WCCM Benedictine Oblates are encouraged to read a designated portion of the Rule daily, and to write a brief, personal response. I hope that this blog will support our Oblate community in this practice. Please, keep blog entries brief and in a first-person ("I") voice. Refrain from discussing, offering an opinion, or commenting on other entries. Simply consider how a particular section of the Rule is speaking to you in your present circumstances.
150 psalms every week—how boring!. What an impossible, repetitious task, for a busy guy like me, retired though I am! Abba, forgive my laziness, my arrogance, my spiritual sleepiness, one more time. Awaken me once more to learn to approach the psalter and the Daily Office, the way John Main recommends I approach meditation and the mantra: “ . . . with a freshness of spirit. Each meditation is a new beginning, a fresh setting out on the pilgrimage beyond self, beyond limitation into the wonder of God”, into the wonder of you, Father. Thank you for the gift of this one more day to adventure with you.
There are 12 chapters in the Rule of Benedict on the Divine Office and on praying the Psalms. The number tells me of the importance that Benedict placed on Scripture and the Psalms in the spiritual life of the monks but more specifically the importance that I need to show to the praying of the psalms and the reading of Scripture in my life. For me it has become a two-way street. As I read the Scripture and pray the psalms, I feel like a thirsty plant soaking up the words of joy, of tears, of remorse, of praise, of thanks, of all those who have gone before me in their prayers to God. Watered,and nourished through their words I come to meditation feeling supported by all the psalm and scripture writers. They have taught me how to pray and what to say and not to be afraid in the saying. But there is even another realm, as Fr. Laurence, quoting John Cassian, tells me in the Daily Wisdom of October 25, I am seeing, “into the very bones and marrow of the Word of God.” And, I add, I am also seeing into my own deepest self.
150 psalms every week—how boring!. What an impossible, repetitious task, for a busy guy like me, retired though I am! Abba, forgive my laziness, my arrogance, my spiritual sleepiness, one more time. Awaken me once more to learn to approach the psalter and the Daily Office, the way John Main recommends I approach meditation and the mantra: “ . . . with a freshness of spirit. Each meditation is a new beginning, a fresh setting out on the pilgrimage beyond self, beyond limitation into the wonder of God”, into the wonder of you, Father. Thank you for the gift of this one more day to adventure with you.
ReplyDeleteThere are 12 chapters in the Rule of Benedict on the Divine Office and on praying the Psalms. The number tells me of the importance that Benedict placed on Scripture and the Psalms in the spiritual life of the monks but more specifically the importance that I need to show to the praying of the psalms and the reading of Scripture in my life. For me it has become a two-way street. As I read the Scripture and pray the psalms, I feel like a thirsty plant soaking up the words of joy, of tears, of remorse, of praise, of thanks, of all those who have gone before me in their prayers to God. Watered,and nourished through their words I come to meditation feeling supported by all the psalm and scripture writers. They have taught me how to pray and what to say and not to be afraid in the saying. But there is even another realm, as Fr. Laurence, quoting John Cassian, tells me in the Daily Wisdom of October 25, I am seeing, “into the very bones and marrow of the Word of God.” And, I add, I am also seeing into my own deepest self.
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