Oblates of St. Benedict » Rule

Know how to meditate

admin — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 10:02:13 +0000

Learn how to meditate on paper. Drawing and writing are forms of meditation. Learn how to contemplate works of art. Learn how to pray in the streets or in the country. Know how to meditate not only when you have a book in your hand but when you are waiting for a bus or riding in a train.

Thomas Merton

Faith

admin — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 09:56:11 +0000

We too often forget that faith is a matter of questioning and struggle before it becomes one of certitude and peace. You have to doubt and reject everything else in order to believe firmly in Christ, and after you have begun to believe, your faith itself must be tested and purified. Christianity is not merely a set of forgone conclusions. Faith tends to be defeated by the burning presence of God in mystery, and seeks refuge from him, flying to comfortable social forms and safe convictions in which purification is no longer an inner battle but a matter of outward gesture.

Thomas Merton

Moving toward a low-impact environment

admin — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 10:21:10 +0000

Large numbers of people are staying away from mainline church services precisely because they do not want to be put to sleep; much organized religion is seen as all too boring. The absence of religion does not necessarily make them more socially aware. An alternative source of desensitization has emerged. Our excitement-prone generation is looking for entertainment, something to distract from the tedium of daily living. Everything has to be presented in an entertaining way: the news, the liturgy, even school textbooks. I suppose you won't continue reading these reflections unless you find them at least dimly entertaining. Furthermore, in a context of spectacular images, loud music, and chemical stimulation there is little scope to be touched either by our neighbor's need or by the promptings of conscience. By creating a miasma of sensory fireworks we effectively block out anything beyond what is sensate: any spiritual perceptiveness, any attention to interiority. Our conscience is deadened by sensory overload and we are little aware of the possibilities that are open to us to create a better world.

Becoming more spiritually aware means moving toward a low-impact environment. The voice of conscience and the words of the Gospel are but a still, small voice in our noisy universe. They are further overpowered by the interior fantasies that form from the residual memories of sensory experience. A lively imagination stirs up the emotions and keeps us from attaining that level of inner tranquility that enables us to attend to the promptings of conscience and to the stirrings of the Holy Spirit. The result is that we are so awake on one level that there is no room for a more interior awakening. Most of us cannot truly listen to another speaking if we are simultaneously watching television, texting on our cell phone, and internally fretting about some imagined grievance. In the same way, we cannot be spiritually aware without turning down the volume of other voices.

Micahel Casey, OSCO
The Road to Eternal Life, p. 33.

A point of pure truth

admin — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 09:51:43 +0000

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our live, which is inaccessable to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us.

Thomas Merton
Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

Compunction: the moment of awakening

admin — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 10:13:40 +0000

In traditional monastic language the great means of ending our complacent slumbers was the sting of compunction. The Latin word compunctio means a piercing; it is like sticking a pin in somebody with the purpose of waking them up. Compunction, involves a moment of awakening, the first glimmer of enlightenment, the dawning of a new day lived against a different horizon. Saint John Cassian, one of Benedict's principal sources, defines compunction as whatever can "by God's grace waken our lukewarm and sleepy souls" (Conferences 9.26). This definition seems to envisage us living our spiritual lives in a slumberous state of half-wakefulness. The grace of compunction is the transition to a state of fuller awareness. The great difference between the saints and the rest of us is that they were spiritually awake more of the time than we are; they were alert to possibilities. It is because they went through life in a state of greater consciousness that they were more conscientious in doing good and avoiding evil. We who stumble through life with many mistakes and omissions admire their saintly deeds but without necessarily realizing that perhaps we could imitate them more closely if our spiritual senses were not so drowsy.