Chapter 7: The value of humility (paragraph 7)
And so, if the eyes of the Lord are watching the good and the wicked, and if at all times the Lord looks down from heaven on the sons and daughters of men to see if any show understanding in seeking God, and if the angels assigned to care for us report our deeds to the Lord day and night, we must be on our guard every hour or else, as the psalmist says, the time may come when God will observe us falling into evil and so made worthless. (From para. 7 of Ch. 7 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)
Unfortunately, Benedict's words scare up feelings of my own anxiety and failure in relation to my Source. And yet, this is the opposite of how he describes the appropriate behavior of the abbot or abbess who takes the place of Christ (from Ch. 2, para. 7: It is the task of the superiors to adapt with sympathetic understanding to the needs of each so that they may not only avoid any loss but even have the joy of increasing the number of good sheep in the flock committed to them.) So I think what Benedict is trying to summon up in the sterner paragraph of Chapter 7, is how important it is to guide people to show understanding in seeking God -- the words buried right in the middle of the passage. Perhaps someone, somewhere, at some time, needed to be "put on guard" to remember to seek God. Today, in my life, I also need to be reminded to seek God, but perhaps in words like these: God is the center of my soul.
Unfortunately, Benedict's words scare up feelings of my own anxiety and failure in relation to my Source. And yet, this is the opposite of how he describes the appropriate behavior of the abbot or abbess who takes the place of Christ (from Ch. 2, para. 7: It is the task of the superiors to adapt with sympathetic understanding to the needs of each so that they may not only avoid any loss but even have the joy of increasing the number of good sheep in the flock committed to them.) So I think what Benedict is trying to summon up in the sterner paragraph of Chapter 7, is how important it is to guide people to show understanding in seeking God -- the words buried right in the middle of the passage. Perhaps someone, somewhere, at some time, needed to be "put on guard" to remember to seek God. Today, in my life, I also need to be reminded to seek God, but perhaps in words like these: God is the center of my soul.
Today’s reading calls to mind again the “Prayer that Jesus approved”, that of the publican in the rear of the temple saying, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.” On Saturday last, Pope Francis had a private audience with a transsexual from Spain. The man born anatomically a woman asked the Pope if he might have “room for someone like me in some small corner of the church.” Whereupon Francis reportedly simply embraced him. Jesus associated with and welcomed the outcasts and people on the margins. Mercifully he has a small corner in His kingdom for me. He invites me daily to meet Him in the present moment, beginning with my mantra and my meditation.
ReplyDelete"The Lord looks down from heaven on the sons and daughters of men to see if any show understanding in seeking God." Meditation gives me the opportunity to seek God. Meditation helps me to come to an understanding that is ongoing through faith that I seek what I do not understand and what I do not know. Meditation gives me a "prayer" through which I come to experience the constant love of God in a mysterious encounter in my heart. It is that love I do not want to betray in my daily responses to others and to self. It is that love, "the sharp dart of longing love" that "cuts through the darkness by destroying the root and ground of sin within us."(Where Only Love Can Go: The Cloud of Unknowing, ed.John Kirvan) It is that love which looked for me first and to which I want to constantly respond and which I do not want to throw away as "worthless" by mindless acts of betrayal.
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