ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

The Pharisee, we remember was condemned for being an hupocrites, a word that means play-actor, pretender, dissembler. Humility means setting aside the mask…. We present ourselves to others transparently, in all our imperfection and vulnerability. We depend on their goodwill for acceptance and love, not on the success of our efforts at self-promotion. MICHAEL CASEY, OCSO A Guide to Living in the Truth: St. Benedict’s Teaching on Humility  

Vatican II tells us that man is a being in dialogue, someone who does not know who he is until another reveals it to him. For man is that being to whom God speaks. By speaking, God reveals not only his own being to man; in a real way, he also reveals man to himself. SAINT POPE JOHN PAUL II 

Begin by knowing yourself, for it would be futile for you to consider others while neglecting yourself. Even if you are wise, your wisdom is lacking something, if it does not enlighten you about yourself. What does it lack, then? In my view, everything. You could know all the mysteries, have explored the surface of the world, the heights of the heavens and the depths of the sea, if you do not know yourself you are like someone who builds without a foundation; it is a ruin that you build, not an edifice. Everything that you do not construct on yourself as a basis is like a heap of dust that the wind will scatter. The person, therefore, whose wisdom does not extend to himself is not wise. The wise man will be wise about himself, and he will be the first to drink the water of his own well. SAINT BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX 

The main aim of all rational creatures, defined by many philosophers as the greatest good, is to become like God. Actually this is not so much a discovery of the philosophers as something derived from Holy Scripture. The book of Genesis illustrates it when it describes the original creation of the human race in the words: ‘God said, “Let us make human beings in our image and likeness.” So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.’ Notice that it says: ‘God created human beings in his image’ and says nothing about likeness. This means that the human race received the dignity of God's image at the beginning of its creation, whereas the perfection of God's likeness is reserved for the end. Human beings must achieve it by imitating God in his works. The possibility of perfection is there right at the beginning by virtue of the image. In the end, human beings will reach perfect likeness by means of their works. T...

The human being, who conforms to the model of the Son, gives glory to God because of having been made by the Father by means of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, the whole person is like God and not just a part: the whole person, soul and body, receives the Spirit of the Father. This is the perfect human being. When the Spirit is united with the soul and with the body, then we have the spiritual person, the perfect person, the human being in the image and likeness of God. If, on the contrary, the soul does not have the Spirit, we would have a carnal and imperfect being. Such a person in having been created would be in the image of God, but would have no likeness to him. Likeness to God comes only from the Spirit. IRENAEUS Against Heresies, 5, 6  

In every worthy human endeavor there is an ideal that calls us forth. And there is the reality of the here and now: our very real human weaknesses and struggles. The danger is that we cling to the ideal, not accepting the real, and never settle, or we let go of the ideal and settle for the present “real,” going nowhere—a very stagnant and disheartening way to live. The exciting challenge is to cling to the ideal, letting it ever call us fourth, even as we embrace the real and bring it lovingly and gently toward the ideal. M. BASIL PENNINGTON The Monastic Way

Have patience in persevering in the holy exercise of meditation, and be content to progress in slow steps until you have legs to run and wings with which to fly. Be content to obey; which is never a small thing for the soul who has chosen God as his portion, and resign yourself to be for now a small hive bee able to make honey. Be always humble and loving in front of God and men, because God talks to those whose heart is humble in front of Him, and enriches them with His gifts. SAINT PADRE PIO

In this morning’s Gospel, we find Jesus and his disciples “on the way”. “One the way” is Mark’s term for the journey of Jesus and his disciples to Jerusalem. Peter’s confession of faith at Caesarea Philippi, which we heard last week, had marked a turning point, the beginning of Jesus’ journey toward his passion. Jesus continues along “the way” with his disciples, in which we find an image of our own call to follow Christ.   In this stage of the journey, they reenter Galilee, which is familiar territory for them, but this time there are not the crowds about them as in the early days of his public ministry; rather, this time, Jesus has taken care that no one know of his presence. For he wants this to be a time set apart for him to teach his disciples in private, where he can have their full attention, free of the distractions of the crowds that had pressed upon him. He uses this occasion to once again speak to them of his death and resurrection. “The Son of Man is to be delivered int...

The greatness of a soul is measured by the greatness of its love. The source of life is charity. I would not dare to call that soul living which had not striven to refresh itself at this source. But how can a soul draw upon it, if it is not present at the source which is charity, which is God? No, only he who loves God is present to God, and only to the same extent as he loves Him. SAINT BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX

The recollection of prayer is different from every other kind of attention or reflection. The man who reflects is cutting himself off and conversing with himself; the man who prays is entering into communication with a power and a love which are outside himself. Whether our prayer be addressed to Christ, the Blessed Virgin, or the Saints; whether we consider the Trinity reigning in our souls or in heaven, the recollection of prayer must necessarily introduce us to the divine presence. The mystery of God embraces our life; prayer is the confronting of the inner conscience of man with the majesty, the countenance, the love of this God. When Saint Benedict speaks to us of prayer it is on this coming into the divine presence that he insists: “Let us consider what should be our attitude of soul in the divine presence”. And again: “When we present our request to powerful men we do so with respect and humility; how much more necessary is it that we should make our supplications to the Lord Go...

At fixed hours time should be given to certain definite reading. Haphazard reading, constantly varied and lighted on by chance does not edify but makes the mind unstable. Taken into the memory lightly, it leaves it even more lightly. You should concentrate on certain authors and let your mind grow used to them…. Some part of your daily reading should be committed to memory every day, taken as it were into the stomach, to be more carefully digested and brought up again for frequent rumination—something in keeping with your vocation and helpful to concentration, something that will take hold of the mind and save it from distraction. The reading should also stir your affections and give rise to prayer, which should interrupt your reading—an interruption which should not so much impede the reading as to restore to it a mind evermore purified for understanding. For reading serves the purpose of the intention with which it is done. If a reader truly seeks God in the reading, everything he re...

When we consider how human beings are made, we are filled with wonder at the wisdom of the Creator that is revealed in us. Suffice it to observe the different functions of the senses which all stem from one center, the brain, and report back to it all sorts of perceptions: site, smell, taste, touch…, and also to observe the other organs of the body both internal and external; and the memory, that recalls numerous disparate elements without confusing or altering them; and the number of thoughts which do not cancel each other out but reappear at the right moment. We cannot refrain from exclaiming with the Psalmist: ‘Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, O Lord; it is high, I cannot attain it.’ [Ps. 139:6] In fact, no one will ever succeed and explaining completely the harmony that is displayed in our bodies or the subtlety that is apparent in our souls. Innumerable thinkers have written on this point. Even so, what has been said is but a small part of what remains to be said, for human...

O Beloved, your way of knowing is amazing! The way you recognize every creature even before it appears. The way you gaze into the face of every human being and see all your works gazing back at you. O what a miracle to be awake inside your breathing. HILDEGARD OF BINGEN

If one sets aside time for a business engagement, a trip to the hairdressers, a social engagement, or a shopping expedition, that time is accepted as inviolable. But if one says: I cannot come because that is my hour to be alone, one is considered rude, egotistical or strange. What a commentary on our civilization, when being alone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it, like a secret vice. ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH Gift From the Sea  

The fact that our prayer is unsatisfactory or unsatisfying is no reason to discontinue the practice. But perseverance in what seems to be a fruitless exercise demands a good measure of patience and a strong faith in the power of even the most seemingly hopeless prayer. Here we may be encouraged by words put into the mouth of Christ by Julian of Norwich: Pray with your whole being even though you think that it has no savor for you. For such prayer is very profitable even though you feel nothing. Pray with your whole being, though you feel nothing, though you see nothing, even though it seems impossible to you. It is in dryness and in barrenness, in sickness and in feebleness that your prayer is most pleasing to me, even though you think that it has little savor for you. Anything that we can do—no matter how small—to give more scope to prayer in our lives is worthwhile and, supposing we persevere in it, will certainly yield dividends in due season. MICHAEL CASEY, OCSO Coenobium: Reflecti...

God is present even and especially in suffering, in failure, even in death. The clever and the robust experience weakness and vulnerability eventually when scientific and rational measures are no match in the struggle with the suffering of the body, the mind, and the spirit. It is often in experiences of powerlessness or raw suffering that we are able to lean into the God who is to be found there in the deepest movement of contemplation at the edge of mystical union. MICHAEL DOWNEY The Vocation of the Lay Theologian as Baptismal Witness, Workshop Session 2.1, 6/23/15

According to [Thomas Aquinas] the root of despair is to be found in what has been termed acidie : for want of a better word, we usually translate this as sloth or inertia, by which very much more, and something deeper, is meant than mere idleness, than lacking the inclination to be active. According to Thomas this metaphysical inertia is identical with the “sorrow of the world,” the “worldly grief” of which Paul says that it produces death (2 Corinthians 7:10). JOSEPH RATZINGER To Look on Christ

O my brother, the contemplative is not the man who has fiery visions of the cherubim carrying God on their imagined chariot, but simply he who has risked his mind in the desert beyond language and beyond ideas where God is encountered in the nakedness of pure trust, that is to say in the surrender of our poverty and incompleteness in order no longer to clench our minds in a cramp upon themselves, as if thinking made us exist. The message of hope the contemplative offers you, then, brother is not that you need to find your way through the jungle of language and problems that today surround God: but that whether you understand or not, God loves you, is present in you, lives in you, dwells in you, calls you, saves you, and offers you an understanding and light which are like nothing you ever found in books or heard in sermons. THOMAS MERTON, OCSO A Letter on the Contemplative Life  

The Cistercian Fathers provide a stupendous response to modern problems precisely at the level of anthropology. They all possess a coherent, shared understanding of human nature to which they continuously make reference. They consider man as the masterpiece of God's love, created for love through an overflowing of the love that is intrinsic to Trinitarian life, the very essence of Godhead. Man is the masterpiece of creation, destined to participate in the infinite fullness of divine life by following a path of freedom. This path constitutes a process of transformation that is sustained by man's conscience as well as by his deepest desire. His nature is sealed by a loving positivity, a seal impressed by the creative act of God. Nothing can cancel it out, not even the inconceivable negativity of rebellion and human sin. It is this origin in love that bestows sense on human existence. It clothes man in beauty and indelible dignity. CRISTIANA PICCARDO Living Wisdom: The Mission an...

When God the Almighty was making mankind through His own Word, He perceived that they, owing to the limitation of their nature, could not of themselves have any knowledge of their Artificer, the Incorporeal and Uncreated. He took pity on them, therefore, and did not leave them destitute of the knowledge of Himself, lest their very existence should prove purposeless. For of what use is existence to the creature if it cannot know its Maker? How could men be reasonable beings if they had no knowledge of the Word and Reason of the Father, through Whom they had received their being? They would be no better than the beasts, had they no knowledge save of earthly things; and why should God have made them at all, if He had not intended them to know Him? But, in fact, the good God has given them a share in His own Image, that is, in our Lord Jesus Christ, and has made even themselves after the same Image and Likeness. Why? Simply in order that through this gift of Godlikeness in themselves they ...

Ordinary language fails us when we come to speak of the life and happiness of the divine Trinity, who share everything without dividing it. Each of the three is God, yet there is but one God. Their loving union is so intimate that they have but one nature, one existence, one life; everything except what pertains to their distinct personalities is common to each. In short, the life of God is an ecstatic union of knowledge and love—complete and infinite happiness. God has no need of anything more; His joy and happiness are such that nothing could increase them. Yet, in His infinite goodness, He decided to share them with somebody else. And so, out of the nothingness that was not God, He created us. It is true, that God could not without contradiction act for a motive less than Himself; being infinite Truth, He cannot deny His own supremacy. But, in planning all creation for His own glory, He decided to glorify Himself by making His creatures happy. And when His creatures revolted against...

INVADED BY THE LOGOS 23-B Sunday in OT (Is 35:4-7a; Jas 2:1-5; Mk 7:31-37) Witnessing Jesus’ magnificent healing activity in the regions of Tyre, Sidon, the Sea of Galilee and the territory of the Decapolis, the crowd in today’s gospel praises Jesus the Healer with this beautiful acclamation: He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak! The exultant acclamation echoes God’s own feeling of great satisfaction when, on the evening of the sixth day of the creation, the Lord contemplates all the works of his hands as a totality: And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good (Gen 1:31). Thus, in a certain way, the Gospel text equates the transformative, life-giving presence and actions of Jesus of Nazareth with those of the Creator God of Genesis. The particular focus of the gospel today is the healing by Jesus of a speech-and-hearing impaired person. (Please forgive me if at times I use the simpler expression “deaf-mute man”. To be p...

I must remember that I am listening to the Word, to Christ. When I think about the voice of Christ I try to recall its various manifestations in his earthly life. I hear it sometimes encouraging and cajoling, at other times challenging and demanding. And then, since my reflections and prayers must inevitably be drawn to the paschal mystery, I think of the voice from the cross where, even at a time of almost unimaginable pain, Christ is calling for forgiveness, making excuses for those who do not realize what they are doing, speaking in what Saint Aelred of Rievaulx calls ‘that wondrous voice, full of gentleness and love’. ESTHER DE WAAL Seeking Life: The Baptismal Invitation of the Rule of St. Benedict

Do not look around yourself into universal history; you must look into your own personal history. Always in your present lies the meaning in history, and you cannot see it as a spectator, but only in your responsible decisions. In every moment slumbers the possibility of being the eschatological moment. You must awaken it. RUDOLF BULTMANN The Presence of Eternity: History and Eschatology

To wish to see or imagine the future is to make a fiction out of hope, and this seems to me to be doing violence to hope…. Obviously, since we do not have God’s imagination, when we think of the future, we think of it in terms of the past…. When we are in a tunnel, we see nothing, but it is absurd to want the landscape when we come out to be the same as when we went in…. Let us let the Holy Spirit do its work…. It is the Spirit’s business; this is what I call poverty. CHRISTIAN DE CHERGÉ Retreat for March 8, 1996

Having created the universe with all its forces, and having made man master of his decisions and destined him to the life of the family and of society, God of necessity wills the interplay of cause and effect, he wills to permit good and evil according to the normal course of events. This evil can be either physical (such as sickness, suffering, death) or moral. Moral deficiencies are to be found everywhere, in us and outside of us. Even in the bosom of the Church of Christ there has been much wrong-doing, and wrong-doing there will be till the end of time. So great is the wretchedness of men that they deface the work of God by their mistakes, their illusions, their weaknesses, and their passions. If we want to sanctify ourselves we must adapt ourselves to the order of things permitted by Providence. We must accept from the hand of God the present, and all the effort required for our daily work, our responsibilities, the defects and wrong headedness of those near to us, the annoyance a...

I believe that every man is a hidden Christian. And in two senses. Man is saved by Christ, in that only through Christ can he attain the beatific vision. And furthermore, all yearnings for the divine, whatever form they take, are and must be attributed to the Holy Spirit. That is at one level but man is also a hidden Christian because, although he is not in a situation in which he is consciously responding to Christian values—there is nevertheless something of Christ in him, as in everyone. And there are many senses, I think, in which this is true. The most obvious, the most simple, is the fact that Christ became man. The fact that he shared our human condition gives significance to every human life wherever it is, whatever it is, and whatever religious belief is held. CARDINAL BASIL HUME, OSB The Intentional Life: The Making of a Spiritual Vocation

According to the Catholic contemplative tradition, desire is only possible as the consequence of experience. We can only desire what we have already tasted in some way. And this is exactly how a monastic vocation starts. One day a child (often it begins as early as that), a teenager, or a young adult senses in the midst of ordinary activities that behind and beneath all things and all acts there is a mystery that continually upholds, enlivens, and renews all that exists. There is a fountain out of which everything arises, a fountain of life that irrigates all life. The surface of the world peels back, and the young person glimpses the center, the burning core—burning, but not destroying, like the burning bush. This mystery, although it is indefinable, has characteristics proper to it. It is holy: in its presence, in the moment of experience, you feel compelled to make some gesture—bow down, take off your shoes, close your eyes, to sing. It is personal. You may not know its name, but yo...