A Heart for the Waiting

    As we wait in Advent's Hope-filled Peace for the coming of the Christ Child, let us not forget how our Lord waits for us... 

Who is this who waits
With arms extended
And wide open hands?
It is Christ, Our Lord.
For ages and ages,
He has been waiting here,
Generations have passed,
He has not folded His wings
Or closed His eyes.
For whom does He wait,
for whom the invitation,
for whom the inexhaustible patience
of infinite love?
It is for one,
who comes slowly,
hesitating, afraid,
trusting more to chance,
to perishable things
and the frailties of men,
than to the everlasting arms.
It is for me,
that for two thousand years,
Love has waited here,
with wide wings spread.
It is for me,
the courtesy
that will not be made importunate,
will not constrain my love
or force the suit.
It is for me,
the silence of the word
wherein the beating heart
alone is audible.
It is for me that God awaits,
with open hands,
a beggar at the locked gates
of my soul.
It is for one who doubts,
mistrusts and fears,
who sees the tears
upon the human face of God,
through her own tears,
and is not moved.
Of all the world
un-worthiest to be loved,
driven at last
from self-inflicted harms,
Reluctantly,
to the Eternal Arms.

—Caryll Houselander

Advent blessings, Friends.

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A Wake-Up Call to the Heart

     Hello... I came across this poem today. It arrived in my email inbox attached to a weekly newsletter from Joan Chittister, OSB. Its simplicity and wisdom seemed to wake me from my noontime slump. I share it with you here. It is a poem by Alden Solovy, a Jewish liturgist, poet, and teacher that now lives in Jerusalem.

Bees

The bees
do not stop
collecting pollen
when humans
murder each other
with guns.
The bees think:
How strange,
how low
on the evolutionary scale
must those humans be,
that they haven't yet
figured out
how to make honey
or peace.

Go into our remarkable world, filled with the generous and the good as well as the lonely and seeking, to join the bees - making life sweeter for those who need our support and kindness... Offer peace by your very presence. 

Do so in the Name of the One who emptied Himself for the love He has for each one of us. Amen.  

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What It Means - Having a Prayerful Heart

     I have found that for many years I've been drawn to the writings of authors with OSB following their names - Benedictine monks and nuns. However, never so much as in the past five months since preparing myself to become a Benedictine Oblate! One of the most beautiful books on prayer that I've ever read (and as a spiritual director, I've read a few) was written by Joan Chittister, OSB entitled Breath of the Soul: Reflections on Prayer. Below is an excerpt from this good book that may lay to rest some of your fears that you're not praying "right" or if you're asking yourself, "How is my prayer helping me to grow closer to God?" Some fears can be assuaged by knowing, without a doubt, that it is the Holy Spirit that calls us to pray and by just giving in to this urge to spend time with God, we are praying the right way. And I'll let Sr. Joan, an authority, speak to any of your other concerns and desire to have a prayerful heart:

Many of the prayers we say have been passed down to us for generations. The psalms, for instance, mark the cry of the human spirit across time. The Scriptures speak of peoples and prayers over 20 centuries before us. Prayers such as these in every culture carry the wisdom of the past to enlighten the insights of the present.

These prayers are venerable, a history of the unchanging human spirit. But they do not guarantee that those who say them will ever be really "prayerful" people they tell us only that people pray.

Prayerfulness on the other hand is the capacity to walk in touch with God through everything in life. It is the internal awareness that God is with me - now, here, in this, always. It is an awareness of the continuing presence of God. It is my dialogue with the living God who inhabits my world in Spirit and in Mind. 

Prayerfulness sees God everywhere.

Prayerfulness talks to God everywhere.

Prayerfulness submits the uncertainties of the moment to the scrutiny of the internal eye of God. It trusts that no matter how malevolent the situation may be, I can walk through it unharmed because God is with me. 

Prayerfulness is both gift and grace, both a natural disposition and a quality of soul to be developed. But what develops it?

Prayerfulness is fostered by the simple consciousness that God is. That God is near us at all times. That God is closer to us than the breath we breathe. That God is available, a silence in the midst of chaos, a voice in the midst of confusion, a promise at the center of the tumult.

If I ask and I listen and I reach out and I fill my heart with the words of the One who is the Word, then I will be answered. Somehow the path will become clear. 

So take some time to be with God today. It will refresh your soul; it will relax your mind and lighten today's load. It will deepen the only completely loving and true relationship you will ever have this side of the grave. A prayerful heart is a grateful one. May the Peace of Christ be with you today. 

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The Heart of a Beginner

 "Are you hastening toward your heavenly home?

Then with Christ's help, 

keep this little rule that we have written for beginners.

After that, you can set out for the loftier summits

of the teaching and virtues, we mentioned above, and

under God's protection you will reach them. Amen."

Rule of St. Benedict (73. 8-9)

    So, I am beginning this entry with the last paragraph of St. Benedict's Rule.  Because that is where I am today, about to venture into the life of a Benedictine Oblate. A beginner, Benedict points out to his monks, is all we are and all we may ever be. The "loftier summits," which include being virtuous, can only begin to be reached under God's loving protection of each of us. But oh, how God wants us to fly under "the shadow of His wings"! (Psalm 17:8)

Today, on the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter, I will meet with my new community of 11 for the first time, as we take this journey together in offering ourselves to Christ and neighbor in a new way.  Frankly, I am not 100% sure of what I'm getting myself into, but that's what the next two years are all about.  Prayer, study, discernment, promise or not...  I just know that there's been a nudging of the Spirit that I felt inclined to run toward. Hastening, if you will. 😊

Benedict wrote, "Are you hastening toward your heavenly home?" Such a question for us to ask ourselves during 2022, when this question was first posed in 516! According to biographers at the time that St. Benedict lived, he was so disgusted by the way of the world back then that he left behind all that he would receive as his father's heir in order to receive an infinitely larger inheritance from his Heavenly Father.  And Benedict's offspring, if you will, continues to grow - even as the world now seems about as corrupt as one can dare to imagine. I am praying to find the inspiration to become part of his legacy, his offspring...

So, I ask again, "Are we hastening toward our heavenly home?" Are we running toward Love or just away from hate?  Do we blame God for what life creates for us to endure, or do we turn to God to be our "fortress and deliverer"?  Do we really understand that everlasting deliverance is always and continually our option to choose? Is God made in our flawed and mortal image, or do we seek out the Infinite Holy One?

Today the Church recognizes and celebrates the occasion when Jesus gave Peter the keys to the Kingdom of heaven and made him the Rock "upon which I build my church." (Peter who is about as human as we get!)  This reading from the Gospel of Matthew 16: 13-19, not only shows Peter's deep faith in Jesus being the Lord, but it also shows to me the trust that Jesus puts in his friend Peter. 

With the help of the Holy Spirit, Peter goes on to lead a Church that will never succumb to "the gates of the netherworld." With the help of the Holy Spirit, we can ask for the grace to know our God more intimately now - and to hasten us to eternal life in our heavenly home!  

Pray for us new Benedictine Oblate candidates, as we will pray for our hurting world.             

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Listening with the Ears of my Heart

 Listen carefully, my son, to the master’s instructions,

and attend to them with the ear of your heart.

This is advice from a father who loves you;

welcome it, and faithfully put it into practice...

                                    - Prologue, The Rule of St. Benedict (1) 

          Thus begins the The Rule of St. Benedict followed by monks and religious since it was written in the 5^th Century.  The father referred to in the opening lines of the Prologue is the Holy Father Benedict who took it upon his heart and his very soul to lead those within his monastery walls to a life living for Christ – putting love for Christ “before all else.”

In the past two years, I have been searching for a path that would bring me closer to Christ. I wanted to give my life more fully to Him and for Him. (Less of me, more of Him.) I studied with the lay Dominicans (Order of Preachers) for a while – such kind people to allow me in to discern if the way of St. Dominic was a good fit for me. I found after six months and daily prayer that it was not where I felt called to be. Yet I still longed for community – above and beyond the community of believers that I am blessed to have in my life and in my parish.

A week before Thanksgiving in 2021, I found myself between books – an oddity – and found one on a bookshelf at home that had been around a very long time, but I hadn’t read. It actually seemed to call out to me, so I pulled Wisdom Distilled from the Daily, by Joan Chittister, off the shelf and settled on the sofa, seeking good spiritual reading from a woman who is a well-known author and sought out for her deep spirituality – living her life as a Benedictine nun, theologian, and peacemaker.

Once I began reading, I couldn’t put it down – yet I wanted to savor every word and make it last. By the time I finished, the day before Thanksgiving, I went online to find out more about Monasteries of the Heart – an online community for those wanting to grow in a monastic  spirituality by living a more deliberate life.  I read and clicked and read and clicked and went further out into the ether's web of sites.  But yet I wasn’t feeling satisfied that I’d found what I was looking for... And at the same time, I didn’t even know what I was looking for! It felt like I was on a search that Someone else was directing.

I was led to the webpage for the Benedictine Sisters of Erie and remembered that the Benedictines also had a community for lay people, known as Oblates.  I read about the monastery’s Oblate Way of Life and thought, “Do I dare?”  The more I pondered the idea, the more drawn in I felt. Then I remembered it was the day before Thanksgiving. Should I call the number listed? Surely no one will answer today.  But I called anyway, and I left a message that I can only describe as “hungry.” I received a call back within the hour.

When I answered the call that came up as Erie, PA, a wonderful oblate of many years, working at the monastery that day, said “Nancy?” – and from that moment, I began to hope that my life would be forever changed!

S-l-o-w-l-y fast forward to January 25, 2022, I received an email telling me that my application had been reviewed and that a Zoom meet-up for introductions would take place on the 31^st – getting closer to my journey finally beginning. So if you’re a friend reading this blog or maybe someone who loves praying for others, pray for me and my newly forming small community, as we meet together on Tuesday afternoons. We eleven “candidates” will spend a year in study together, while forming "community," and a second year of further study and discernment as “initiates” before making a final commitment to the Oblate Way of Life and to the particular monastery with whom I have studied. I am looking forward to writing about my experiences over the next two years.  I hope you are well, safe, and happy. 💙 

I wish you Christ’s Peace.

☩

Never swerving from his instructions, then, but faithfully

observing his teaching in the monastery until death,

we shall through patience share

in the sufferings of Christ

that we may deserve also to share

in his kingdom. Amen.

                                                - Prologue, The Rule of St. Benedict (50)