Monday of Holy Week

John Eudes Bamberger, OSCO writes on monastic prayer: Prayer is more than one practice among others for the follower of Christ: it is a way of life. Prayer is an activation of faith in the Lord Jesus that seeks his aid in response to his coming to seek our heart.

Jesus began his Holy Week in the Upper Room with his disciples. We can begin our Holy Week by deepening our awareness of God within, where we find him already engaged in speaking to the Father on our behalf.

Being Fed by the Word

Paul Claudet writes The Gospels show us the Savior coming to the soul and imparting truth and virtue by the touch of a hand, the brushing of a garment, a bit of moistened earth applied to the locked eyelids. One look from him is enough to make an apostle out of that idler yawning under the fig tree…


What Paul writes is poetic. Many times words or phrases from the gospel touch our hearts, and we feel inspired and lifted up. But such sentiments, wonderful as they are, often fail us when life tumbles and we are grasping for something solid. Just like Bartholomew, being moved by the words of Jesus is not enough. When his life tumbled, and suffering surrounded him and his Master, Bartholomew, along with the all the other apostles, deserted Jesus in the garden. They had heard and were amazed at what Jesus said. But they had not imbibed those words at a deeper level. They had to realize that the beauty of Jesus words give life only when we make them our own.

There are times in our lives when the words that once sounded poetic and profound no longer inspire. That is a good time for us, a time laden with grace, because it brings us to a new awareness. It brings us to a point where we cannot continue as passive spectators. If we allow it, the very questioning we begin opens up the truths we believe in, allowing us to delve deeper. Only when we find better answers, ones brought out by our own ponderings and not some pious sentiment found in a book, will we find strength in Jesus words.

I will never forget you!

The antiphon for Wednesday of the Fourth week of Lent says Lord, in your great love, answer me. (Ps 68:14) How does God answer?

Is 49 says I will never forget you... on the day of salvation I help you…For the Lord comforts his people.

All these passages taken from the reading remind us of God’s answer-- hope. When we are in need, God tells us He is there beside us, ready to help, comfort, and console.

Msgr. Luigi Giussani writes, hope is an energy, the energy of vigilance, an energy that continually pierces through, pierces continually through the shadows.

Who of us are not aware of life's shadows? They are part and parcel of human existence. The more conscious you become in your own spiritual journey, the sharper will your awareness be, and you will see that dark cloud which wants nothing better than to envelope one within its wall of darkness.

Again, Giussani: The energy of hope breaks, perforates the hard walls of the tomb in which distraction, intemperance and worries enclose us. It’s not the disappearance of distraction, intemperance or worries; it’s that in the midst of distraction, worries and intemperance, unconquerable hope continually forms.

What more can we ask from God?

Rivers of Grace

“The angel brought me, Ezekiel, back to the entrance of the temple of the Lord, and I saw water flowing out from beneath the threshold of the temple toward the east” Ezekiel 47:1

The reading for today goes on to explain how this water flowing from the temple increased both in size and in depth, until it was a full river. “Wherever the river flows, every sort of living creature that can multiply shall live…their fruit shall serve for food, and their leaves for medicine.” (47:12).

We are that temple, and the waters are the souls we touch through grace. As our lives continues, and we go forward, so should the grace increase in us. It happens because we find in the Lord “our refuge and our strength” (ps 46). When God is in our midst, we find life. For God’s creation did not end when we were made; he continues to fashion us, and requires our own share of responsibility in this work, through the choices we make.

“I have come that you may have life, and have it to the full” Jesus tells us. Life is a good barometer of where we are on the journey. If life is confusing or oppressive, it may well be we need to examine our path, and see if perhaps we need to go in another direction, or perhaps we need to bravely leave a job or profession to seek a different way. Our guide is what gives life. For, the river cannot increase if the life of grace does not flow abundantly.

The Prodigal Gospel

We’ve heard many reflections on the Prodigal Son, the humility of the returning son, the generosity of the Father. But the Gospel begins by telling us that “a father had two sons.” We must not forget to reflect on the actions and words of the elder son.

The Ammas and Abbas of the desert taught and practiced metanoia, the continually turning of one’s heart and soul towards God. The Prodigal Son demonstrates this aspect as well. The Elder son felt he had no need of such sentiments. “All these years, I have always obeyed your commands, and not one have I broken.” The Elder Son was unconscious because he forgot: love seeks reciprocity. The younger son learned this lesson, the hard way yes, but he could return and seek out the father. The Elder son did not seek out the Father. He only came to complain.

I’ve always been able to identify with the Elder son. Even as a young child, it was hard to read of the prodigal son returning after behaving in such a ghastly manner and being treated like a prince. In my heart, I too felt that such treatment was overdone. It made remaining faithful seem less noble, or so I thought?

But God doesn’t seek faithfulness so much as He seeks reciprocity. To give back, we must first realize where we stand. No amount of good deeds or obedience can give us righteousness before God. He seeks a “humble and contrite heart”. The elder son is guilty of the blindness many of us live with. And it isn’t the blindness that is debilitating…it is the insistence that we need nothing.

Paul speaks of the “new creation”. Like metanoia, the new creation is not something we can do once, and it is done. Conversion isn’t a one time act, setting us forevermore in the proper stance. As humans, we do fail, we do need, we do seek. Perhaps the words of the Elder, “and you have not so much as given me a calf to celebrate with my friends” tells us the true problem. The elder son wasn’t looking to be with the father. He looked to celebrate with his friends. He felt no need of his father, because he had obeyed all the commands. Had he sought the father, seeking to know him better, he too could have joined in the celebration, because we all need to come back to life. But we first must be conscious of our need to return; we must want to be with the Father.

Appetite for God

Simon Tugwell, OP writes Saint Thomas says desire is the faculty which receives, so that the bigger our desire is, the more we can receive…Our part in this life is to learn to want largely and earnestly enough to make us capable of the infinite rightness of God’s kingdom…The more we try to tame and reduce ourselves and our desires and hopes, the more we deceive and distort ourselves. We are made for God and nothing less will really satisfy us.

Tugwell is speaking of the appetites, and our oft misunderstanding of the role they should play in our lives and hearts. Somehow, many of us feel that our appetites lead us to sin, and should be curtailed with fasts, penances, denial of all sorts. Tugwell says, you are misunderstanding the role they are meant to play. What we take as our tendency for sin isn’t an appetite, but a sickness. That needs healing . But the appetites are our desire for goodness [which] is really a much more robust desire than any alleged desire for evil.

Mindful of Thomas Merton’s words, that Lent is not a season of punishment so much as one of healing we have a good place to start.

Sic Affici Deificari Est

Contemplation. Not to be entered into just for enlightenment, or to heighten my consciousness, or to find greater peace and inner serenity, or even just to feel more intimate and connected with God. That may be the reason we begin such a practice. But it will not keep us there. We have to be convinced by St Paul to rather be transformed in the newness of your mind, so as to determine for yourselves what is the good and pleasing and perfect will of God. Rom 12:2

What Paul speaks of in being transformed in the newness of your mind we know as metanoia, a radical turning of one's life, heart, soul, will, everything to God. We turn toward God until we are in a face to face encounter with him. Movement is the key here, turning toward, continually. Without the movement of the soul turning, the concept of radical holds no meaning.

St. Bernard writes For contemplating it [the Father] with unveiled face [the result of metanoia] we are transformed into the same image from glory to glory as by the Spirit of the Lord. Speaking of contemplation, John Eudes Bamberger OCSO writes ...our Cistercian Fathers...bear witness to their dynamic understanding of the tradition that affirms the purpose of our way of life [is] to be a radical transformation of our very being and not merely the adaptation to the subculture of the cloister....divinization, which is the highest expression of transformation, as in the well-known saying of Saint Bernard: Sic affici deificari est (Dil 10).

Awareness of God

John Eudes Bamberger, OCSO writes that Bernard of Clairvaux describes the purpose of monastic life, indeed of all human living, as being essentially a process of profound change in the quality of one’s love until it attains to its perfection. Bernard views our human condition as engaged in a dynamic transformation of what is deepest in the person.. The work of the spiritual life is the radical remaking of the whole person. Spiritual progress is not simply a question of learning new habits, of adapting to a different lifestyle, of development new skills. It is a matter of a new creation, one that affects the self at its highest point, of refashioning its deepest being and of redirecting its energies as they arise from it most hidden center.

What a monastic strives for is what all Christians are called to. The monastic has the added help of time, place and space. Thomas Merton wrote What is called the contemplative life is really a life arranged in such a way that a person can more easily and more simply and more naturally live in an awareness of direct dependence on God—almost with the sense of realizing consciously, at every moment, how much we depend on Him; and receive from Him directly everything that comes to us as a pure gift; and experience, taste in our hears, the love of God in this gift.

We are followers of Jesus at just such a point, where our very essence changes.