Newsletter Year: 2021

One richly meaningful Scripture passage
to which I often turn is Romans 8:28: “We
know that all things work for good for
those who love God, who are called according
His purpose.” That profound truth
reminds us that God the Father brought
good out of the worst tragedy of history,
the crucifixion and death of His Son, Our
Lord. Through Christ, the Father continues
to bring amazing good out of deplorable and
disgraceful situations, and we are called to
hold on faithfully to that central truth even
when we cannot see the good. That wisdom
does not mean, of course, that we just let
evil prevail and not do anything to oppose it
when it is in our power to do so; God sometimes
uses us to bring about some good.
However, even when we are called to fight
actively against evil, we must do so within
God’s call, in cooperation with His grace,
and with the love of Christ.

Every now and then, though less often than I would like, a phrase from the readings at Mass touches my heart and then sticks with me. Toward the end of the Easter Season, when Gospel passages were taken from Saint John, we heard Our Lord assert, “’I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now’” (Jn 16:12). Then He adds that when the Holy Spirit comes, “’He will guide you to all truth’” (Jn 16:13). The words “much more” give me encouragement. When my prayer, both private and communal, is dry over long periods of time, it seems that the Lord is not saying anything to me—at least nothing that I can experience as touching me or changing me. I then wonder whether if I am being hard of heart and failing to listen. Perhaps the Lord has given up on me and on the possibility of my further renewal in Christ. (I know that God never gives up on us, but sometimes it certainly seems to be the case when I feel that I have “lost” Him.)…

Perhaps among the least palatable verses of the Rule are those of the sixth and seventh steps of humility. St. Benedict tells us, “The sixth step of humility is that a monk [be] content with the lowest and most menial treatment and [regard] himself as a poor and worthless workman in whatever task he is given” (RB 7:49). The seventh step may sound just as degrading; it stipulates that a person be “convinced that he is inferior to all and of less value, humbling himself and saying with the Prophet: ‘I am truly a worm, not a man, scorned by men and despised by the people’ (Ps 22:7)” (RB 7:52). How can such statements be reconciled with our Easter faith, which proclaims that we have been redeemed through the…

What impression do people generally have of monks – or other vowed religious? At least for Catholic Christians it is probably that those who profess religious vows are spiritually strong, and there may be some truth to that. In order to profess vows of obedience, stability, and conversatio morum (or the better known vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience), a person must have achieved a certain degree of spiritual maturity and the ability to make sacrifices of lesser things for a higher good – ultimately for God Himself. St. Benedict says in his final chapter of the Rule that those who observe the Rule “can show that we have some degree…