Marching Towards the Light: A Retreat Postscript

On our retreat one of our members shared with us the account of a monk at a Monastery whose responsibility was the tending of the graves in the Monastery Cemetery.  One grave had no headstone, but the monk had placed flowers on it along with the other graves.  Why?  It was his own grave and he lived with a sense of his own mortality and the hope of eternal life.  We are all marching towards that eternal light.

            This was sharply focused on our last Morning Prayer with the Sisters in the Monastery Chapel.  I drove from the Retreat Center to the Monastery with one of our members who has a little difficulty walking, only to find some confusion.  The Monastery door was locked and no-one was available to answer the bell.  We walked around to another entrance, up a short flight of stairs, and headed for the elevator to the Monastery Chapel. 

            The elevator door opened immediately but the elevator was full; three paramedics and one of the Sisters were accompanying an older Sister who was strapped into a gurney.  As they came out of the elevator and passed by us the older Sister on the gurney smiled pleasantly at us and said, “Good morning,” almost as though there was nothing wrong.

            Morning Prayer had already begun when we took our seats.  The Sisters were singing the Morning Hymn and as they began to chant the Psalm I could hear the “beep, beep, beep” of the ambulance backing up and bearing the older Sister away.  Apparently her blood pressure had shot up to 200.

            Together, Sisters and Oblates, we continued to sing Morning Prayer.  We are all of us marching towards the light and our heavenly home.  God grant us the grace, like the Sisters of St. Scholastica, to continue marching towards the light unafraid, with a song on our lips, and our hearts fixed on the Resurrected Christ in whom is all our trust and hope.

THE RHYTHM OF PERSONAL RENEWAL

The Pentecostal Scholar Simon Chann of Singapore has made some surprising statements, surprising because they come from the Pentecostal expression of the Christian Faith. The statements, as I read them through my own filters, are:  “Worship is not just a function of the Church, but the Church’s very reason for being;” and “What is the mission of the Trinity?  And the answer to that question is communion.  Ultimately all things are to be brought into communion with the Triune God.  Communion is the ultimate end, not mission.  Communion …is ultimately, seeing God and seeing the heart of God as well, which is his love for the world.” [i]   

That takes me back to the rhythm of personal renewal reflected in the flux and reflux in the writings of Van Ruysbroek.  As we empty ourselves in the service of God and in the warfare between the kingdom and the world we reach the end of ourselves and personal Depletion.  We, then by pure grace and pure gift return to him.  Being restored by communion with God we flow back out into the world, sharing in the self-emptying and incarnate love of the Logos, the Christ, even Jesus, whom we adore.  We then flow back into the world and into the holy warfare of making disciples of all nations, baptizing them into the name, and into communion with, “the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything the Logos has commanded, for lo, he is with us always even to the end of the age.”  In an act of further Incarnation he is not only with us but in us, even in our own self-emptying mission into the world. 

In Hebrews 12:22, he tells us that we have come to join in the heavenly communion…and together, hand in hand, “have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God.  We have come to the thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the Church, the Church of the first-born.  We have come to God, the judge of all men, to the spirits of righteous men made perfect.  We have come to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, to the sprinkled blood that is our at-one-ment with the Triune God who loves us. 

In coming we receive a Kingdom that cannot be shaken.  Thus “let us offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe for our God is a consuming fire,” and all that is not holy love within us will be burned up that we might be purified, and thus purified and united with his holy love we flow back into the world, his own creation which he loves and seeks to restore to himself. 

The other paradigm that fits with this is the classic “God initiates and man responds.”  God in his love, reconciling justice and mercy, sends the Logos incarnate into the world.  We ourselves are ransomed by his action: “Truly no man can ransom another, or give to God the price of his life, for the ransom of their life is costly and can never suffice, that he should live on forever and never see the pit” (Psalm 49:7-9), and “But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me” (Psalm 49:15).  We receive our at-one-ment and in holy and exuberant joy are drawn out of ourselves, out of our locus in the world, and drawn into the holy fellowship of the saints and angels, and for a few moments, by grace often repeated, we are united with him and with his redeeming love.  That is the first motion. 

The second is this: Now that we are in him and he in us; we, with joy, join in his redeeming work and through us and our love he reaches out to the world around us.  This happens, even to the extent, that Paul can state an oft experienced pastoral reality and say: “I make up in my own body that which is lacking in the sufferings of Christ on behalf of the Church, which is his body” (Col. 1:24).

This empowering union becomes a complete reality in the sacramental union that we celebrate in Holy Eucharist.  Gathered ‘round the altar in the fellowship of saints and angels, we kneel, and in humble adoration we receive the body and blood of Christ.  Do not explain away his simple, but profound, declaration, “This is my body.  This is my blood.”  Most of the American Protestant world misses the reality claiming perversely that it is a memorial only.  That is a phenomenal and costly error.  There is a reason why the proverbial mega-church is a mile wide and a quarter of an inch deep. 

There is little cost to Christ, or to us in such bloodless gatherings.  In the body and the blood we receive the very substance of God incarnate.  He who is one substance (homoousios) with the Father as regards his Godhead, becomes of one substance with us, not only in His incarnation, but also in the giving of His body and blood.  He becomes one substance with us as regarding His manhood and His Godhead, which is undivided (Council of Chalcedon Definition, 451 AD, as applied to the Eucharist)[ii].  We receive him Himself, more than the mere experience of praise, more than in the discipline of daily offices, we receive Him and enter into a mutual indwelling with the Holy God.  It receiving Him we take him in us back into the world.

Peter Kreeft remarks, “How irrational to swallow a camel and strain at gnat!—to believe the greater miracle, the oneness of the man Christ with God, and not the lesser one, the oneness of the bread with his body.  If God can leap the infinite gap into man, he can surely leap into the appearances of bread and wine.” [iii]

For that matter, how irrational to believe that that God can leap the infinite gap into man, and not believe that through Christ he can make that infinite leap into each one of us.

Every Sunday we are dressed in white and surrounding the altar, we lift up holy hands as liturgists (leitourgos - liturgist = minister) in praise and worship of Him in the liturgy of communion, in the heavenlies, receiving again his very substance. 

In those moments sacramentally and really we feed upon the body and blood of the Christ who said, “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him (John 6:56).  And again, “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation, a communion, a fellowship, a koinonia, in the blood of Christ?  The bread that we break is it not a koinonia in the body of Christ?  Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread (I Cor. 11:16-17). 

We do not come to worship to be entertained.  If anything we are the entertainment for the Lord.  Now united with him, in union with him, we join in his holy mission out into the world.  Through such worship, ministry, liturgy, through the body and the blood we receive the Spirit of power. 

Hence in our congregation, before the sermon we pray, “Holy Spirit, it is your purpose to reveal to us the living God and his only Son, Jesus Christ our Lord: Pour on us the fire of your love.  Warm our hearts, challenge our minds and gently draw our wills along your paths, that your presence and power may quicken our love, deepen our joy, and equip us to meet the challenges of our daily lives, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”  This happens not only through proclamation, but also through the union of word and sacrament.  We proclaim the Word to the world, and draw those who are being saved into union with him in the sacrament of Holy Eucharist. 

St. Paul expresses this mission of the church in this way: “I have written to you very boldly by way of reminder, because of the grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:15-16).  The language is sacramental language.  The minister is the liturgist, the priestly service is precisely that which the priest does Sunday by Sunday as the liturgist of God at the altar.  The word for offering, is prosphora, that which is offered on the altar of God.  This offering is sanctified, made holy by the Holy Spirit, the Ruach Elohim of the Old Testament and the New. 

The offering that we offer is actually the “offering of the Gentiles.” specifically the fruits our work of evangelism.  In love and adoration we present to the Father those whom we have brought to salvation in his Son Jesus Christ.  This offering is possible only through Christ, and is a work directed by the Holy Spirit.  What strikes me is the awesome responsibility we bear in this matter.  If we are insensitive to the call of the Spirit, we will be left standing on the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza while the eunuch makes his way back to Candace the pagan queen unconverted. 

Worship, communion with the God of love should awaken the love of God within our hearts.  When that does not indeed happen it signals that our communion with God is actually abortive and all our religious posturing is precisely that.  We are hypocrites, in the Biblical sense of that word, wearing the assumed mask of piety.  To us, then the Christ will say, “Would that you were either cold or hot!  So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth (Rev. 3:15,16).  If you think that is harsh, consider this, that without Christ as his ransom, the eunuch will go to hell, and we will have no offering to bring to the Father.

The two paradigms are completed in our personal and corporate experience, in the flux and reflux, the rhythm of personal renewal, and in the responsive action in which God initiates and man responds by returning his love to him, and joining his love in his ministry and warfare in the world, the kosmos.

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[i] (Christianity Today, June 2007)

[ii] “The Definition of the Union of the Divine and Human Natures in the Person of Christ” in The Book of Common Prayer, p. 864

[iii] Peter Kreeft, Christianity for Modern Pagans: Pascal’s Pensées, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), p. 274

Copyright © 2012 Robin P. Smith

The Yadah Prayer Cycle

The Hebrew word, Yadah means, to throw, or shoot, and also to praise.  The root of the word, yad, means hand.  Yadah means to stretch forth the hand in praise.

Praying the Jesus Prayer

Behind the practice of repeating the Jesus Prayer is the conviction “The Living God is accessible to personal experience, because He shared His own life with humanity.”[i]  You, as an individual, can know God, and you personally are known by Him.  It is the ministry of the Holy Spirit that carries us into the presence of God.  St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in his Catechetical Lectures, teaches that,

All your life long will your guardian the Comforter abide with you; He will care for you, as for his own soldier; for your goings out, and your comings in, and your plotting foes. And He will give you gifts of grace of every kind, if you grieve Him not by sin; for it is written, And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, by Whom you were sealed unto the day of redemption. What then, beloved, is it to preserve grace? Be ready to receive grace, and when you have received it, cast it not away.[ii]

2.      In the Incarnation, the Living God comes to us in human form.  Without the willingness of the maiden Mary there would have been no Incarnation.  Of the Incarnation Charles Williams says,

At the beginning of life in the natural order is an act of substitution and co-inherence.  A man can have no child unless his seed is received and carried by a woman; a woman can have no child unless she receive and carries the seed of a man – literally bearing the burden.  It is not only a mutual act; it is a mutual act of substitution.  The child itself for nine months co-inheres in its mother; there is no human creature that has not sprung from such a period of an interior growth.[iii]

One of the implications of the Incarnation is that God chooses to work hand in hand with humankind, not instead of humankind.  We have a share in the grace of God by our active participation.  Like Mary we have the responsibility of saying “yes” to God, and also the responsibility of presenting ourselves, spirit, soul and body to Him in active participation with His work in our lives.  St. Paul says, 

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,  for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.[iv]

The tradition of praying the Jesus Prayer reemphasizes the essential unity between spirit  and body by the use of the prayer rope as a means of helping us focus on the Divine Presence in our prayers.

3.      “The Jesus Prayer also took the form of constant mental repetition of a brief sentence such as, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.”[v]    It is not that the simple discipline of the repeated Jesus Prayer earns the presence of God.   The personal experience of God is a gift.  It is God who is reaching out to us.  In the light of that we remember the words of St. Paul, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”   

One ancient method was to use a prayer rope, repeating the prayer once for each knot, and focusing your attention on the presence of God as you pray.  The prayer, addressed to Jesus Christ, is a prayer of humility, and an acknowledgement of our own frailty.  Further it helps to understand that mercy extends well beyond simple forgiveness.  One of the two major Old Testament words for mercy actually means womb, and the other is more often translated steadfast love.  So you might say, “Hold me secure in your steadfast love even though I am a sinner.  The prayer leads us personally to Jesus and to the experience of His steadfast love.

4.      The Yadah Prayer Cycle:  There is a practical difficulty in the use of a prayer rope in our society.  It is most often too obtrusive to use in public settings other than worship.  Some people use a Rosary or Anglican Prayer Beads, but that presents the same problem.  Let me suggest to you an alternative method that is based on the same principle as the prayer rope.

Ø  Start with the closed hand or fist as though you had a grip on God.  With the closed hand start your prayer cycle with a declaration of the awareness of God who is always present with his people, such as, “Lord, I thank you that you are always with me and I praise you for your love.”

Ø  The next three short prayers are an acknowledgment of the Holy Trinity. With a prayer to God the Father stretch forth the thumb; with a prayer to God the Son stretch forth your index finger; and with an invocation to the Holy Spirit extend your second finger.  You might pray: “I thank you Father that you love and accept me.  I thank you Jesus that you died for my sins and rose from the dead.  I humbly ask you Holy Spirit to help me to focus in my prayers.”

Ø  Then close the hand again.  With the closed hand gripping God, bring before God the intercession that is closest to your heart and pray a brief informal prayer.

Ø  Stretch forth the thumb and pray, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.”  Maintaining your focus on the Presence of God, stretch forth the index finger and repeat the Jesus Prayer, then do the same with the remaining fingers of the hand until the hand is fully extended. Note that the hand is now open as a symbol of your willingness to receive from God.

Ø  Close the hand and get a grip on the Presence of God, and make your next intercession.  Keep your prayer both informal and brief.  If you allow yourself to ramble you will lose focus.

Ø  Begin the next cycle extending the thumb, then each of the fingers in turn, and repeating the Jesus Prayer each time.  At the end, return again to the closed hand.

Ø  I find that doing five cycles of the Yadah Prayer is enough; more than that and one tends to lose focus.

Ø  At the end of fifth cycle, close the hand and briefly give God thanks that He is always willing to hear your prayers.

Ø  Then extend the thumb, and give thanks to the Holy Spirit for his help.  Next extend the forefinger and say a short prayer thanking Jesus for the power of His death and resurrection. Finally, extend the next finger and express your love and gratitude to God the Father who is always ready to hear you prayers.

Ø  Close the hand again with a grip on the Divine Presence.  You may conclude your Yadah Prayer cycle or begin again.

5.      The threefold benefit of this method is that you can pray this way any time and any place without being obtrusive.  Second, you don’t need to buy anything.  Prayer ropes tend to be expensive, and rosaries and prayer beads can break.  Third, many prayer ropes, prayer beads and rosaries have more beads in each section leading to a greater repetition of the Jesus Prayer, and also less places for intercession between each group of knots or beads.

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[i] Gregory Palamas, The Triads, ed. John Meyendorf, trans. Nicholas Gendle, (Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1983), p. 1 

[ii] St. Cyril of Jerusalem, The Catechetical Lectures, ed. in contemporary language by Robin P. Smith

[iii] Charles Williams, The Descent of the Dove, (Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 1939), p. 234

[iv] Philippians 2:12-13  

[v] Palamas. p. 4

CHIVALRY

CHIVALRY 

"Cast away, then, all cowardice out of thine heart,

and with knightly valour ride with me in the lists:

for it becomes not the squire to hesitate,

where his lord goes forward with gallantry and courage.

. . .

No vicarious atonement, then,

will satisfy the instinct of the true lover of reality.

He desires life with all its accidents and misfortunes:

the high heroic life of the chivalry of God."[1]

. . .

My Lord,

so often have I gone out with thee into the lists

not knowing wither I go,

sometimes armed and sometimes not,

sometimes consciously to do battle,

sometimes oblivious of the battle at hand.

Lord, I recognize the lists

as one of the themes of my life.

I praise Thee,

that has called me,

and kept me company.

. . .

Now my liege Lord

I place upon me the panoply of God:

I gird my loins with truth and integrity

and place upon my chest the breastplate

of Your righteousness.

My feet are shod with the Gospel of peace

and I stand ready to bear witness to You

in the midst of the fray.

I hold secure the shield of faith,

its colors the red of your shed blood

its white the purity you purchased for me,

its insignia the rampant Lion and the Lamb.

I fear not the fiery darts of the wicked one.

On my head I place the helm of salvation

its golden plume the sign of

Your victory over death and the grave.

In my hand I grasp the blade of the Spirit

which is the Word of God

sharper than any two-edged sword

piercing even to the division of soul and spirit,

joints and marrow.

My liege Lord

I stand by your side.

I hear the rumble of drums.

My ears ring with the trumpet call.

Lead me, My Lord.

I follow you to battle

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[1]John Cordelier, The Path of Eternal Wisdom, (London: John M. Watkins. 1922), p. 17.       Copyright © 2011  Robin P. Smith

Seeking the Ancient Paths

       I was considering my three favourite saints, Benedict, Anthony, and Teresa of Avila, when it occurred to me that each of them withdrew from the corruption in the World and in the Church.  St. Benedict and St. Anthony each withdrew to their caves and Teresa withdrew to one her little houses in the cities of Spain and shut the door.  Each sought and treasured solitude.  History testifies that when you do that, the lost children of the world begin to beat a path to your door.  All three had to provide for the challenge of providing hospitality for other seekers of God.    Benedict ended up as the founder of a major branch of monasticism.  Anthony found other hermits following him to the desert.  Teresa spent as much time founding little monasteries as she spent taking refuge in them.

Their societies, and ours, were Pagan; at times Pagan arrayed in the glorious robes of the Church.  A cloak of virginity is not the same thing as virginity.  Today when clergy fill out the forms of application for marriages they are apt to meet the question, “Bachelor” or “Maiden” with a wry smile.  The Church in America has difficulty accepting that this is not a Christian country, certainly not within the parameters set by the New Testament.  Perhaps it never has been except in certain remarkable cultural pockets that managed to withdraw from the larger whole.

In general, there are always exceptions, in general the response of the church echoes the words of God, “They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, 'Peace, peace,' when there is no peace.  Were they ashamed when they committed abomination? No, they were not at all ashamed; they did not know how to blush.” [i]  We are ashamed to blush.  When the Church has been less accommodating it has paid the price by being condemned as condemnatory, and therefore socially unacceptable. 

Many of today’s voters are wrestling over which of our candidates or political parties are more Christian than the other.  Be assured, “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.  All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”[ii]  It is within the context of the Church within the World, and the World within the Church that Saints Benedict, Anthony, and Teresa each fled to a little cave.

This is not a counsel of despair, nor is it somehow peculiar.  It is the rhythm of the Church and the World.  The Lord himself counsels the faithful not to seek the answer within the Church itself, “Do not trust in these deceptive words: 'This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD.”[iii]  Do not be trapped into worshipping the garments of holiness or the stones of ancient buildings, not that in America we have ancient buildings.  Even our Lord Jesus himself sought times of solitude where he could be alone with his Father on a lonely Galilean hilltop.

The answer is not to be found in the World or even in the Church.  “Thus says the LORD: ‘Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.’”[iv]  Rest is not to be found in the lost ideal of a Christian nation nor is it to be found in the beauty and diversity of the Church.  It will not be found in feverish attempts to cloak social morés in the garments of holiness.  That is like a gold ring in pig’s snout. Rest is to be found in the ancient paths where the good way is.  “Now . . .  we take the greatest care to hold that which has been believed everywhere, always and by all.[v] 

Rest is not to be found even in the ancient paths, but where the paths lead.  Rest is to be found in the God of love who is also a consuming fire where all of our pretensions are only dust and ashes.  One cannot in truth separate love and holiness, and it is precisely the demands of holiness that caused Saints Benedict, Anthony, and Teresa to flee from the Church within the World and the World within Church.  Were they wrong?  Many would tell us today that they were. 

For you and for me the practical answer is to be found in taking deliberate time for solitude like these ancient saints.  Pascal wrote, “I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.”[vi]  As Oblates we are not called to live in endless solitude, but we are called to enfold times of solitude into the rhythm of our lives and our search for solitude needs to be supported by the simple round of psalms and lessons, the prayers of the Church, and corporate worship.

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[i] Jeremiah 6:14-15 

[ii] Romans 3:10-12 

[iii] Jeremiah 7:4  

[iv] Jeremiah 6:16 

[v] The Vincentian Canon: Vincent of Lerins ~ AD 434

[vi] Peter Kreeft, Christianity for Modern Pagans: Pascal’s Pensées, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), p. 172

Copyright © 2012 Robin P. Smith

Thwarted

What happens when we are thwarted?  Most of our problems come because of a wrong view of ourselves. Life is simpler when we acknowledge our place in the universe: The Lord is God and I am not!  Along with that simple fact there is a corollary: He has many children and I am only one of them.

Peter Kreeft writing on Pascal tells us,

The essence of sin is selfishness, “me first”, self-love or pride.

            Pride is essentially competitive. “Me first” necessarily means “you second”.  Pascal would like Rodney Dangerfield’s line, “When you’re looking out for Number One, you’re going to step on some Number Two.”

            Self-love, or pride, is not the same as self-respect.  Self-respect means treating yourself, like all selves, as valuable. . .

            Self-love on the other hand, means making yourself your own God: that is your own end, good and goal; seeking your happiness and purpose and destiny and meaning in yourself rather than in God.[i]

There is a twist in human behaviour that needs to be noted.  Another more subtle form of self-love is seeking others as “your own end, good and goal.” Make no mistake; that is also another form of self-love, because in doing so you are not seeking others for their own sakes.  May God deliver us from people who want to put us in first place, for the first place belongs to God alone, and people who make a habit of doing that can be a tremendous nuisance to the people they love in this manner.

The only antidote is truth, and truth is not loved by those enmeshed in self-love.  Pascal says that the nature “of self-love is to love only self and consider only self, . . . The predicament in which it thus finds itself arouses in it the most unjust and criminal passion that could possibly be imagined, for it conceives a deadly hatred for the truth which rebukes it and convinces it of its faults.”[ii]

In Gaudy Night, Dorothy Sayers gets to the heart of her plot by uncovering a motive for an attempted murder.  Lord Peter Wimsey, in conversation with the teachers of a women’s college, holds forth,

My first task was obviously to find out whether Miss de Vine had actually ever murdered or injured anybody. In the course of a very interesting after-dinner conversation in this room, she informed me that, six years ago, she had been instrumental in depriving a man of his reputation and livelihood—and we decided, if you remember, that this was an action which any manly man or womanly woman might be disposed to resent . . .

Incidentally, I established for a certainty, what I was sure of in my own mind for a start, that there was not a woman in this Common Room, married or single, who would be ready to place personal loyalties above professional honor.  That was a point which it seemed necessary to make clear—not so much to me, as to yourselves.[iii]

            The point being that part of our acknowledgment of the Lord being God is an acknowledgment that it is the Lord who sets the rules and not we ourselves.  His rules are that Truth and Integrity must prevail, and that in so doing justice must be carried out.  Justice includes truth and integrity, and making your word your bond.

            Is Kreeft too glum when he says?

“We are all born into the world as selfish little pigs . . . our working philosophy is always “I want what I want when I want it”; and that even when we later learn to cover up and compromise this demand, it remains down at the bottom of our heart.”

This truth is easily uncovered by the experience of feeling thwarted, and being thwarted is a common every day experience when we human beings interact with each other.

            How easily we are annoyed, perhaps even angered, when some other equally self-centered person encroaches on what we consider to be our rightful territory, be that territory our time or our personal space.  When that happens what we really are saying is that “I am my own,” and “What’s mine is mine.”

            A good deal of the salvation history of the children of Israel was involved with the issue of territorial claims, one encroaching upon the other, and that conflict persists to the present day.  What was largely missing was the fundamental underlying question: Just whose land was it anyway?  Even Job, at the outset had a clear understanding, “The Lord has given, and the Lord has taken away,”[iv]  And King David is his dedicatory prayer of the offerings for the temple confesses,

"But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able thus to offer willingly? For all things come from you, and of your own have we given you.  For we are strangers before you and sojourners, as all our fathers were. Our days on the earth are like a shadow, and there is no abiding.[v]

There is an ancient Navajo understanding that we don’t “own” the land, we just inhabit it.  We are stewards not lords.  From a Benedictine viewpoint this governs St. Benedict’s general attitude towards material possessions.  St. Benedict in his rule tells his monks,

Let it not be allowed at all for a monk to give or to receive letters, tokens, or gifts of any kind, either from parents or any other person, nor from each other, without the permission of the Abbot. But even if anything is sent him by his parents, let him not presume to accept it before it hath been make known to the Abbot. And if he order it to be accepted, let it be in the Abbot's power to give it to whom he pleaseth. And let not the brother to whom perchance it was sent, become sad, that "no chance be given to the devil" (Eph 4:27; 1 Tm 5:14). But whosoever shall presume to act otherwise, let him fall under the discipline of the Rule.[vi]

This is not socialism in action but something quite different.  It has to do with the nature of original sin.  Benedict does not want his monks grasping at material possessions and shrieking, “Mine! Mine! Mine!”  Nor does he want his monks to consider time their own.  When the bell rings it’s time to worship and if you are so inconsiderate, not of others but of the Lord, that you are late there will be an act of discipline.  In this context discipline is a better word than punishment.  The monk has to learn that even time is not his own.  The Psalmist prays, “But I trust in you, O LORD; I say, "You are my God." My times are in your hand.”[vii]

The experience of being thwarted may actually be a gift from God because it helps us understand that the real issue of spiritual life is a call to a deeper acceptance of our place in the universe and our place in the family of God.  Surrender is not an abstract quality so much as an action verb.  In all of this, with time, space, and material things, we are to live with open hands not with wicked closed fists.

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[i] Peter Kreeft, Christianity for Modern Pagans: Pascal’s Pensées, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), p. 147

[ii] Ibid. p. 149

[iii] Dorothy Sayers, Gaudy Night, (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), p. 478

[iv] Job 1:21

[v] 1 Chronicles 29:14-15  

[vi] The Rule of St. Benedict by chapters (Boniface Verheyen OSB, Atchison, 1949) OSB Website

[vii] Psalm 31:14-15