On The Holy Spirit, the Hospitality and Vulnerability of Friendship, and the New Life Eastering in Us

 The last few days have been full of God's surprises, "gifts beyond imagining", as my director might say! Everything has been about the deep bonds we form, sometimes lose touch with, and then discover again or reestablish in a new way. While these days have meant renewed relationships with friends and Sisters once grown distant in time and space, they were especially informed by the readings for two Communion services I did and the reflections I offered on those readings. On Friday we looked at the Gospel reading about Jesus calling us friends and the shift from the bonds of law that held Israel together making one People out of disparate tribes to the bonds of love which motivate (or are called to motivate) Christians. We also reflected on the challenge Jesus calls us each to, namely, that, in the power of the Holy Spirit, we allow him to be a friend to us and that we respond as those who would be friends to him and all he delights in. In particular, in Friday's reflection I spoke of sin as falling short (hamartia), not of the demands of the law, but of our own true humanity while the bonds of love animate and empower us to fulfill this God-given potential. This is our most fundamental vocation.

Communion Services and Readings:

On Monday I enlarged on the idea of this challenge and the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives because the readings focused on the sending of the Holy Spirit to open our hearts and make us hospitable. I reminded the assembly that the term "heart" is a theological term which refers first of all to God and I noted something I have written about here, namely that is it not so much that we have a heart and then God comes to dwell there, but that where God comes to dwell in us (and where we open ourselves to that more and more in the power of the Spirit) we have a heart!! "Heart" is defined in the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament as the place where God bears witness to Godself. Hospitality is the key to understanding what it means to be truly human.

But hospitality is also the key to understanding what it means for God to be truly God. While we have grown up with the omnipotent, immutable, impassible God of Greek philosophy, that is not the God Jesus reveals to us. Instead, Jesus reveals (both shows and makes real in space and time) a God who has chosen not to remain alone, a vulnerable God who loves and suffers, and opens his own heart to us, a God who, in Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit has determined to take humanity (and perhaps the whole of creation) into Godself. Ours is a vulnerable God, a God who, though he might have been entirely self-sufficient and alone, has chosen not to remain so. And so Jesus will go to prepare a place for us within God's very life; he will share with us that deep bond of love that obtains between himself and his Abba and, in that Holy Spirit, animate and empower us to be Friends of God and all of God's creation.

What struck me most in Monday's readings was that as Jesus shows us who we are and he shows us who God really is, the key word defining the situation in either case is "hospitality." The Holy Spirit opens our hearts and makes us vulnerable and, in the same way, that Spirit opens the heart of God to us and makes God vulnerable to God's own creation. In all of this I was reflecting on what I first referred to a few posts ago as "bonds of being" --- those deep bonds which link us to others in the power of the Spirit. These are the bonds that animate and empower us to be truly human, to come to perfection, completion, or fulfillment. And they are the deep bonds without which we live superficial lives which, in one way and another, "miss the mark".

Renewing and Strengthening Deep Bonds --- Camaldolese and Franciscan:

And in the midst of all this reflection I was renewing or strengthening the deep bonds of my own life, first with the Camaldolese, especially the monks and oblates of Incarnation Monastery and New Camaldoli Hermitage. And then, I was led to a link regarding the Jubilee celebration of a classmate of mine from the Franciscans. I watched the video and there Sister Christine was! But she looked frail and where I have been aware of her from time to time over the years, I never contacted her; but here, because I felt concerned, I determined I would contact the Mother House and see if she was okay. Sisters in the MH sent my note to Sister Christine and she contacted me; we began emailing last week. Yesterday we met via ZOOM and caught up some on our own lives and then the lives of our original classmates!! 

The sharing we did was a complete joy! We talked about and compared things we had forgotten or never known about one another including the fact that we were both born prematurely at almost identical weights in the very same hospital in So CA!!! We were equally premature and spent the same amount of time in incubators. We were also both converts to Catholicism with families who, at least in the beginning, did not approve our conversion (I did remember that Christine was from a Methodist family but she had not recalled I was also a convert to Catholicism).  It turned out our lives were full of such similarities we had been unaware of all those years ago. Some of them, more contemporary, significant, and surprising similarities, very much define who we are today.

But what was really most wonderful was the way Sister Christine caught me up as best she could on what happened to herself and other classmates once I had left the Franciscans and opened herself to knowing me in a new way. There were deep bonds formed (and forming) 50 + years ago, though I had not appreciated that sufficiently; there were deep wounds as well (it is never easy leaving a congregation, I think). I experienced a new sense of healing and wholeness from this renewed connection, and I look forward to wherever it takes us. I came away from all of this aware that God has been working overtime in my life these past weeks reminding me of all the ways we are made for hospitality and all the ways we need it if we are to be our truest selves. I had a sense of "coming home" when I visited New Camaldoli a couple of weeks ago, and I had a sense of "coming home" yesterday as Christine and I met by ZOOM. In all of that I experienced the gift of the Spirit Eastering in us ---empowering and animating deep bonds that transcend time, and space, and (as Jesus reminds us) even death --- gifts beyond imagining! Thanks be to God!!

Feast of St Benedict: Hospitality as a Synonym for Mercy

When, while reflecting on Friday's readings two years ago, I told the story of the Nickel Mines massacre, I mainly focused on the theme of forgiveness and how it is that the Amish were capable of forgiving Roberts and also extending that forgiveness to his widow and larger family. When Matthew tells us not to worry about what we are to say in such crises because the Holy Spirit will  provide us with whatever that is, it reminded me of the Amish practice of forgiving routinely, consciously living from the Gospel, and thereby creating habits of the heart which do indeed enable them (and us) to speak and act as Christians empowered by the Holy Spirit in even such terrible situations. My point two years ago was that we are called as Christians to hand on the Gospel of reconciliation and the Amish show us vividly what that means.

But those daily readings have to do with more than just forgiving those who hurt us. Again and again references are made to a richer or broader concept than forgiveness as we ordinarily understand it. That broader concept, that reality is the mercy of God. As I reflected and meditated on these readings I was reminded once again of how inadequate our common notion of mercy actually is. Too often we see it as "letting someone off the hook" or as "the opposite (or at least the mitigation) of justice." Too often I have the impression we see mercy as a form of sentimentalism or weakness and we say that God's mercy must be balanced by his justice (or vice versa).  But Pope Francis, Walter Cardinal Kasper and others (including myself in some of the things I have written here) are clear that God's mercy is his justice. It is in being merciful that God sets things right and establishes a Kingdom (a Divine realm of sovereign empowerment) we can hardly imagine. Friday's readings along with the tragedy at Nickel Mines help us understand how that is the case.

Each of the readings speaks of forgiveness but they also convey the more expansive and challenging idea that when God is merciful it means that he gives us a place to belong, a place in his own life, a place where we are safe and free to be ourselves, a place which is free from fear and where vulnerability is not a dangerous to us but is an altogether (if still risky) human and normal reality.  When God forgives it means God extends his mercy to those who are sinners, those who are strangers or aliens, those who have offended him and injured those most precious to God (including themselves!). After all a sinner is one who quite literally has made herself alien to God, a stranger whom God does not know in that intimate Biblical sense of the term. In each of the readings there are references to being offered such a place, being made to be other than orphans or sinners, being shown compassion and having a place in God's own life.

In the Gospel lection Matt is dealing with a community being torn apart because of the new faith; it is a community in which the people are asked to continue to proclaim the Good News in the face of all opposition and to offer mercy and make neighbors and even family of strangers and aliens on a level which was not common otherwise. Both the Nickle Mines Amish and St Benedict, whose Feast day was yesterday, help us to understand this mercy in terms of doing justice and making the world a different place -- the world of neighbors, not aliens. The word that ties all three dimensions together, forgiveness, mercy as offering people a place to truly belong, as well as the stories of the Amish and St Benedict, is hospitality. What I came to see in reflecting on the readings, the original story of Nickle Mines and my own Benedictine Tradition is that hospitality and mercy stand as synonyms in the Christian Tradition.

In the Nickle Mines massacre the Amish offered forgiveness almost immediately and I told that story two years ago. But there was more to the story, more that I did not know until I read the book, Amish Grace. Forgiveness would have allowed the participants in that story to move forward without holding grudges. It would have allowed a more or less easy peace with the world of the "English" and especially with Robert's (the gunman's) wife, children, and larger family. But this was not sufficient for the Amish. They literally welcomed the gunman's family into their lives. Not only did they allow Robert's wife and mother to visit the victims regularly, but, as I may have noted, his Mother came weekly to the most badly injured child and read to her, sang to her and sometimes bathed her. Robert's parents held pool parties for the children and had teas for the parents. They were welcome in one another's homes. Indeed the Amish children were reported to have said to Robert's Mom, you haven't come to read or sing to us yet; when will you come and visit us? Everyone involved spoke of "the new normal" they had to get used to --- there was no going back to the way it was or pretending it had not happened! But additionally, they worked hard to create a "new normal" in which strangers became neighbors and neighbors became family. In short, they showed mercy as well as forgiveness and changed the nature of their world for everyone involved.

It is more than a little appropriate then that the Church asks us to revisit these readings and I choose to revisit this story on the feast of St Benedict. Benedictines know that hospitality is a key virtue and very high value in the Christian life. In the Rule of St Benedict we are reminded that everyone who comes to our door is to be treated as Christ. All monasteries have guesthouses and most do a wonderful job of accommodating guests as they would Christ himself. But hospitality is about more than providing someone a place to sleep or a seat and plate at our table. It is about learning to see the face of an individual in place of that of the stranger; it is about overcoming the stereotypes and bigotry that are parts of our own hearts and ways of seeing reality. It is about facing the fears within us that are triggered by our encounters with those who are different than we are and in so doing, making of the world a place which is truly more just and safer for everyone. To be merciful to another is to do the same. It is to allow them a place in our lives, yes, but even more it means to let them into our hearts.

When the young man asks Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?" Jesus doesn't point to any single group. Instead, he tells the story of the good Samaritan, the quintessential alien who cares for a man (an enemy) who has been mugged and who then ensures that "enemy's" future care at a local inn as well.  Neighbors, Jesus tells us in this way, are simply strangers we do not allow to remain strangers. They are strangers whom we allow to genuinely belong in our own lives and world, aliens we make at home. In Jesus' parable, the Samaritan makes a neighbor of a stranger while the religious leaders who are this man's neighbors treat him as an alien and make a stranger of him. The Samaritan makes of the world a place that is a bit safer and looks a bit different to the man who was mugged. Of course, it takes preparation and practice to do such dramatically compassionate acts. The Amish practice forgiveness and mercy/hospitality every day of their lives. In this regard at least, their hearts were readied in a significant way for the crisis that befell that awful day in Nickel Mines, PA. When Jesus/Matt tells the community not to worry about what they are to say on their own day of crisis he points to the Holy Spirit who will speak through them --- if, that is, their own hearts are readied as well.

My prayer this day is that each of us will look at the ways in which we fail to have mercy, fail to offer hospitality, fail to make a neighbor of the stranger, choose to remain aliens, or to treat others thusly and act in some way to change those things. For God, having mercy and offering a place in his own life is the same thing. It is in loving that God mercifully does justice and makes the world a hospitable place. May we draw these realities a little closer together in our own minds, hearts, and lives as well --- and may our world be made more merciful, more hospitable, and more just in the process. I also pray especially for those Dominican Sisters in Iraq who have made it their own mission to make neighbors of the stranger and to break down the stereotypes and walls of bigotry (especially religious bigotry!) that keep their world broken by alienation and hostility. May our own efforts at hospitality be the Christian response and counter movement and dynamic to hostility. (cf also The Homeless Jesus)

Feast of the Visitation (Reprised)

Jump for Joy  by Eisbacher

Saturday's Gospel is wonderfully joyfilled and encouraging: Mary travels in haste to visit her kinswoman Elizabeth and both women benefit from the meeting which culminates in John's leaping in his mother's womb and prophetic speech by both women. The first of these is Elizabeth's proclamation that Mary is the Mother of Elizabeth's Lord and the second is Mary's canticle, the Magnificat. Ordinarily homilists focus on Mary in this Gospel lection but I think the focus is at least as strongly on Elizabeth and also on the place the meeting of the two women has in allowing them both to negotiate the great mystery which has taken hold of their lives. Both are called on to offer God hospitality in unique ways; both are asked to participate in God's mysterious plan for his creation despite not wholly understanding this call and it is in their coming together that the trusting fiats they each made assume a greater clarity for them both.

Luke's two volumes (Luke-Acts) are actually full of instances where people come together and in their meeting or conversation with one another come to a fuller awareness of what God is doing in their lives. We see this on the road to Emmaus where disciples talk about the Scriptures in an attempt to come to terms with Jesus' scandalous death on a cross and the end of all their hopes. They are joined by another person who questions them about their conversation and grief. When they pause for a meal they recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread and their entire world is turned on its head. That which was senseless is on its way to making a profound sense which will ground the existence of the church. Peter is struggling with the issue of eating with the uncircumcised; he comes together with Cornelius, a Centurion with real faith in Christ. In this meeting Peter is confirmed in his sense that in light of Christ no foods are unclean and eating with Gentiles is Eucharistic. There are a number of other such meetings where partial perception and clarity are enhanced or expanded. Even the Council of Jerusalem is a more developed instance of the same phenomenon.

On Spiritual Friendship, both formal and informal:

I personally love Eisenbacher's picture above because it reminds me of one privileged expression of such spiritual friendship, namely that of spiritual direction. I can remember many meetings with my own director where there was immense surprise and joy at the sharing involved, but one time in particular stands out --- especially in light of today's Gospel. I had experienced a shift in my experience of celibacy. Where once it mainly spoke to me of dimensions of my life that would never be fulfilled (motherhood, marriage, etc), through a particular prayer experience it had come to be associated instead with espousal to Christ and my own sense of being completed and fulfilled as a woman. As I recall, when I met with my director to share about this experience, I spoke softly about it, carefully, a little bashfully --- especially at first; but I also gained strength and greater confidence in the sharing of it. (I was not uncertain as to the nature of what I had experienced, but sharing it certainly allowed it to claim me more completely and let me claim a new sense of myself in light of it; that was necessary and a central piece of sharing such things with a director, for instance.) My director listened carefully, and only then noted that she had always prayed for such a grace for all her novices (she had been novice director for her congregation); she then excused herself and left briefly. When she returned she had a CD and CD player with her. Together we sat quietly, but joyfully and even a bit tearfully celebrating what God had done for us both while we listened to John Michael Talbot's  Canticle of the Bride.

Elizabeth and Mary come together as women both touched in significant ways by the mystery of God. They have trusted God but are not yet completely clear regarding the greater mystery or how this experience fits into the larger story of Israel's redemption. They are both in need of one another and especially of the perception and wisdom the other can bring to the situation so that they can truly offer God and God's plan all the space and time these require. Hospitality, especially giving God hospitality, takes many forms, but one of the most important involves coming together to share how God is active in our lives in the hope of coming to a greater and more life giving perspective, faith, and commitment. It is in coming together in this way that we clarify, encourage, challenge and console one another. It is in coming together in this way that we become the prophetic presence in our world God calls us to be. Let us all be open to serving as friends to one another in this sense. It is an essential dimension of being Church and of the coming of the Kingdom of God.

"How Can Someone Pray all Day?"

[[Dear Sister Laurel, I have a simple question. How can someone pray all day long? I mean is that even natural or healthy? I know it sounds like I am insulting your vocation or something. I don't mean to but I can't even begin to imagine praying all day.]]

Over the past several years I have described prayer in several basic ways. I have written that prayer is God's own work or activity within us. I have said that we pray when we are open and attentive to this ongoing activity. Similarly, I have suggested that prayer is that event wherein the question we are is posed and completed by the answer God is (though as I think about it, that is also not a bad description of redemption);  I have written about the human heart and what it means that we achieve singleness of heart where heart is that personal center wherein God bears witness to Godself.  In all of this I have said that human beings are dialogical by their very nature (just as the Trinity is a dialogical reality) and that prayer is an expression of this just as it is the expression of covenantal existence --- that existence in and with God we are all called to. 

In doing this I hope that one thing I have indicated is that many different activities can be truly prayerful or qualify as prayer. One has to be able to listen to one's own heart (again, where God dwells and speaks himself) and to the voice or Word of God as it comes to one from outside oneself. Deep speaks to deep. One learns to do this and does it in a privileged way in quiet prayer, lectio divina, journaling, praying Office (which builds on psalms, readings and canticles that both speak to and allow one to pour out one's own heart), etc. But beyond these things almost any activity can become prayer. As I think I have written before, some of my most profound prayer experiences have occurred as I enjoyed a hot cup of tea, washed dishes,  folded laundry, or took a walk. Conversations with friends can be profoundly prayerful as can meal times. The key in all of these is that we learn to listen both to and with our hearts and that we eschew distractions as much as we can or as is healthy for us. (Here I mean eschewing choosing those things which serve to distract us from the hard work of attending to reality; I am not referring to distractions that occur during prayer itself.)

Note well that I am not speaking of saying prayers all day long. These can certainly be helpful in listening to and expressing our own hearts, but they can also be a source of actual distraction and mere busyness.Thus, for instance, I don't pray more than three or four of the hours of the Liturgy of the Hours during a day because doing so is often more distracting and fragmenting than it is helpful to me in coming to pray my entire day. Nor do I simply fill my time with "saying prayers" instead of praying a pretty ordinary life. 

On the other hand, let's say I am out of the hermitage and the environment is noisy and distracting.  One of the things I do is to pray with regard to the people and events all around me. Here I ordinarily use beads and something like the Jesus prayer or the Hail Mary to help me as I look briefly at the folks nearby (say, on the train with me or in the doctor's waiting room) and pray for them.  Here rote prayers are really helpful in maintaining a connection between inner and outer dimensions of my attention. They help shape my attentiveness to others into something compassionate and generous rather than merely curious and distracted. The same is true when I am feeling distracted within the hermitage; then rote prayers serve as a means of maintaining focus and direction in my day. They also remind me of my own poverty in prayer, not only because of my own tendency to distraction per se, but because these words are "borrowed" from others and are a help when I am unable to pray otherwise.

How healthy or natural is all this? Given my understanding of the nature of the human person and especially of their relationship with and relatedness to God, prayer is the most natural activity we can undertake. I don't think that saying prayers all day is necessarily particularly healthy but praying our lives, doing all things together with and in God is both healthy and holy-making (because these two things are really one). Allowing our lives to be prayer means becoming truly or authentically human. It means becoming the dialogical realities real human beings always are --- both because of  and through our fundamental dialogue with God and because of and through our dialogue with others and the created world around us. We are made for this kind of life. It is essentially contemplative and serves as the the foundation of a compassionate life in which we can truly give ourselves to others and work towards the fulfillment of creation in justice. 

My question to you then is can you imagine living a life which is geared toward listening and responding to and from your own heart? Can you imagine allowing your heart to become "pure" or "single" in this way --- a single, focused, and compassionate "hearkening" to reality? Can you imagine living a life which is geared toward a love which does justice, that is, a love which makes all things right and brings them to completion or fulfillment? Do these things seem healthy to you? Desirable? If you say yes to these questions then you have affirmed what I describe as a prayerful life --- an essentially contemplative life in fact. If you add to these the affirmation that such a life requires one to spend time consciously listening and responding to the Love-in-act (God!) which is the source and ground of existence, and that one must do so daily as a very high priority in order to live  in the ways you have already affirmed to be healthy and desirable, then you have confirmed the place of a life of prayer as well  --- the very life whose naturalness and healthiness you questioned at the beginning of this post. Of course such a life is not nearly as common as a life of distraction and dissipation but I sincerely believe that it is upon such lives that our own authenticity and the future of our world depends.

"Zacchaeus come down! I am dining with You Today!"

[[Hi Sister Laurel, your approach to Lent sounds complicated. How possible is it for people who don't live contemplative or eremitical lives?]]

Great question. I think the approach sounds more complicated than it actually is. While I am doing a lot of individual things they are meant to assist me to do one main thing, namely, to allow both my heart and my hermitage to be more truly places where God finds hospitality while I rest in God. If you think about having a guest visit you for Lent and making your house and your life ready for that guest, you might find a lot of things need doing (or need to be sacrificed), but really the focus of your efforts is simple: make your place theirs and put yourself at their disposal. If you have hosted this guest before you will probably know what s/he needs and desires from you. In that case you may simply need to improve a little here and there on the arrangements you have made in the past --- though you will also have learned more about yourself and your guest and will find ways to honor that in the present. In a sense that is really all I am doing and all I have really described in What Do You Do for Lent?.

Secondly the questioner for the post I put up lives in a parish where the triad prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are stressed. The same is true in my own, and in fact in the universal Church. This triad runs through all the readings we have throughout the season. My own preference is first of all not to see these as three separate or discrete things we might do but instead as three facets of every genuinely human life, one which is: 1) rooted in and open to God (prayer), 2) concerned with and committed to the really essential while letting go of the inessential --- especially if these latter things bind or make us unfree in some way (fasting), and which is 3) compassionate and generous to others (almsgiving). We are called to be people who receive our lives from God, detach ourselves from that which is inessential or less truly lifegiving to assist in providing both the inner and the outer space needed for both prayer and almsgiving, and go out to share what is lifegiving with others --- on whatever level that is needed. The penances we do during Lent are meant to awaken us to the promise and demands of these three dimensions as well as to make them more alive and real in us the rest of the year.


If you look again at the list of things I mentioned were involved in Lent this year you will see they all fall under things necessary to put my guest first, to be there for God, to really be a person in whom these three dimensions are real and integrated in eremitical terms. Since I do limited ministry it is sometimes easy to forget the purpose of the hermitage itself and to treat it as a merely private place where I relax apart from ministry or the place where I get ready to do ministry. Instead, the hermitage itself is a ministry both to God and in order to remind us all that every home is meant to be a place of hospitality to God and to those precious to God. Archbishop Vigneron referred to this in the homily he gave at my perpetual eremitical profession when he spoke of giving my home over to God. Of course there is great privacy here at Stillsong and relatively few people actually enter here, but even so it remains a quasi public place which is meant to witness to eremitical life and the meaning of the silence of solitude. The life within the hermitage is a relatively relaxed life but not a lax one and sometimes I have temporarily lost sight of this, either in anxious work, or in "just kicking back". I suspect this is often a challenge in contemplative houses and one the Rule and horarium help members to meet --- especially in Benedictinism. In my own case the solution, it seems to me, is a renewed focus on allowing God to find rest here in my home and in my heart while I truly rest in God. That is really what Lent seems to be for me this year.

For those not living in hermitages and not living contemplative lives I think some of the same approach can be adopted, whether with the Lenten triad itself, or in making of one's home (both heart and hearth) a place of hospitality to God and those who are precious to God (one will do so in ways which will involve the Lenten triad). Those who cannot seem to function without bringing work home with them and who, unfortunately, never really rest in the love of their families or create space where their families may rest in their love could certainly find a few things to do which would make life better all around. Those who come home from work, turn on the TV or computer and never spend real time with their families could do similarly. Those who rarely eat together or treat their homes as momentary pit stops along the route of real life could find ways to change this. (Mealtimes are an especially privileged time to be hospitable to God together.) Those for whom spirituality is compartmentalized and is thought to, "belong in Church but not here," could find ways to celebrate Lent which changes this misguided approach to reality (spirituality).

The bottom line questions for the hermit are, 1) are my heart and home places where God always finds a welcome and a place to rest while I find real rest in the heart of God? and 2) How do I allow that to be more and more true each day? It is certainly true that I am not worthy to have the Lord stay under my roof, but as was the case with Zacchaeus, Jesus has called out to me and said that he will be dining with me this day; I try to take that seriously every day I repeat the Centurion's response to Jesus' announcement, "O Lord I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof. . ." but I am doing so in a renewed way this Lent. Given the frequency with which we each repeat the Centurion's response to Jesus (Matt 8:8) --- it is done at every Mass and is a summary of a sound Eucharistic spirituality --- I don't think the hermit's question is one which should be foreign to any Christian --- though I suspect it definitely is!

What Do you Do for Lent?

[[Dear Sister Laurel, would it be okay if I asked you what you do for Lent? In my parish we focus on prayer, fasting, and almsgiving and I try to do something I don't usually do. Like this year I am spending time helping in a soup kitchen. Your life is already one of "[assiduous] prayer and penance" and I guess you can't help in a soup kitchen so what do you do?]]

Hi there and thanks for your question. It is actually one I get asked most every year but I don't think I have ever really answered here.

Each year is a bit different and that is true this year as well. Let me say first of all that whatever I choose to do for Lent usually fits in an organic way with the rest of my life. It is rarely the case that something of our lives cannot be improved upon or more attention given to this or that aspect of our Christian commitment. In my own life there is no doubt that I can improve my prayer life, my life in the hermitage more generally, the way I approach parish commitments, the way I structure my time, my commitment to the values which are central to eremitical life, etc. My own preference for Lent, therefore, is not to do one disparate or disconnected thing (like saying extra prayers, giving up some food item, etc) but instead, to look at the entire scope of my life and renew the basic commitments which are part and parcel of that. When I do that a number of things may change, whether permanently as the fruit of discernment, or temporarily and experimentally as a means to this discernment. So let me start by describing some of the things which changed for me this Lent and then I will describe the bottom line which made those changes necessary.

This Lent I am primarily working through a process of discern-ment which allows me to get in touch in a fresh way with the really basic things God has called me to and to which I have publicly committed myself. I am doing this in a more focused and intense way than I would ordinarily be able to do the rest vof the year, and thanks to the assistance of my director (and my own readiness), in a more effective way than I might have done in other Lents.

In order to do this specific changes have needed to be made in a number of areas: 1) I am more reclusive than ordinarily which means I don't get to Mass as frequently, 2) I am working through a book my director gave me to assist me in doing this work better than I may have in the past, 3) I have withdrawn until Easter from an activity I do once a week outside the hermitage, 4) I have changed my daily schedule to some extent so that I get rest more frequently, 5) I am doing a bit more journaling than I ordinarily do, 6) I am" fasting" in a way which allows my diet to change permanently in order to address several different things (health, commitment to poverty or simplicity, maintaining an attitude of celebration during  meals, different demands on my energy, etc.), 7) The first four hours of my day have changed some in the way I approach prayer or the practice of vigil, 8) I have changed (or am changing) the schedule on which I see clients so that I see them during fewer days during any week and also in a way which leaves  more weeks entirely free of appointments, and 9) I have gone through the hermitage to get rid of old files, papers, clothes, books, etc that accumulate through the year but are really no longer necessary. It may sound like a lot of stuff, but it all fits together into a single Lenten project and purpose.

The bottom line in all of this is that I am living Lent in a way which allows me to really pay special attention to making a prayer of everything I do and therefore, of making my ordinary, everyday life extraordinary in Christ. I have written about this in the past so it is not a new idea. (Besides, it is a key element in Benedictine spirituality.) Alone we live ordinary lives. When we live those with God in a conscious way everything is transformed into something extraordinary. (For the hermit this is a major piece of distinguishing between merely living alone and living in solitude.) This sense that even the most ordinary of lives (or parts of our lives) can be made extraordinary if only we allow God to share in every moment and mood is one of the real gifts which hermits bring to the Church and world. In fact it is part of the charism or gift quality which the vocation represents. Even so, while this is not a new idea for me, nor a new undertaking exactly, what tends to be true is that in a kind of spiral pattern I periodically come to it anew and with a fresh sense of awe and appreciation. At each turn of the spiral I return to this foundational truth with a deeper awareness of, appreciation for, and commitment to it, a commitment which engages me in progressively deeper and more extensive ways. The real newness in Lent, it seems to me, comes not from doing new things (though one may also need to do that just as I outlined above), but in doing things with a renewed commitment, with a heart which is broken open just a bit further than it was yesterday, in a more thoroughgoing way than one has done until now.

You see,as I understand it, the prayer, fasting, almsgiving triad refers not merely to three discrete activities we do, but to three dimensions of a faithful and authentically human life. Most fundamentally such a life is open to and rooted in the dynamic presence of God within and around us. It is lived in and with God in a way which provides hospitality to God both in one's home and in one's heart. A life which is prayerful is a life which is hospitable to God and lived with the sense of God as an everpresent guest. Because of this accent on hospitality to God, an accent on living in and with God, a prayerful life necessarily entails fasting since fasting (which means fasting from more than just food) involves  a commitment to the really essential things in life while it eschews the inessential. (Fasting is the flip side of feasting and hospitality to God calls for both.) We will find we eat differently, rest differently, use our time differently, and so forth when the accent is on hospitality to God. This must be so if everything we live is to be a prayer just as it is the result when everything IS a prayer.

Finally, such a life is a generous one which reaches out to others with the riches we have received; almsgiving is a symbol or expression of this. We live our lives first of all with and for God, but to the extent we really do this we will find ourselves both free and motivated to give ourselves generously to others. We will find ourselves commissioned to go out to others in some significant way. To my mind then, almsgiving is another way of describing the missionary impulse which is intrinsic to God-as-Trinity and to any Christian life lived with, in, and for God. It is the very essence of Church. Your own choice of helping in a soup kitchen is an expression of this dimension of your life. A huge part of my Lent this year is meant to assist me in determining the shape of this missionary impulse in my own life and the concrete forms it will continue to take when I am faithful to my call to be a diocesan hermit.

Lent is a time the Church gives us to allow this kind of reorientation (conversion) in all the dimensions of our life. In my own it has far reaching consequences for the rest of the year. It is not that I forget my commitments nor the central elements of the eremitical life during the rest of the year, nor that I am unfaithful to these, but several times a year (Advent, Lent, retreats, desert days, etc.)  just like anyone else, I need to tweak things and get in deeper touch with these and the God who empowers them; at these times it means getting back in touch with the surprise and awe I experience at being called in the way I am.  It means renewing the sense that everything done with, in, and for God transforms the ordinary into the really extraordinary and makes of the little I can give something of infinite worth. During the year a lot can happen to knock us out of our own spiritual centeredness or cause a bit of a wobble in the orbit of our lives. It is also the case that we each  grow incrementally (a little at a time) so that in time (say the space of a year or of several years) we may need to stop and take stock of what that period of time has brought in terms of growth; we do this in order that we may embrace that in a conscious way.  Though we never really know how Lent will go or what God will do with this time in our lives, this Lent seems to be one of those for me and in this it is a real gift.

Eremitism: A Life of Constant Vigil (Reprised)

Perhaps it is the focus of Advent with its emphasis on preparation and waiting, but I came today to see my life specifically and eremitical life more generally as one of vigil --- and continuous vigil. Whether the time in cell is obviously fruitful or marked by darkness and seeming emptiness, whether one turns to prayer with joy and enthusiasm or with resistance and depression, one waits on the Lord. One spends one's time in vigil.

Now this is ironic in some ways because despite loving prayer at night the Office of Readings which is also called "Vigils" has never been my favorite hour and this last two years I have substituted another way of spending the time before dawn which has been very fruitful for me (and, I hope, that means fruitful in terms of what God wills!). The time from 4:00am to 8:00am has been one of vigil but it consists of quiet prayer, Lauds, and writing with some lectio. A Camaldolese nun mentioned her own monastery (and the one I am affiliated with as an Oblate) treating these same hours as a time of vigil and I very much liked the idea. I did not know that it would define both my day and my life, however.

There is something amazing about living in a way which is not "just" obedient (open and responsive) to the Lord, but which is actively awaiting him at every moment.(Yes, these are intimately related, but not always practiced that way.) The heart of Benedictine spirituality is the search for God. When candidates for Benedictine monastic life arrive at the monastery, the goal they are expected to affirm is the search for God. This is the defining characteristic of the authentic monastic life and a significant point of discerning a vocation. We can hear that phrase as emphasizing an active, even desperate attempt to find something that is missing from our lives, or we can hear it as a process of preparing ourselves to find the God who is immanent in our lives and world at every point. In the latter case our lives become a vigil to the extent they are transformed into something capable of perceiving and welcoming this immanent God.

Another central Benedictine value is hospitality, and there is no doubt it plays a very significant part in this perspective. While we ordinarily think of hospitality as offering a place for guests who come to the monastery or hermitage in search of something, we should extend the notion to God. All of our prayer is a way of offering hospitality to God; it is a way, that is, of giving him a personal place to stand in our lives and world. While God is omnipresent and the ground of the truly personal, he does NOT automatically have a personal place in our lives. Like someone whose name we do not know, he may impinge on our space, but until we call upon him by name and give him a place he cannot assume on his own, he will remain only impersonally there. And so, in prayer we call upon him by name ("Abba, Father"), we carve out space and time for him, we give him permission to enter our lives and hearts and to take up more and more extensive residence there. We offer him friendship, hospitality, and we structure our lives around his presence. We continually ready ourselves and look for him just as we look for a best friend we expect any time and thus our lives become a vigil.

For hermits, whose whole lives are given over to God in a focused and solitary way, vigil is simply another description of the environment, goal, and gift (charism) of eremitical life we refer to as "the silence of solitude." Those four hours before Mass or Communion in my daily horarium define the characteristic dynamic of the whole of my life --- at least when it is lived well! It is a vigil which requires the silence of solitude (i.e., external and internal silence and solitude), leads to the silence of solitude (i.e.,communion with God), and gifts the world with it and all it implies. During Advent especially I think the call to make something similar of our own lives is extended to every one of us in a special way.

Prayer: Concerning ourselves with God's own Self and Destiny (partial reprise)

Tomorrow's Gospel includes Matthew's version of the Lord's Prayer. As we continue to focus on the basic themes of Lent it is only appropriate that the Church looks at what prayer is and reminds us of Jesus' own instruction in it --- what was primary and what followed naturally. In Lent one of the things we attempt to do is die to self in ways which make us more open to God's presence, God's Word, God's own hallowing of his name within us and in our world. We fast in ways which help us set aside our more superficial needs; we open ourselves to the love of God which we allow ourselves to savor so that we might be profoundly nourished and God's own will be done, God's own life be fulfilled in and with us. Our Lenten journey reminds us that genuine spirituality is forgetful of self, that it "gets out of the way" and lays aside self-consciousness. In tomorrow's gospel, Jesus (via Matt) provides a model of prayer which assists in this. It is a model of prayer in which we concern ourselves first and last with God's own needs, and with being there FOR HIM! We know it as the Lord's Prayer

In the first three petitions (and the invocation too, though that is a topic for another time!) we concern ourselves with God's very self (holiness and name refer to God's own self, not to mere characteristics or tags); we ask that he might be powerfully present in our world (because both name and the hallowing he is refer to a powerful presence which creates and recreates whatever it is allowed to touch and make holy). With the second petition especially, we open ourselves to his sovereignty, that is, to his very selfhood and life as it is shared with his creation. God assumes a position of sovereignty over that creation when his life is truly shared and that creation achieves genuine freedom in the process, but the reign or kingdom of God refers to God's own life once again --- this time as a covenantal or mutual reality. And, with the third petition in particular, we open ourselves to the will of God --- to the future and shape of a reality which is ordered by his sovereignty and fulfilled by his presence.

Now, it is true that God possesses what is called aseity. That is, he is completely self-sufficient and in need of nothing and no one. But that is only one part of the paradox that stands at the heart of our faith. The other side of the paradox is that our God is One who has determined to need us; from the beginning, indeed, from all eternity, God has chosen not to remain alone. He creates all that is outside himself and he summons it (continuing the process of creation) to greater and greater levels of complexity until from within this creation comes One who will be his true counterpart and partner in creation. At bottom this is a call to share in God's very life. In fact, it is the ground of an existence which can only be fulfilled when it shares in the Divine life and God himself becomes all in all!

All of Scripture attests to this basic dynamic, whether cast in terms of creation or covenant. All of Scripture is about God's determination to share his very life with us, and his creation's capacity in the Spirit to issue forth in, or become his own unique counterpart in the fulfillment of this plan. When God's plan is fulfilled, when his very life is shared to the extent he wills, everything he creates reaches fulfillment as well, but it is the human vocation in particular to allow this to become real in space and time. And afterall, isn't this what prayer is truly all about: allowing God's plans to be realized in his creation; cooperating with his Spirit in ways which let his own life be made PERSONALLY real here and now so that EVERYTHING acquires fullness or completion (perfection) of life in God?

Unfortunately, one of the most pernicious problems I run into, whether in myself or in my work as a spiritual director is the occasional inability of myself or of directees to "get out of the way" of the Spirit or to "forget self" in prayer. Prayer seems always to be about us, our problems, our sinfulness, our needs and concerns in ways which sometimes contribute to our own self-centeredness. While I am NOT suggesting we neglect this side of things in our prayer, I am suggesting that there are ways to pray these concerns which are NOT self-centered. (Note, the key here is in praying these concerns rather than merely praying about these concerns. Sometimes we have to silence conversation about concerns and simply live them in our prayer as we give our whole selves to God for his own sake.) I think this is part of what Jesus is getting at in tomorrow's gospel when he reminds us that God knows what we need before we ask him! It is certainly mirrored in the form of the Lord's prayer and the priority of the invocation and petitions. If we open ourselves humbly to God in prayer, the sinfulness, needs, concerns, etc will be part of that but the focus will not be on these.

Because of this, one of the most significant questions we can ask ourselves in checking in on our prayer occasionally is, "what kind of experience was this for God?" Ordinarily this puts a full stop to the sometimes- problematical self-centered focus and chatter about ME in prayer which can occur and puts the focus back where Jesus clearly lived it himself --- on God and the way in which God wills to be present to and for us. What today's Gospel gives us in this model of prayer is a sense that contrary to much popular thought and practice otherwise, prayer is really the way we give or set aside our lives for another, namely, for God and his own Selfhood and destiny. And while it is absolutely true that in the process of giving ourselves over to God's own purposes our own hearts will rightly be opened up, poured out, and our own needs met (as Isaiah reminds us in the first reading, God's Word will not return to him void!), prayer is first of all something we are empowered to do for God's own sake!

Eremitism, A Life of Continuous Vigil

Perhaps it is the focus of Advent with its emphasis on preparation and waiting, but I came today to see my life specifically and eremitical life more generally as one of vigil --- and continuous vigil. Whether the time in cell is obviously fruitful or marked by darkness and seeming emptiness, whether one turns to prayer with joy and enthusiasm or with resistance and depression, one waits on the Lord. One spends one's time in vigil.

Now this is ironic in some ways because despite loving prayer at night the Office of Readings which is also called "Vigils" has never been my favorite hour and this last two years I have substituted another way of spending the time before dawn which has been very fruitful for me. The time from 4:00am to 8:00am has been one of vigil but it consists of quiet prayer, Lauds, and writing with some lectio. A Camaldolese nun mentioned her own monastery (and the one I am affiliated with as an Oblate) treating these same hours as a time of vigil and I very much liked the idea. I did not know that it would define both my day and my life, however.

There is something amazing about living in a way which is not "just" obedient (open and responsive) to the Lord, but which is actively awaiting him at every moment.(Yes, these are intimately related, but not always practiced that way.) The heart of Benedictine spirituality is the search for God. When candidates for Benedictine monastic life arrive at the monastery, the goal they are expected to affirm is the search for God. This is the defining characteristic of the authentic monastic life and a significant point of discerning a vocation. We can hear that phrase as emphasizing an active, even desperate attempt to find something that is missing from our lives, or we can hear it as a process of preparing ourselves to find the God who is immanent in our lives and world at every point. In the latter case our lives become a vigil to the extent they are transformed into something capable of perceiving and welcoming this immanent God.

Another central Benedictine value is hospitality, and there is no doubt it plays a very significant part in this perspective. While we ordinarily think of hospitality as offering a place for guests who come to the monastery or hermitage in search of something, we should extend the notion to God. All of our prayer is a way of offering hospitality to God; it is a way, that is, of giving him a personal place to stand in our lives and world. While God is omnipresent and the ground of the truly personal, he does NOT automatically have a personal place in our lives. Like someone whose name we do not know, he may impinge on our space, but until we call upon him by name and give him a place he cannot assume on his own, he will remain only impersonally there. And so, in prayer we call upon him by name ("Abba, Father"), we carve out space and time for him, we give him permission to enter our lives and hearts and to take up more and more extensive residence there. We offer him friendship, hospitality, and we structure our lives around his presence. We continually ready ourselves and look for him just as we look for a best friend we expect any time and thus our lives become a vigil.

For hermits, whose whole lives are given over to God in a focused and solitary way, vigil is simply another description of the environment, goal, and gift (charism) of eremitical life we refer to as "the silence of solitude." Those four hours before Mass or Communion in my daily horarium define the characteristic dynamic of the whole of my life --- at least when it is lived well! It is a vigil which requires the silence of solitude (i.e., external and internal silence and solitude), leads to the silence of solitude (i.e.,communion with God), and gifts the world with it and all it implies. During Advent especially I think the call to make something similar of our own lives is extended to every one of us in a special way.