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Easter Monday
Reading this morning in Brother Lawrence’s The Practice of the Presence of God, I felt as if the old monk were aiming some of his words directly at me across the centuries. In his eighth letter, he tells the person to whom he’s writing: I do not advise you to use multiplicity of words in prayer; many words and long discourses being often the occasions of wandering… And in his ninth letter, discussing a mutual acquaintance, he tells his correspondent: She seems to me full of good will, but she would go faster than grace. One does not become holy all at once. … These two subjects, verbosity in prayer…
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He Is Risen Indeed
I slipped into sleep last night watching the fire-patterns in the stove, methodically releasing my hold on old hurts and old grudges that had been bedeviling me all evening. Reading earlier in the afternoon in Holy Week: The Complete Offices in Latin and English, I had latched onto a section from the Second Nocturne in Holy Saturday, a selection from Psalm 26: I believe to see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living. Expect the Lord, do manfully, and let thy heart take courage, and wait thou for the Lord. How often are men exhorted in this day and age to “do manfully?” The rarity…
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Later On Good Friday
The word “blessing” is grossly overused and misused these days, but my use of it here is absolutely precise: today was a blessing. I had the day off and was determined to spend it in reading, prayer, and contemplation. I did so. I prayed a full rosary in three stages, said all of the offices (so far) for The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I worked on my Latin exercises (I’m trying to learn to say all of the major prayers in Latin), did a bit of work on some poems in progress, and wrote some prayers in my prayer book. I read a pretty sizable chunk of…
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The Ides of March
“Beware the Ides of March!” I said that today at my office, and one of my coworkers, who has a college education, asked me what I was talking about. “You know, from Julius Caesar? The day he got turned into a pincushion by the Senate?” She frowned as if I had asked her for money. “Who?” “Never mind.” And as I do so often, I turned away. I can’t wait until Wednesday. “Saint Who?” A week ago, the migration of hummingbirds back to these climes began. This evening, I was sitting in our office here at home, gazing out the door at Jinx, when something bulleted past. There was a…
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Tidbits From An Old Master
Ever since I found one of his books at a library sale, I have enjoyed and benefited from the writings of Abbe de Tourville. His slender volume, Letters of Direction, is a book I frequently use in my lectio divina. Here are some passages from that book that I think my readers might enjoy and from which you might gain nourishment: Let us be able to depend quietly on ourselves. Let us judge for ourselves which things most help, guide, and teach us, by observing the degree in which they fit our own particular temperament; learning by experience those things which help us and which we most need. Live according…
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The Soul’s Language
Prayer begins by talking to God, but it ends by listening to Him. In the face of Absolute Truth, silence is the soul’s language. — Venerable Fulton J. Sheen
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In A Trying Time
A hot, bleak, disappointing day, and sitting here in the quiet of a cool room, I am grateful that it is at an end. Two sizable disappointments bled the day of much of its appeal. One was a considerable setback at my job, which does not bode well for me in the coming weeks. The other was a bit of dismal financial news, arriving when I reached home this evening. And yet I do not feel crushed or despondent, and my spirits are cheery and calm. I believe the credit for my calmness in the face of disappointment goes to two mp3’s to which I listened today. This morning on…
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Layksuh Hayull
I sat outside this morning with bible, breviary, and notebook, my coffee steaming in the cool and sugared mugginess of the day’s initial pages. Up in the woods in the direction of the new-born sun, a screech owl called, sounding as always like a tiny spectral horse whinnying. His appearance is early this year; I usually don’t hear the screech owls until mid-to-late September. And I sat and sipped and wondered if his eerie song was considered a harbinger in the mythos of any peoples. The squadron of the buzzing bullets we call hummingbirds were about their business, and watching them reminded me of something from my pilgrimage to Gethsemani…
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The Unquiet Mind
This morning’s lectio divina reading highlighted this verse: The things that thou hast not gathered in thy youth, how shalt thou find them in thy old age? Ecclesiasticus 25:5, Douay-Rheims version Thinking through the implications of the question, my mind is unquiet. How shall I find those things I neglected in greener years? And how many of those things are there? ~ S.K. Orr