them. (Matthew 18:20)

THE MOST DIFFICULT BEHAVIOR TO LEARN

In my case, as an aspiring Lay Cistercian in process of becoming more like Christ but being so very far from perfection, the most difficult thing I must learn is to not returning evil for evil but good for evil.  It sounds so easy to do but goes against everything human are emotions and will are acculturated to respond.  This is the result of original sin. When someone tells me I am an utter failure as a person, a failure as a husband, a failure as a Catholic Priest, someone who only lives in La-La Land, someone whose mother did not teach him right, the normal tendency is to strike back bring up the faults of the other person.  You hurt me and I will hurt you back, only more so.  This leads to much of the fighting and anger between and among spouses, families, and friends. If you give back love for evil and peace for hurtful comments and accusations, it is not normal, but it is what Christ wanted us to do.  I Thessalonians 5:15

When you offer the peace of Christ to those at Eucharist, you offer Christ to one another. You proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes again. You do what Jesus taught us.

WORKS OF MERCY

Mercy is a virtue to have compassion for, and if possible, to alleviate the sufferings of others, according to New Advent. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10198d.htm

When your heart touches the heart of Jesus, something wonderful happens. The encounter produces God’s own energy in your heart, as much as you can accommodate. A contemplative practice, such as Lectio Divina, opens up the heart to the reality of love, if only for a moment. What comes from this awareness must be “loving your neighbor as yourself.”  Read Matthew 22:34.

The corporal works of mercy are:

• To feed the hungry;
• To give drink to the thirsty;
• To clothe the naked;
• To harbor the harbourless;
• To visit the sick;
• To ransom the captive;
• To bury the dead.

The spiritual works of mercy are:

• To instruct the ignorant;
• To counsel the doubtful;
• To admonish sinners;
• To bear wrongs patiently;
• To forgive offenses willingly;
• To comfort the afflicted;
• To pray for the living and the dead.

If you love me, says the Master, love one another. Have mercy on others as I have mercy on you. Words to live by. Words that are the fruit of faith. Go, do them.

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

My wife and I recently took a trip to Nashville to visit our daughter, Martha.  Of course, we had to take along our dog, Tucker.  Nice trip for a couple of days, but then my wife asked me, what’s next?

I said that our daughter was coming to Tallahassee for Thanksgiving visit.  What’s next?

I began to think about the time from now to whatever happens until I die.  Here are some thoughts, hopefully not too morbid.

• I want to write a series of blogs (like this one) on the subject of The Theology of the Body, taken from the series delivered by Pope Saint John Paul II at his weekly audiences over a year or so.  And then what?
• I want to write a series of blogs and create an instrument for parishioners to tell which of four churches in them is dominant and which they need to prop up to maintain balance. And then what?
• I want to write books on Eucharist, Lay Cistercian Journey, The Dark Side of Love, The Carpenter’s Dog, A compendium of blogs for those in Adoration Before the Blessed Sacrament, and hopefully more topics to come from the Holy Spirit.  And then what?
• Prepare for my funeral and internment in Honeycreek Woodlands Cemetary at the Holy Spirit Monastery. And then what? www.trappist/net/conservation-burial-ground
• For the rest of my time, live the Life of Christ as practiced by Cistercians Monks, Nuns, and Lay Cistercians.  And then what?

Die.  And then what?

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What person or thing do you love the most in your life?  What is the one person or thing that, if you took it away, everything else would crumble? This is the center of your life, the one principle upon which all other moral principles and meaningful values are based.

I only bring this up because it is important for my own growth in the Life of Christ within me.  You see, there is no room for anyone else as the center of my life. There is only one because God is One. The secular world would place family, spouse, mother or father as the center. At one time, so did I, until I realized that I was only thinking of the limited ways of the world. It does make sense to place your spouse as the most important thing or person in your life if you live in two universes (physical and mental).

As one who can only aspire to be a Lay Cistercian, I admit that I do not place my spouse or even family as my center.  I do that because I have found something deeper about love than human love. That is not to say that I don’t love my wife and daughter. I have come to see layers of love, far greater and deeper than I had ever imagined. I experienced the dark side of love, that which says you love someone, even if they can’t or won’t love back, or have some form of mental health issues or alcohol or drug dependence.  Jesus gave us a hint, when he told his disciples, (Luke 6:32)  “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.”

Ironically, when you place Christ as your center (my center is Phil 2:5), all else follows. The words of the Master guide us in growing from self to God, “seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you besides.”  The best way to love our neighbor is to love God first with all our heart, our mind, and our strength. It takes a lifetime of experiences to learn that seeking God has been right in front of my nose every day.

I must tell you, I had trouble with letting go of my perceptions of what love should be. I think this is due to my taking the meaning from what this world says about love and the priorities of relationship. This is another example of the difference between what the world thinks and what Christ says we should do. Placing God first means everything else is number two.  Adam and Eve didn’t get it and placed God second and themselves first. What seems like a no-brainer, is giving up part of your independence to affirm dependence on God, or, put another way, Thy Will Be Done.

LEARNING POINTS

1. If you love God more than your family, you may want to rethink your center. Read Matthew 10:37 “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;” What sounds like something insensitive to the family is actually placing love in priority.
2. Ironically, it is when you love God with all your mind,  all your heart and all your strength that you can love your family perfectly.  It is perfect because you have ordered the correct priorities: God first, family second, everyone else third.
3. Read Matthew 6:33  “But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

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

When reciting the Liturgy of the Hours, particularly the Office of Readings, the Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer, I frequently make mistakes.  You know, forgetting my place, saying you instead of yours, or mispronouncing the name of a tribe of Israel or those incredible names in the Old Testament. I used to worry about being correct all the time but had to acknowledge my imperfections so much that I just accepted them as part of prayer. Here are ten things I have learned about prayer. You might have experienced other ones.

1. All mistakes are part of prayer, yet we try as we can to offer God a perfectly recited and annunciated text.
2. Slow down when reciting prayers, especially the Psalms. Slow recitation allows the brain to meditate on the words and ideas of the Psalmist.
3. Don’t innovate.  My group at Good Shepherd Parish in Tallahassee says “O God, come to our assistance” instead of “O God, come to my assistance.”  Pray like it is written, not as you would like it to be.
4. I offer each day’s prayer for a special person in my life. It could be someone living or dead, no matter.
5. Prayer is lifting the heart and mind to God.  Saying just the words is not enough. Words are the keys that open up my heart to the heart of Christ.
6. The Liturgy of the Hours is a prayer of the Church universal. Somewhere in the world, disciples are giving praise to the Father through the Son in union with the Holy Spirit. Every hour, prayers of petition, reparation, thanksgiving, and adoration rise to the Father in reparation for the sins of the world, that God might be all merciful to all humans and do not treat us as our sins deserve.
7. Saying the Liturgy of the Hours in a choir (with alternating sides saying a stanza of the Psalms), is proper. Saying it in private is an alternative  Since I do both when I recite the Liturgy of the Hours privately, I move my lips when praying since this is the official prayer of the Church Universal.
8. I always say thank you to people, when we have concluded Liturgy of the Hours, the Rosary or Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.
9. When I feel bad or sick prayer is more valuable because of what it takes to overcome original sin and renounce self.
10. When I am not present for the Liturgy of the Hours, my group prays for my intentions as I do, when they are missing.

Praise to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. The God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the Ages.  Amen and Amen.

The following comments are my own reflections from the document on Lay Cistercian Journey discussed at a Gathering Day of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery on October 1, 2017. It is part of our on-going Junior Professed Formation Program. Each month, our Lay Cistercian Advisor, Brother Cassian, OSCO, presents various approaches to 20th Century Cistercian Spirituality for Lay Cistercians based on the documents of International Lay Cistercians. What follows is the Lourdes document on Lay Cistercian Spiritual Journey.  Look it up for yourself  on:

https://www.cistercianfamily.org/documents/Spiritual%20Journey%20FINAL%2020June2014.pdf

Over the next two to three weeks, each day, I will be commenting on one part of this fie part document as it affects me as an aspiring Lay Cistercian, struggling to move from self to God. This the fifth and final paragraph of the document. The text is bolded for your ease of reading. My reflection follows.

5) Life in Christ
The Lay Cistercian’s road is one particular way of living the universal journey of human beings into God. The presence of Christ is the heart of our journey: “He is the way, the truth, the life.” It is necessarily a journey accompanied by others. It is the quest for the encounter with Christ who transcends us and abides in us. Our greatest hope is that the gift of discovering Christ in one another will be the path of holiness and joy for us. Our journey is inspired and nourished by the sisters and brothers in the Cistercian family; for this, we will be eternally grateful.
After reflecting on our identity (Huerta 2008) and working on our formation (Dubuque 2011), we as Lay Cistercians sought to go to the heart and source of these two realities. We discovered an encounter with a Presence: Jesus Christ, the source, and summit of our journey. Jesus calls us through our brothers and sisters to be witnesses of the Gospel in the world, enlightened and supported by the Cistercian tradition as it is embodied in the nuns and monks who accompany us.
May Mary, Queen of Citeaux and model of obedience, show us the way to our full transformation into the image of her Son.”

For me, the purpose of my life is to have in me the mind of Christ Jesus (Phil. 2:5). Since I was a lad of 23, they have been my mantra and the source of my spiritual nourishment. When I read the Lay Cistercian statement number five, The Life of Christ, it was like a homecoming. It is the nuclear fission of my spiritual life. I look at my journey to Forever in terms of a lifetime of what I have learned about what is meaningful and what lacks substance, or, as I like to call it, cotton candy (tastes good but there is no nourishment for the body).

There are some assumptions about my purpose of life which I feel I must share with you what I think when I hear or read The Life of Christ.

1. When I look at my own life, I try, with varying degrees of success, to have in me the mind of Christ. Because of original sin, the condition or effects of which we still must content as we discover what it means to have and sustain the life of Christ in us, what we must do is not easy to either identify or to practice.  I don’t see spiritual thinking as natural. On the contrary, the world and its allurements to what is true, that everyone has an opinion and there is no one who can tell you what to believe, and that you can’t really know Christ because he never existed as the Church proposes, is our default. A default of original sin is what we all fall back on unless we make the effort to find out what God wants.  St. Paul calls this self-indulgence in Galatians 5:16-26.  He contrasts this with works of the Spirit, which we must choose over the default of sin. The point is, original sin is our default or self-indulgence. It is only by our choosing what God wants that we grow deeper in the life of Christ.
2. Cistercian contemplation is only one way to have in me the mind of Christ Jesus. Any spiritual pathway that has Christ as its center and leads us to grow from self to God is good. It would be a mistake to think one approach is better than another. For me, the Cistercian approach is the one I feel called to explore and participate if they will have me.
3. As one who aspires to be a Lay Cistercian, I feel called to move forward by learning the Cistercian practices and charisms of humility, obedience to the Abbott, seeking solitude, silence, pray, work, and finding Christ in my Lay Cistercian companions.
4. Love has an undefinable number of levels, each one deeper than the one before it, to live the Life of Christ in our hearts.
5. Finding Christ in each other recognizes that Christ is present in each of us, only to be discovered and nourished with love and humility.
6. The great emphases of the Gospel writers plus St. Paul (Luke) is about having in each of us the life of Christ through belief but also through doing what we believe. Over and over, Christ is seen getting angry with people, not because they were weak and sinful, but because they did not follow the will of the Father.  Post Pentecost thinking has the Apostles and disciples receiving the Holy Spirit and taking that zeal out into the world. If it was just zeal, this movement would not have lasted more than the lifetime of its leader.This was not a conversion to the Jewish way of thinking, but using the Jewish traditions and teachings of the Prophets to expand how to live as Christ taught us, with the help of the same Holy Spirit.
7. There is indeed a quest or yearning to be more and more like Christ and less and less like me, the broken-down, old temple of the Holy Spirit.  I have called it by many names, one of which is fierce love.  What would you do to possess the life of Christ within you? What price is great enough?  Yet, it is totally without monetary cost, but it will cost you everyTHING you have. I have found that I have to give me all my mind, my heart and my strength to love God.  Christ did it and bids me do so.  As a Lay Cistercian, my focus on the Life of Christ is to discover that Christ through my Lay Cistercian and other faithful companions on my journey.

After reflecting on our identity (Huerta 2008) and working on our formation (Dubuque 2011), we as Lay Cistercians sought to go to the heart and source of these two realities. We discovered an encounter with a Presence: Jesus Christ, the source, and summit of our journey. Jesus calls us through our brothers and sisters to be witnesses of the Gospel in the world, enlightened and supported by the Cistercian tradition as it is embodied in the nuns and monks who accompany us.

The document calls us to discover an encounter with Jesus Christ. As one who aspires to be a Lay Cistercian, I try to do what nuns and monks in the monasteries do, i.e., love God with all their hearts, their strength and their souls, and their neighbor as themselves. What they do is to seek God through practices and creating a school of love to move from self to God. Sounds simple, but for me, it is a lifetime of trying to take some of these charisms and, using the Cistercian practices I have learned, apply them to my own secular situation. The question is not, is it better to be in a monastery than try it in the secular world with family, job, distractions, and the struggle to live in a secular world that does not value Christ. I would not have it any other way.

Life in Christ is both my purpose (have in you the mind of Christ Jesus), the journey, and the ultimate goal, Heaven. How can I fail, if I focus on becoming more like Christ and reproducing the passion, death, and resurrection in my life? Since I can never love God with all my heart and soul, through Cistercian practices, I can allow my heart to sit next to the heart of Christ and absorb His love.

Through Him, With Him, and In Him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all honor and glory is yours, Almighty Father, the God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages. Amen and Amen.

The following comments are my own reflections from the document on Lay Cistercian Journey discussed at a Gathering Day of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery on October 1, 2017. It is part of our on-going Junior Professed Formation Program. Each month, our Lay Cistercian Advisor, Brother Cassian, OSCO, presents various approaches to 20th Century Cistercian Spirituality for Lay Cistercians based on the documents of International Lay Cistercians. What follows is the Lourdes document on Lay Cistercian Spiritual Journey.  Look it up for yourself  on:

https://www.cistercianfamily.org/documents/Spiritual%20Journey%20FINAL%2020June2014.pdf Over the next two to three weeks, each day, I will be commenting on one part of this document as it affects me as an aspiring Lay Cistercian, struggling to move from self to God. This is the fourth segment, one that embodies the effects of moving from self to God. Something wonderful happens to one who surrenders his or her whole self to be shaped by the inexorably dynamic energy of being in the presence of Christ. You inexorably beginning to resemble that which shapes you. This is my journey.

The text is bolded for your ease of reading. My reflection follows the bolded text.

4) Formation/Transformation: its importance for spiritual growth
Formation within the Lay Cistercian community is a lifelong journey into the richness of the Cistercian charism. Formation must be both personal and communal.
It includes the following:
a) The practice of Lectio Divina and prayer
b) The Rule of Saint Benedict
c) Knowledge of the treasure of Cistercian literature
d) The Divine Office (Liturgy of the Hours)
e) Self-knowledge
f) The importance of the Eucharist and other sacraments
g) Spiritual Accompaniment. The practice of both exterior and interior silence and listening is emphasized in living the Cistercian charism. The annual retreat is a means of reinforcing community and relationship with God.

As one who aspires to be a Lay Cistercian, the formation part of the journey is being present to the one who forms, in this case, Christ Jesus. There are two dimensions to the formation process: the individual as the ultimate repository of and depository of faith, “have in you the mind of Christ Jesus.” (Phil 2:5). The second dimension is that of one community of faith, the crucible wherein Christ can shape the individual in His image and likeness.  Without the individual, there is no one to form in the image of Christ. Without the community, all sharing in the same Cistercian charisms and practices, there is no formation. Without Christ Jesus, there is no transformation from self to God.

A good example of the formation that leads to a transformation is experienced by those who are in a loving relationship. Long distance relationships tend not to last very long. Why? The answer is obvious. You must be present (physically, mentally, and spiritually) to each other on a consistent basis to grow deeper in love and affection. East and West coast marriages are not sustainable, although they do happen.  As a Lay Cistercian, I want to commit to being present, not only to the Lay Cistercian community of the monastery of the Holy Spirit but more importantly to be even closer to the heart of Christ, through being present with them.  I count myself fortunate that I have two such communities of faith, one Lay Cistercian with both laity and monks, and the other one the Eucharist Community of Good Shepherd parish, Tallahassee, Florida, with Father Mike Foley as its representative of Christ.

There are four ways in which I want my heart to be as close to Christ as possible (Deuteronomy 6 and Matthew 22:34)

1.  TO BE PRESENT TO CHRIST, BE PRESENT TO THOSE WHO LOVE HIM WITH ALL THEIR HEARTS.

As a Lay Cistercian, I want to commit to being present, not only to the Lay Cistercian community of the monastery of the Holy Spirit but more importantly to be even closer to the heart of Christ, through being present with them.  I count myself fortunate that I have two such communities of faith, one Lay Cistercian with both laity and monks, and the other one the Eucharist Community of Good Shepherd parish, Tallahassee, Florida, with Father Mike Foley as its representative of Christ. Some people don’t get it. They see the Church as composed of sinful people, which it is, but fail to see the effects of grace and God’s love for these same people. Which is greater? That people are sinful, which we all are because of original sin, or that they overcome their own sinfulness through faith and grace by trying to love God with all their hearts?  Part of the formation is being present to others who have in them the mind of Christ Jesus, part of the Lay Cistercian formation is being present to the monks and learning from how they practice the various acts that lead to humility, obedience, solitude, and silence.  A big part of it is the community helping you to open your heart to seek God right before you, in the moment. It may not be a spectacle or like going to a rock concert, but it works.

2. TO BE PRESENT TO CHRIST, DO WHAT HE TELLS YOU. St. John’s Gospel is the only one to tell the story of the Wedding Feast of Cana. In that account, Jesus turns water into wine, no small feat.  The mother of Jesus, Mary, tells those helping Christ to “…do what he tells you.”  Such a nondescript comment yet inserted by John for a reason. The whole Gospel proclaims the divinity of Christ and his mission. Like the wine-stewards in the biblical account, what he tells you may not be consistent with what they know to be the case, i.e., all the good wine is served. The point is when Jesus tells us to do something, it may go against our nature, it may not be comfortable to do, it may not make sense. All of these stories are just part of what Jesus taught us, according to the end of John’s Gospel.  (John 21:25) It makes me wonder what other stories are out there that never made it into written Scripture. Part of the being a Lay Cistercian has to do with seeking God in Christ by placing your heart next to the heart of Christ. What Christ tells us in these encounters is always based on giving glory to the Father by doing what God tells you. This is the personal part of the formation, one that leads directly to action. It is in the obedience to doing what God tells you to do that formation becomes transformative. This is the transformation from self to God, not that we ever reach the finish line, as St. Paul says in Philippians 3: 8-16.  We still run to capture the prize for which Christ Jesus captured us.

3. TO BE PRESENT TO CHRIST, REALIZE THAT THE LOCAL COMMUNITY OF FAITH, IN THIS CASE,  BOTH THE LAY CISTERCIAN AND MONASTIC COMMUNITIES, ARE THE PRESENCE OF CHRIST HIMSELF ON YOUR JOURNEY.

One of our Lay Cistercians told me that, the late Father Anthony Deliese, OSCO, told him he should consider being a Lay Cistercian. He asked Father Anthony was are the requirements to be one. Father responded, “You just have to be a sinner.”  To attempt the lifelong journey of formation that leads to transformation does not mean you are NOT free from the effects of original sin. It does mean that the practice of moving from self to God is just that—work, as St. Benedict states in his Chapter 4 of the Rule, “Tools for Good Works.”  Doing good works or good behaviors produce good outcomes or products. The Reformation’s notion of good works was that you could buy your way to Heaven. Get rid of this bias when you hear these words. No one deserves Heaven, it is a gift of faith.  It is the result of those behaviors practiced in the context of a community of faith that produce energy or grace. No one deserves Heaven. When we as a community do those actions Christ taught us, they produce grace, God’s own energy. We call them sacraments because they are sacred moments where we can touch the heart of Christ and thus go with Him to give glory to the Father (John 17:3-26). This is Christ’s center. In so far as the whole community all focuses on this same mission, we are one together in Christ Jesus.  This differentiates us from communities such as Elks Club, Moose, Kiwanis, Knight of Columbus, or Little League.  They are good but they do not give us what we need for our journey to Forever. Many time we can’t see the grace they produce, but we can always see the good works emanating from Cistercian practices and contained in the charisms we seek in our lives. We see it most clearly in the communities of faith to which we belong. As one who aspires to be a Lay Cistercian, this is one of my faith communities, as I mentioned previously. It is no wonder then that one of the ways for this school of love to be present to Christ is for it to be present to each other, differences of personalities and perspectives notwithstanding. That is why Gathering Day is so important.

We cultivate silence and solitude as Lay Cistercians in the context of the grace we receive from each other on Gathering Day. That is an extension of our community practices together, which we will discuss shortly.

4. TO BE PRESENT TO CHRIST, PUT YOURSELF IN THE PRESENCE OF CHRIST.

We read above in the Lourdes document on The Lay Cistercian Spiritual Journey that it is a lifetime commitment with both individual and communal dimensions.  As I reflected on this fourth way to be present to Christ, I thought of myself, the individual, as being the temple of the Holy Spirit, although I must admit a broken down, old fragmented one. Each of us who accept Christ as really present in the Sacrament of Eucharist is like the tabernacle in the Old Testament, the Holy of Holies, and the tabernacle that holds the leftover loaves from the distribution by Christ. (Matthew 14:15-21).  Are we worthy to do this? Indeed not. Lay Cistercians need to awaken the soul and be aware that we need the Cistercian practices that lead to charisms that, in turn, produce in us the mind of Christ Jesus. (Phil 2:5). Daily!

A chance conversation one day at Starbucks with a young woman brings this fourth way into focus for me.  I was waiting in line for my coffee when I noticed a young girl have a copy of the Rule of Benedict in her hands.  Naturally, my senses all quickened and I got up the nerve to ask her how she liked it. She said she had been to a retreat recently and picked it up at their bookstore. She did not know much about it.  I told her I could share with her what I know and we sat down to a quick cup of coffee.  I told her about Chapter 4 of Benedict’s Rule and how I try to read it every day in the hopes of becoming more like what I read. We talked about the various practices, such as Liturgy of the Hours, Eucharist, Lectio Divina and other practices which I had as part of my schedule.  She said that she was recently divorced and it was probably due to her former husband being in California, while she was in Florida.  They thought it would work out, and it did for nearly a year.  “We needed to be present to each other more,” she said. I thought of what she said whenever I think about my Lay Cistercian Journey.  I not only need to be present to Christ but also to the Cistercian community of faith. It is one of the reasons I drive five + miles once a month to attend the Gathering Day with other Lay Cistercians. Long distance love can cause the ardor to wane.  I am convinced that is why many people leave the Church, because, as G. K. Chesterton says, “..it is not that they have tried the Church and found it wanting, but they have never tried it at all.”

For me, the Cistercian practices, as outlined in the Lourdes document on The Lay Cistercian Spiritual Journey, help me to focus and refocus my energies on Christ each day. Each day!  I see it as a way to fill up my tank each day with the energy of God, giving me the strength to keep myself from falling into a long-distance relationship with Jesus. The Cistercian practices are not unique to the Church, but, as coupled with the readings of Cistercian monks and nuns and other more recent writings, such as The Cistercian Way, by Dom Andre Louf, OSCO, provide context to what might otherwise be like drinking concentrated orange juice. https://nunraw.blogspot.com/2010/08/andre-louf-ocso.html

PURPOSEFUL PRACTICE

As one who can only aspire to be a Lay Cistercian, my Lay Cistercian Spiritual Journey is, both unique in where I find myself on my journey, but also based on the solid, centuries-old heritage of Cistercian spirituality, such as the practices and following the Rule of Saint Benedict. I have found that the following holds true for me:

1. I need a default plan of spirituality if I am to keep the daily practices I need to sustain my spirituality. Some people call this a schedule.
2. I need to have a balance between my Cistercian practices and doing chores that have nothing to do with God. (Ora et Labora) While it is true that I yearn to love God with all my heart, my soul, and my strength, I can’t keep up this intensity without becoming consumed by it, which, for me, is not a good place to be. This morning, I spoke with a person after Morning Prayer who was concerned that one of our members was burning themselves out with doing good works (can’t say no to anyone who asks for their help either because of guilt or the self-perception that a good parishioner always responds to someone in need). Balance means you have the perspective to see where you are in terms of where you want to be.
3. I need to have perseverance in doing spirituality. The temptations I have are several: a) You don’t need to go to Morning Prayer today, you can miss just one and it won’t hurt; b) Your spirituality won’t suffer if you miss just one Eucharist. You need to sleep in because you are so tired (actually I am tired at 77 years old); c) No one will miss you; d) No one reads your blog, so why waste your time; e) My wife thinks all this is fantasy land and la-la land, so maybe she is correct and trying to go each and every day to Cistercian practices is foolish.
4. I need to have the perspective that just because I don’t see immediate results from my Cistercian practices I am failing to grow from self to God. God is the yardstick for my measure, not doing so many activities for the sake of activities.  Doing Cistercian practices and good works for the sake of good works or so that others in the Cistercian or faith community will see you and think you are holy, is deceitful and you will have the reward of a deceitful person from God.
5. I need to see with the eyes of faith, not of this world. When I try to recite and read Chapter 4 of St. Benedict’s Rule, The Tools for Good Works, success is not reading it every day or even remembering what I read. Success is placing myself in the presence of God, in this case with silence and solitude, and waiting for God to speak.
6. I need to remember that, according to Brother Michael, OCSO, I pray as I can, not as I can’t.
7. I need to have in me the mind of Christ Jesus (Phil. 2:5) all day and to remind myself frequently during the day of the great love that Jesus had for all of us, and particularly just for me. It just takes a second to lift my heart and mind to glorify God. I do this at daily Eucharist in a more perfect way but have those reminders throughout the day that a Eucharistic mini-moments. If you love someone, you will constantly think about them throughout the day.
8. I need to strive to be humble and obedient to God’s will as personified by the Abbott and the Lay Cistercian community elders.
9. I need to strive for perfection yet realize that original sin keeps me from ever loving with all my heart and soul and strength. As St. Paul says in Phillippians 3: 12-13, I still run the race trying to capture the prize for which Christ captured me.
10. The Cistercian practices with a schedule keep me focused on both my individual schedule (rosary, daily Lectio Divina,  reading Chapter 4 each day,) and my faith community participation (Gathering Day, daily Eucharist, Penance, Morning and Evening Prayer and other Hours).

CISTERCIAN PRACTICES TO HELP ME ON MY JOURNEY

a) The practice of Lectio Divina and prayer.  

I try to practice the discipline of Lectio Divina each day for at least thirty minutes or more. As I become more and more converted to having in me the mind of Christ Jesus, I find that I look forward to the time in silence and solitude that I spend on my one and only Lectio Divina reading, “have in you the mind of Christ Jesus.”  The key here is making Lectio a habit, one that produces that which it signifies, love, without reservation. I also call this fierce love.

Guido II, the Carthusian Prior, devised a four-step ladder or rungs of accomplishment to help his monks reach the ultimate and rare relationship with the heart of Christ, i.e., contemplation. They are reading, meditation, prayer, and contemplation.  As one who aspires to be a Lay Cistercian, I do best at Lectio when I purposefully set my mind to saying over and over my reading (Phil. 2:5) and then let what comes to mind just happen.  I wrote over 36 books as a result of my Lectio encounters with the love of Christ plus the blog you are now reading.
b) The Rule of Saint Benedict. I can see someone who reads St. Benedict’s Rule as thinking this is just for monks and nuns who are Benedictines, Cistercians, or Carthusians.  I am far from being anything of an expert on St. Benedict in any way, but I want to follow his way of spiritual perfection to help me move from self to God.  Here are some of my reflections on the Holy Rule.St. Benedict wrote the Rule as a way to focus monks on living in a community of very different personalities and backgrounds without killing each other. It is that.

• St. Benedict wrote the Rule as a way to focus monks on living in a community of very different personalities and backgrounds without killing each other. It is that.
• St. Benedict wrote the Rule as a way to focus monks on living in a community of very different personalities and backgrounds without killing each other. It is that.
• St. Benedict wrote the Rule as a spiritual guide, as the Prologue says, to learn how to listen with the ear of the heart. There are other Rules from other spiritual figures, Ignatius, Augustine, Basil, Dominic, Francis, and Carmelites, to name only a few, each trying to focus their followers on living the life with Christ as their center. https://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/0480-0547,_Benedictus_Nursinus,_Regola,_EN.pdf
• St. Benedict was influenced by the Conferences of Saint John Cassian (340 BCE) https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03404a.htm and The Rule of the Master.https://archive.org/stream/ruleofstbenedic00delauoft/ruleofstbenedic00delauoft_djvu.txt. You may wish to read more about early monasticism in these references.
• Lay Cistercians use the heritage of St. Benedict and his Rule as the basis for the charism of conversion of life to Christ. St. Benedict’s saying, “That in all things, may God be glorified” exemplifies the simplicity of seeking God in whatever we do.  Believe me, it is not that easy to sustain one’s focus on God.
• As the Lourdes document on Lay Cistercian Spiritual Journey states, we strive for formation, leading to transformation (from self to God).  We try to adapt The Rule of Benedict to a non-monastic setting while trying to keep Cistercian practices and charisms. It is not for everyone, but it is for anyone who wishes to penetrate the merely physical and mental universes to discover a whole new world opened for us by the redemptive sacrifice of Christ in his passion, death, resurrection, and ascension. It is most definitely a call from God to lead the life entirely devoted to loving God with all our heart and mind, even if we so often fail to do so.

c) Knowledge of the treasure of Cistercian literature

This practice is still in the process of unfolding.  I am reading current Cistercian authors. Here are some of the primary sources I have found helpful, for those who wish to dig deeper.

https://www.osb.org/cist/ An inexhaustible source of all things Cistercian and Benedictine.

https://www.carlmccolman.net/books-to-explore/ This is probably, in my biased view, the best website for things Cistercian with emphasis on Lay Cistercian.  Carl is a Lay Cistercian at Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery, Conyers, Georgia.

https://books.google.com/books?id=YIdqbXFOvwwC&pg=PA218&lpg=PA218&dq=early+cistercian+authors&source=bl&ots=stMKzJ4eso&sig=WU4WdO78ATEa_j17NIJRACNOLko&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiEi9-I4fLWAhWoz4MKHahxCc4Q6AEIPjAD#v=onepage&q=early%20cistercian%20authors&f=false.  This huge URL title is the Cambridge Companion to the Cistercian Order.

https://www.cistercianpublications.org/Category/CP-CT!OCW/Other-Cistercian-Writers A great site for Cistercian books from Cistercian Press.

https://books.google.com/books?id=Rj_dTtDoAFEC&pg=PA6&lpg=PA6&dq=early+cistercian+authors&source=bl&ots=4kD8HlUMAN&sig=ZwpLvOxu5tNLg3VBhidqKuXrzeI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiEi9-I4fLWAhWoz4MKHahxCc4Q6AEIQDAE#v=onepage&q=early%20cistercian%20authors&f=false

 
d) The Divine Office (Liturgy of the Hours)

One of my favorite practices to move from self to God is Liturgy of the Hours.  As organized in the Rule of Benedict (c. 540 AD) is typically prayer seven times a day, five of which may be in the form of choir chanting.  The hours are Office of Readings, or Vigils, Morning Prayer, formerly called Lauds, three short, mid-day hours, Evening Prayer and Compline (Night Prayers).  When you attend these hours at Our Lady of the Holy Spirit, Conyers, Georgia, especially Compline before bedtime, the Abbot will bless each person with a sprinkle of holy water.  How nice.

This is one of the most important practices for Lay Cistercians, but it is not without its difficulties.  The official prayer of the Church is meant to be chanted by two choirs of respondants. Since Lay Cistercians do not live in a monastery, this can be challenging.  Personally, I am fortunate to have a group of the laity at Good Shepherd Parish, Tallahassee, Florida who wish to pray the Liturgy of the Hours in choir. We recite but do not chant the Psalms. (Office of Readings, Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer).

Here are some of my observations as one who attempts to be a Lay Cistercian who recites the Liturgy of the Hours.

• Liturgy of the Hours is the prayer of the whole Church, even it recited in private.
• It is the Church giving praise to the Father through the Son, in union with the Spirit.
• It is a way in which I can offer my daily intentions for those I love.
• It is my pledge as a Lay Cistercian to convert my way of thinking and living to have in me the mind of Christ Jesus.
• It is one way during the day during which I can try to focus on loving God with all my heart and soul.  I try to recite the words as though they are a gift from me to God, unique in their weight with my intentions of reparation, praise, thanksgiving, and petition.
• It is a challenge each time because the Wiley One keeps prodding me to stay home and sleep or even to pray at home which would be more convenient. Sometimes I give in to these temptations, but more and more, with God’s grace, I am finding myself aware of what is going on and how much my commitment to pray the Liturgy of the Hours means to my Cistercian spiritual journey.
• I let down others when I choose my own self-comfort over the needs of the community of faith.
• Liturgy of the Hours is a way for me to practice penance and reparation for my sins.  I don’t go around always committing lots of sins, nor do I consider myself evil and sin-centered in my Cistercian spirituality, but I do need God’s grace to keep me from choosing to be a god rather than seeking God in everything I do.

e) Self-knowledge

As a Lay Cistercian, knowledge of self is critical to my journey to Forever.  I know that, without the constant taking up of my cross and renouncing myself, I will slip on the slippery slope of thinking that I am a god. Read what St. Paul says in Romans 7:19.

I am not a rotten piece of flesh covered by a thin candy shell of grace from Christ. Such a radical, Reformation position does not take into account the transformation of the heart and the power of the Sacred Heart to make all things new. I am a responsible person, one who has free will and the self-knowledge to learn from my mistakes and ask for God’s mercy. My human nature, is not rotten anymore than Christ’s human nature was rotten, but, because of the original sin of Adam and Eve, I am wounded and in need to take up my cross daily and reproduce the sufferings of Christ, as St. Paul says in 3:9-17.  As a Lay Cistercian who seeks God in whatever the day brings, my strength is not in my own self-knowledge but rather in having in my the mind of Christ Jesus (Phil. 2:5)

Cistercian spirituality, to my utter astonishment, stresses:

Simplicity:  God is one, so spirituality, the more complex it is, the closer it is to One.  More is not better in prayer and actions.  The contemplative approach is seeking to meet God within us, then listening to what is said, and finally doing what Jesus tells us.  I like to use the analogy (conscious of the fact that all analogies fail to capture or adequately describe our relationship with God) of me sitting on a park bench in the snow, waiting for God to show up. Every day, I come to that park bench (Liturgy of the Hours, Lectio Divina, Eucharist, Rosary, Reading Scripture, Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament). I know that the heart of Christi always there, but it is enough for me to show up every day in the hope that He will see my intentions and grant me mercy, forgiveness, and make all things new in me for that day.  One of the lessons I have realized, as a Lay Cistercian is that each day is a lifetime, you begin each day with morning offering, then Cistercian practices, and whatever happens, it is that in all things, God be glorified. (St. Benedict and I Corinthians 10) If God is love, then love is One.  It is the Mystery of Faith, slowly unfolding its secrets, only to be fully revealed in Heaven, the end of our journey.

Balance:  It is not good to burn yourself out on spiritual practices, although sometimes I think St. Bernard came close.  Balance in my life as Lay Cistercian means I don’t isolate myself from daily immersion in the problems of this world.  It does mean I don’t take my values from it. I like to think of myself as a pilgrim with no home or sense of comfort while I am on this earth. My values come from Chapter 4 of St. Benedict’s Rule, which I try to read and into which I conform each day. Renouncing self-has become a big theme in my spiritual journey, in the past few years. Here too, balance is needed to keep from tripping over the edge of my path.  I don’t want to be a fanatic about Cistercian spirituality, just a broken-down, old temple of the Holy Spirit who sits in the back seats of  church, not daring to look up to Heaven and proclaiming, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

f) The importance of the Eucharist and other sacraments

Sacraments are sacred moments when the individual in, with, and through the community of faith, encounter the God in, with, and through Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit. They are special occasions where we receive God’s own energy to help in our formation. They are instituted by Christ Himself to give us what we need to move from self to God. In all these occasions, we place our hearts next to the heart of Christ. We receive the strength to have in us the mind of Christ Jesus. As part of the Cistercian practices that lead to our formation, Sacraments allow us to be transformed in, with, and through Christ to become more like God and less like our sinful selves.

With time, I have found that I can see beyond mere physical reality to mental reality (meaning) and spiritual reality ( God’s meaning).  Thus, sacraments are not merely physical activities by a group of people but are the means by which the Body of Christ, the local community of faith, transforms itself from self to God.  This mystical view of sacraments, lost with the over-zealous desire of reformers to dump control over them by the monarchical church, is key to transforming oneself as a Lay Cistercian. In a mystical view, the sacramental experience is a lifetime one, given to the Church to help individuals get to Heaven.

A LIFETIME VIEW OF GOD’S GIFTS TO US

Sacraments are gifts like Faith is a gift. We don’t deserve Christ coming to us under the appearance of human activities, but where two or more are there, Christ is in their midst. Here is how I view these gifts in my Cistercian journey. There are four phases containing seven sacramental gifts.

1. Gifts to bring us into adoption as sons and daughters. Christ has chosen us, but it is by faith that we have responded to the call. John 15:12-17 states that we must do what Christ commands of us. Quite simply, it is to love one another as Christ has loved us. There are two sacraments of initiation, ones that help us to get rid of Original Sin and one to sustain us with the Holy Spirit as we struggle to have in us the mind of Christ Jesus (Phil. 2:5).
   

   12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 I do not call you servants[d] any longer because the servant[e] does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. 16 You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. 17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

BAPTISM — In Baptism, we are born of water, water symbolizing new life, making all things new again. But it is more than that, it is what it signifies, washing away the sin of Adam and Eve, cleansing us once and for all from Original Sin. We are now washed clean in the blood of the lamb, whiter than snow, as the Psalmist says.  We are friends of Christ and adopted sons and daughters of the Father, in, with, and through Christ Jesus. There is a problem. Baptism does not take away the effects of the sin of Adam and Eve. We must still suffer, feel pain, get sick, grow old, have personal setbacks in life, we are prone to evil while not being evil ourselves, and we must all die.

Baptism is not just a one time bath in water, although it is that. Once baptized, we become adopted sons and daughters of the Father and must try to follow God’s will as best we can.  We pray to help us renew our baptismal commitment. We say the Creed at each Eucharist to renew our baptismal pledge to renounce Satan and all his allurements. We ask for God’s help to keep us centered on Christ as we live our daily lives.

CONFIRMATION– This is the gift from God that keeps on giving. Once we have been accepted by God as adopted sons and daughters, we find that we are a pilgrim in a foreign land, the land being secular thinking and what the world thinks is true. The Spirit of Truth comes to make his home in us, so much so, that we are called temples of the Holy Spirit. As one who aspires to be a Lay Cistercian, I am a broken-down, old temple of the Holy Spirit, one covered by all kinds of vines and with visible cracks in my facade. Remember, Sacraments are outward signs instituted by Christ to give us grace, God’s own energy.  How thoughtful our God is. We get just what we need, the Holy Spirit to help us discern how to see what the world cannot see, and to hear what the world cannot hear. We can contemplate the depths of the spiritual universe and place our very hearts next to the heart of Christ without being destroyed by pure energy. Christ is our mediator, the one who help us transform from self to God, the purpose for our lives, the one who awaits us in Heaven. As St. Paul says in Philippians 3:8-21,

• One thing about the Holy Spirit. You will never realize the Spirit without Faith, the Mystery of Faith, and without the Spirit, the transformation from self to God is impossible.
• These sacraments are both individual and communal expressions of grace. They are public professions of the faith of the community, into which we were all baptized and received the Spirit of adoption.
• As one who aspires to be a Lay Cistercian, Sacraments are the major highway of the spiritual journey, constructed at great cost by the blood of Christ and those of the martyrs and saints. The road goes through solid rock and enables us to journey on a path made straight by centuries of trying to do the will of the Father through Christ in unity with the Holy Spirit.

2. God sustains us with his own energy. In the knapsack of gifts God gives us both individually and communally, Eucharist is our food for the journey. For Christ, doing the will of the Father was his food. For us, doing the will of Christ and thus the Father is the food that will sustain us in the spiritual universe.

• One of the rules of our universe is everything deteriorates–everything. Only two things did not corrupt–Jesus and his mother, Mary.  In keeping with the natural law, we live inside the boundaries of birth and death.  Being spiritual is not natural because we must give our intellectual assent to living outside of birth or death, in favor of a mindset that says there is no time, no matter, no space where we are headed (with Christ in Heaven). To those who just believe in what you can see, it is folly. To those who believe that Jesus will deliver on what he promised us, it is called salvation and the fulfillment of the Garden of Eden scenario of Adam and Eve.
• It is just like God to give us of Himself under the appearance of bread and wine. Eucharist provides us with what we need to sustain ourselves in this foreign land. We receive these gifts from God each time we proclaim the death of the Lord until He comes.

MERCY — As we approach the reading of the Word we proclaim that we are unworthy to hear the Word of God and ask God and Christ to have mercy on us and wash us with the waters of forgiveness of our sins. As we approach the reception of the Body and Blood of Christ, we proclaim that we are not worthy for Christ to come under our roof. This act of humility, as given by the Roman Centurian, is transformative.

PEACE — We receive God’s own peace in our hearts. It is transformative because anything that comes from our heart being next to the heart of Christ means we grow toward the greater nature (three natures: divine, human, animal and living). For one who can only hope to aspire to be a Lay Cistercian, this is an often overlooked gift from God. We have just given all honor and glory to the Father through Christ in the unity of the Holy Spirit, the ultimate act of sacrifice acceptable to the Father. Now, the Father tells us that we will have in us His very life, that which is pure energy, pure love, pure knowledge, and pure service. This peace, however, must be shared, as it states in Deuteronomy 6 and Matthew 22:34, love your neighbor as yourself.  That is why we give each other the gift that God has given to us. This peace which is given by you to another is transformative.

BREAD AND WINE — The Eucharist is the Last Supper, the Passover from slavery to freedom each time we proclaim the death of the Lord until He comes.  When you die, your family and a few friends will remember you in their thoughts and maybe in a few old, faded photographs, thinking about the fact that you once were.  When Christ died, there were no books Jesus wrote (except to use the Torah and writings of the Prophets). His disciples and the Apostles probably panicked and went into an upper room to re-group and decide what to do now that the reason for their movement died. The only social and religious ties these pioneers had was the Temple, The Torah, and the Jewish festivals of their ancestors.  After Christ died, his disciples were disorganized, fearing authorities, unsure of what Christ taught. What caused a 360 degree turn around? With the reception of the Holy Spirit, their eyes were opened that is, they saw how everything fit together to the glory of the Father. They were no longer fearful but fearless, They knew what to say. Some Apostles and disciples wrote Gospels, a heroic account of Christ using the Greek and Roman heroic myth form (authority from higher person, mission, impossible tasks overcome by the hero, suffering greatly, the descent into hell, dying in some cases, rising from the dead, ascension, and triumph) https://www.storyboardthat.com/articles/e/classical-hero Some, like St. Paul founded a school to stretch the message to the Gentiles through personal journies and writing letters.

Early followers did the only thing they knew, they wrote down what they remembered from what Christ taught. St. John says, in the last part of his Gospel (John 20:30-31) that there were many other signs that Jesus worked and the disciples saw, but these are not recorded in this book. There are recorded so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and that believing this you may have life through his name. This statement is at the core of what I hold as my interpretation of Cistercian spirituality.  The beauty of Cistercian practices as we describe here is putting your heart next to the heart of Christ through various activities. It is this simplicity of love that I desire to emulate in my life as I try to have in me the mind of Christ Jesus. Eucharist is the food of angels but also the food that is God Himself under the appearance of simple bread and wine.

THE REAL PRESENCE

After the Apostles met Christ in the upper room, they were changed. Physically there was no change, but spiritually, they now knew why Jesus came and what they had to do to tell others about it. They also knew that those who followed Christ would need to see the Lord as they had done. They used the Last Supper, Reception of the Holy Spirit, Baptism, Mercy and Forgiveness, Marriage and Priesthood, plus preparation for the journey to Heaven. Early followers of the Master also got zapped by the Holy Spirit and were never the same. Christ is present to them in many ways:

The Last Supper--when they ate the bread and drink the wine, they proclaim the death of Christ until he comes in glory. This is the mystery of faith.

The Body of Christ– it is difficult to see the Body of Christ when all you see are sinful people trying and failing to love God. If all you see is the negative beam in the eyes of others, maybe you should take the beam out of your own eye first and have in your the mind of Christ Jesus.

Christ in our neighbor — St. Benedict talks about treating guests as though they were Christ. This is called hospitality and one of the Charisms of both Benedictine and Cistercian heritages.  It is more difficult for us to see Christ in others than for us to find Christ at Church on Sunday morning, although He is there. We know we are disciples of the Master when we can love those who hate us and do good to others when they persecute or belittle you for Christ’s sake.

Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament — this is the big leagues of Catholic spirituality.  I consider it the ultimate place to contemplate the heart of Christ. Of course, this is possible because of Faith.  Faith is not just intellectual belief, but the radical conviction that Jesus is present under the sign of contradiction, a wafer of bread.  I must struggle to believe this because it goes against reason, but it is reasonable. “O Lord, I believe,” says St. Thomas Aquinas, “help my unbelief.” He also said, “For those who believe in the Real Presence, no answer is necessary. For those who do not, no answer is possible.”

3. Do what Jesus tells you.  Mary told the wine stewards, who came to her with the concern that there was no wine for the wedding celebration, “Do what he tells you.” (John 2:1-12) The same can be said for the Jesus who lives in the Body of Christ in our day. The question becomes, what does he tell me to do? What does he tell the community to do? How we answer that depends on how much we act on what Jesus tells us to do. t helps that we have twenty centuries of trying to have in us the mind of Christ Jesus to discern truth from error.

FORGIVENESS AND MERCY: The gift that sustains us in a world of original sin.

One of the ways Jesus is really present is through the community of faith. He bids us cultivate mercy and forgiveness of others, as we ourselves wish mercy from Him. This was so important to Christ that he instituted a formalized way that the community could receive the grace (energy of God) to make all things new, once again. As an aspiring Lay Cistercian, I am keen on the fact that I don’t go around committing moral every day.  The problem for me is, as I read Chapter 4 of the Tools for Good Works in St. Benedict’s Rule, I am so far from even reaching, much less sustaining them, even with God’s own energy through the sacrament of Reconciliation. I am a mere perpetual novice, a pilgrim in a foreign land, one who will never achieve what I seek.  Maybe that is the way it is supposed to be. At least Christ walks by my side on my Lay Cistercian journey.

The Sacrament of Reconciliation or Penance was instituted by Christ to make all thing new in Christ. As Christ stressed Mercy, so we, followers of the Master must do what he tells us. We must cultivate in our hearts the mercy that comes with unconditional love, but we must be careful not to succumb to the temptation of the world that beckons us to equate mercy with justice. If you have mercy on those who do not believe or who hold teachings contrary to the Apostolic heritage, you don’t have to agree with them that what they hold is correct. If you do, you are not from Christ.

SPIRITUAL PROPAGATION

There are two gifts that Jesus left us that propagate the Church and ensure it is ready for the next generation to love Christ with all their hearts, minds, and strength and our neighbor as ourself: Matrimony and Holy Orders. Remember, Sacraments are holy moments where the community of believers generates new life (Matrimony) and sustains the life of Christ through service to the Body of Christ(Holy Orders).

4. The gift of healing.

Jesus heals each of us, believers and non-believers.  When we get to Heaven, we will see just how much Jesus did for us and just how much we were aware of it during out lifetime.  I think we will also be astonished at who is in Heaven and the good they did in their lifetime.  I don’t want to be too proud to think that I am on a conveyor-belt on the way to Heaven.  I know that we will be judged, each one, according to our good works, not our bad ones.

Healing is a gift, instituted by Christ to give us God’s own life through the Body of Christ. Only Christ can heal, or anyone to whom he gives the gift.  In the upper room, John 20:23-24, he breathed on the disciples and said: “Receive the Holy Spirit, for those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; for those whose sins you retain, they are retained.” 

The gift of healing is one to prepare us either to continue our journey of life or to prepare us to meet Christ in the next.

g) Spiritual accompaniment
The practice of both exterior and interior silence and listening is emphasized in living the Cistercian charism. The annual retreat is a means of reinforcing community and relationship with God. 

What makes a Cistercian monk or nun, according to some of the Brothers who have taught us how to be Lay Cistercians, is silence and solitude.  Not all Cistercians belong to the strict observance. Two divisions of Cistercians come down to us from the time of St. Bernard: Regular Observance and Strict Observance.

The following excellent description of what is Cistercian is taken from the website of Our Lady of Dallas, a Regular Cistercian observance. “Cistercian monks and nuns derive their name and origins from a place in France called Cîteaux (in Latin, “Cistercium”), where in 1098 St. Robert of Molesme and twenty-one monks founded a seminal monastery. Today, two canonically distinct religious orders share the heritage of Citeaux: the Cistercian Order (O. Cist.), sometimes called ‘Common Observance’ Cistercians; and the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (O.C.S.O.), more commonly known as ‘Trappists’ on account of their derivation from the seventeenth-century, French reform associated with the Abbey of La Trappe. Both orders have men’s and women’s monasteries with communities throughout the world.” https://www.cistercian.org/abbey/history/the-Cistercian-order/index.html

For those who wish to dig deeper still, try the following: https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03780c.htm

All Lay Cistercians exist because they have an Abbot/Abbess who accepted them as Lay associates of their Monasteries. I am fortunate to have been accepted by Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery (Trappist) in Conyers, Ga.  www.trappist.net/lay-cistercians. We learn about Cistercian practices and charisms from the monks, both brothers, and priests. Five pillars of the Strict Observance Cistercians (Trappists) are silence, solitude, pray, work, and community.  I am striving to put these five anchors of contemplative spirituality into my life as a layperson. I have a long way to go but am making some headway.  It is indeed a journey with Christ not only the prize but a welcomed companion on the journey.

As a member of the Lay Cistercian community, I promise to make an annual retreat and other practices that I have commented on above, as ways to focus my mind and heart on Christ with all my strength and love my neighbor as myself. You would think it gets easier the older you get, but I find the Wiley One often creeps into my thinking trying to pry me away from practicing my Cistercian charisms, broken-down, old temple of the Holy Spirit that I am. It is my journey, and there is great joy in having Christ walk with me on the journey to Emmaus, once again. Once you have seen the Lord, nothing is the same again in your life.  I will suffer any indignity, any discount, any attempt to get me to think of Cistercian spirituality as la-la land, and open opposition to my travel to Gathering Day in Conyers, Georgia, as St. Paul says in Phillipians 3:10-11, “…all I want is to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and to share his sufferings by reproducing the pattern of his death. That is the way I hope to take my place in the resurrection of the dead.”

Praise to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now and Forever, the God who is, who was, and who is to come, at the end of the Ages. Amen and Amen.

The following comments are my own reflections from the document on Lay Cistercian Journey discussed at a Gathering Day of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery on October 1, 2017. It is part of our on-going Junior Professed Formation Program. Each month, our Lay Cistercian Advisor, Brother Cassian, OSCO, presents various approaches to 20th Century Cistercian Spirituality for Lay Cistercians based on the documents of International Lay Cistercians. What follows is the Lourdes document on Lay Cistercian Spiritual Journey.  Look it up for yourself  on:

https://www.cistercianfamily.org/documents/Spiritual%20Journey%20FINAL%2020June2014.pdf Over the next two to three weeks, each day, I will be commenting on one part of this document as it affects me as an aspiring Lay Cistercian, struggling to move from self to God.

The third part of the International Lay Cistercian document has to do with the central place of community in becoming more like Christ and less like you.

The bolded text is the document followed by my reflections.

3) The central place of community, lay and monastic, as a means of spiritual growth. Our response to the call of Christ leads us into a Lay Cistercian community where we are mutually enriched in a relationship with each other and with the monastic community. The monastic community recognizes the presence of Cistercian values in the lay group and authorizes it to be called a “Lay Cistercian Community.” Walking with others brings richness, as the sharing and communion experienced are sources of support and joy. The community also creates constraints, requiring patience and listening, and could cause suffering. We recognize that community is an essential and indispensable element of our journey, a necessary means of spiritual growth. We must learn to love those who are called to the same community, sharing with each other with honesty and humility. Thus, we learn to see Christ in one another and to love as Christ has loved us.

Here are a few ideas I have, after reading the section on the place of community in Lay Cistercian life.

I have always been impressed that St. Benedict compiled a list of rules to allow itinerant, 5th-century monks to live together without killing each other. He was influenced by the writings of St. John Cassian https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03404a.htm. who lived in the 4th Century.  These rules are like the banks of a river, setting boundaries of human behavior so that the waters of the human condition can flow without too much interference.  What Benedict did was to give a blueprint to many monks or nuns to live a life focused on Christ, the mystery of Faith. There are four principles that I see St. Benedict stressing to his monks.

1. Whatever you do, prefer nothing to having in you the mind of Christ Jesus.
2. The community is a school of love, where we practice how to love God with all our hearts, our souls, our strength, and our neighbor as yourself.
3. Cultivate humility, obedience to the will of God as exercised by the Abbot/Abbess or superior who takes the place of Christ.
4. Seek God by using the tools of good works (Chapter 4) daily, pray the Office of Readings, Receive the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, experience Christ in each other.

Part of the Mystery of Faith is the simultaneous dwelling of imperfect and sinful humans with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. How could Christ possibly trust his Church to sinful and weak humans, who can choose the wrong path and yet sincerely lead us toward Christ?  How can the Church be Holy as in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic, yet be populated by sinful persons like ourself?  Part of the answer is, we are not rotten persons but merely weak and choose the wrong path sometimes. Community brings us back to what is good and true each time. If all we have is our own forgiveness of our own sins, we have a fool for a god.

As one who aspires to be a Lay Cistercian and follow the Rule of St. Benedict as practiced by Cistercians, I do not live in a community of faith that constantly interacts with other Lay Cistercians. Yet, the Gathering Day affords me the opportunity to interact with community members who each have different gifts of the Spirit and ways to seek God. When we share our deepest feelings about moving from self to God with other Lay Cistercians, I myself experience the God in others and so, “we learn to see Christ in one another and to love as Christ has loved us.” 

The Real Presence of Christ is not just under the appearance of bread and wine, although it is most certainly that. It is also the Real Presence of Christ under the appearance of each other. There is one faith, one Lord, one Baptism, one Spirit, one priesthood, and one God with three distinct persons. Community uncovers what is real, although invisible, and allows me to seek God as only I can do it.

LEARNING POINTS

1. Read Acts 15:5-28. The early community had to expand to include all persons (catholic) and not just those who were Jews.
2. The community is the living Body of Christ now and in each age. Do you believe this enough to see the power of the Holy Spirit in the Church today?
3. Do you meet together frequently to share the Spirit or are you like someone who ha an East/West coast marriage?
4. Being in the presence of believers does something wonderful to you.

Praise be the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, both now and Forever. The God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages. Amen and Amen.

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