Newsletter Year: 2011

Preparing well for anything takes discipline. If I am going to preach at a Sunday Mass, I must discipline myself to spend some time almost every weekday to reflect on the Sunday readings, to jot down relevant thoughts, and eventually to organize them. If I am traveling to an unfamiliar destination, I must discipline myself to obtain good directions and to follow them. (Most of us probably know from experience that failure to do this can result in disaster!) Cooking a festive meal requires discipline to mix well and time well. Facing an athletic contest likewise requires much…

Is lectio divina a problematic task fraught with difficulties, or is it a marvelous opportunity to encounter Christ? A number of people, including Oblates, have told me that they find it very hard to practice lectio. They verbalize their hardships with such expressions as “I read and read, and nothing comes”; “I don’t hear God saying anything to me”; “I have no insights”; or “I just feel bored and distracted.” Indeed, I agree that the practice of lectio can be difficult and unrewarding at times. I recently finished going through the prophet Ezekiel for my lectio. The last chapters of that book describe in great detail…

This past fall I was doing my lectio divina with the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah. Praying over this prophet’s words can be difficult for me because the text frequently seems to portray God as upset, angry, and even destructive. Jeremiah includes such prophecies as, “See now, says the Lord God, my anger and my wrath I will pour out upon this place, upon man and beast, upon the trees of the field and the fruits of the earth; it will burn without being quenched” (Jer 7:20). He also proclaims, “For the Lord has wrought our destruction, he has given us poison to drink, because we have sinned against the Lord” (Jer 8:14). How can this be? What can it mean for us? Perhaps we would like to dismiss these words as a distorted or exaggerated description of God from the Old Testament or would prefer to apply God’s…

We live in a society of many imbalances, one of which involves work. Large numbers of people are unemployed or underemployed. Other people are overworked, sometimes because others have been laid off and leave additional burdens behind for the remaining employees. People without sufficient work or income may be tempted to become discouraged and murmur. Those with too much work can likewise be tempted to lose heart and grumble. What do the Holy Rule and Benedictine monastic life have to say in response to…