----- Original Message -----
From: "Jerry Lee" <jeromeleo AT earthlink DOT net>
To: "holyrule" <holyrule AT yahoogroups DOT com>; "monasticlife"
<monasticlife AT yahoogroups DOT com>; "MDL"
<benedictinemonasticdiurnal AT yahoogroups DOT com>; "rcbenedictineoblate"
<rcbenedictineoblate AT yahoogroups DOT com>; "oblateforum-l"
<oblateforum-l AT charitychannel DOT com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2006 9:15 AM
Subject: [MonasticLife] Holy Rule for Apr. 25


> +PAX
>
> Prayers for Pluscarden Abbey's Fr. Mark on his patronal feast, and for all
our Marks!
>
> Prayers for Brie, in her 20's, her blood pressure is high, possibly the
sort that spikes anytime one is in  a doctors' office, but they are testing
to be sure, also for her parents, Bev and Cas (on whose anniversary we
recently prayed in Deo gratias!) and for the doctors who treat Brie and all
of us. Prayers for Noel, blood pressure and diabetes, also financial and
real estate problems, seeking to get one son in school and to help another
son find work. Prayers for them all. Prayers for the happy death and eternal
rest of John, and for all who mourn him.
>
> Prayers for Peter, Kahler's disease ( multiple myeloma,) apparently
treated successfully a few years back, now he fears a recurrence. Scan today
to better assess is condition. Prayers for Ted, prostate cancer and having
chemotherapy, also for Kellen, 8, to receive a kidney transplant with his
father being the donor this Wednesday. The little boy and his family have
been through so much and pray this this operations will be successful and
safe for both Kellen and his Dad. How wonderful parental love can be! Yet
God's love for us all is even more wondrous than that!
>
> Special prayers for Katie, Darren, and their 3 month old daughter, Chloe.
They had been told they could not have children and Chloe was conceived
after prayers to Pope John Paul II, right after his death. During labor and
delivery, Katie broke her tail bone and ruptured a few discs in her spine.
She is now in a lot of pain and has post-partum depression, too. Ardent
prayers for them all!
> Lord, help us as You know and will. God's will is best. All is mercy and
grace. God is never absent, praise Him! Thanks so much! JL
>
> April 25, August 25, December 25
> Chapter 67: On Brethren Who Are Sent on a Journey
>
> Let the brethren who are sent on a journey
> commend themselves
> to the prayers of all the brethren and of the Abbot;
> and always at the last prayer of the Work of God
> let a commemoration be made of all absent brethren.
>
> When brethren return from a journey,
> at the end of each canonical Hour of the Work of God
> on the day they return,
> let them lie prostrate on the floor of the oratory
> and beg the prayers of all
> on account of any faults
> that may have surprised them on the road,
> through the seeing or hearing of something evil,
> or through idle talk.
> And let no one presume to tell another
> whatever he may have seen or heard outside of the monastery,
> because this causes very great harm.
> But if anyone presumes to do so,
> let him undergo the punishment of the Rule.
> And let him be punished likewise who would presume
> to leave the enclosure of the monastery
> and go anywhere or do anything, however small,
> without an order from the Abbot.
>
> REFLECTION
>
> Lay people, in St. Benedict's time and for centuries afterward, were
> more cloistered in the sense of media isolation than most religious
> are today, especially so in rural areas. We have to put ourselves
> into their perspective to see what St. Benedict is saying here. There
> was no postal service, let alone electronic media of any sort.
> Couriers and outriders, official or self-appointed were the only
> sources of news. Gossip and hearsay were the only news media
> available to most. It was, in comparison to our own day, a rather
> cloistered world.
>
> Today's active Benedictine educator or health care provider or parish
> minister could ill afford being so out of touch, much less Oblates in
> the world with jobs and families. Still, it is important to see that
> St. Benedict stressed this value as strongly as he did and try to
> find out why he did so.
>
> Fast forward to a Benedictine value we haven't mentioned much lately,
> but a central one: purity of heart. Purity of heart is the focused,
> singular monastic way of searching for God, of the spiritual
> struggle. Purity of heart, as Kierkegaard said, really IS to will one
> thing. For the Benedictine, that one thing is God, union with God.
>
> A very old monastic principle, one more alive in the East today than in
> the West, held that whatever did not help one in the monastic quest
> was actually harmful. Under that theory, there was no middle ground
> of neutrality. It helped you become a better monastic or it didn't.
> If it didn't, it wasn't considered extraneous, it was considered
> harmful, even evil. Since St. Benedict doesn't say that things heard
> from outside "can" cause great harm, but rather that they flat out do
> cause it, it may be to this earlier concept that he refers.
>
> We live in a world so flooded with media, with input, that it would
astound
> a person of St. Benedict's time, even one with no taste for monastic life!
> Let us frankly face the fact, beloveds, that ALL of that information is
not even
> good, let alone useful. We are so immersed in the barrage that we have
> often become indiscriminate, indifferent to it. We must develop and
> hone and reclaim that skill to sift and avoid the useless or harmful.
> We must be mindful and examine the amount and genuine worth of media
> exposure we allow ourselves. The sky is not the limit here.
>
> Our lives and vocations are so varied and our differences are so
> wide, but our quest is the same. Somehow, each of us, in every
> milieu, has to find a way to carve out a little bit of that isolation
> for ourselves. I love Ann McPhillips' phrase: "gatekeepers of our
> hearts." Face it, we live in an age where we can easily be in touch
> with virtually everything and that is not always good for us.
>
> It's about focus, it's about the times in one's life that one must
> carve out for oneself, times in which "only one thing is needful."
> When a cacophony of things become needful, purity of heart is drowned
> out. Maybe we have noisy families or lives, maybe we honestly cannot
> get the respite we seek. That's when we have to really struggle to
> build it in our hearts, to find God, as Teresa of Avila did, among
> the pots and pans.
>
> Our hearts may, in truth, be the only monasteries we have, the only
> gates we shall ever keep, but that does not matter. God knew from all
> eternity exactly the environments and times in which we would have to
> seek Him and He tailor-made them for us, even though in the midst of them,
> that may be hard to see at the time. He knows what He is about. We
> need to build that "one thing needful" as a place within us. For many
> of us, that will be the only desert to which we can ever fly.
>
> One last pointer for the news you DO watch or listen to or read: do so
> with prayer, make it lead to prayer. We have become more or less
> immune to horrible tragedy unfolding before us. Lose that immunity. Saying
> "Tsk, tsk..." helps no one. Say a prayer, say lots of prayers for those
whose
> horror becomes the grist of news mills.
>
> Love and prayers,
> Jerome, OSB
> http://www.stmarysmonastery.org
> jeromeleo AT earthlink DOT net
> Petersham, MA
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
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