Tag: Pennington
Reflecting on Lent
Tonight we are halfway through Lent. We have gone through twenty days and three Sundays. We have twenty days and three Sundays ahead. So it is a good moment to stop and look. What have we been doing with this Lent? Going back and listening to Benedict again: During these days, therefore, we will add… Read More ›
Reflecting on Lent
. . . we are halfway through Lent. We have gone through twenty days and three Sundays. We have twenty days and three Sundays ahead. So it is a good moment to stop and look. What have we been doing with this Lent? Going back and listening to Benedict again: During these days, therefore, we… Read More ›
Being Beloved Children of God (Part 5)
The wonder of our sonship. I tell you, my brothers, that there is absolutely nothing in this world—nothing that I can possibly conceive of—that is more wonderful than this: to know that you are God’s beloved son. It is total liberation. It is wondrous and great. It is a fulfillment of all the desires for… Read More ›
Being Beloved Children of God (Part 4)
Dropping our plan. What that Prodigal Son had to accept at that moment was to drop his own plan completely and accept the father’s embrace of love. Accept the father’s way. Let the father clothe him in the new garment—the garment we receive when we receive the habit. Put on his finger a ring, a… Read More ›
Being Beloved Children of God (Part 3)
Epiphany. That is a powerful word that the Lord gives us in the parable of the Prodigal Son. We all know ourselves to be the Prodigal Son, and we are on that journey. We are at different places on the journey, but there is a significant moment on the journey—a moment of epiphany. An epiphany… Read More ›
Being Beloved Children of God (Part 2)
The Prodigal Son. Saint Paul says, in his turn, that all paternity comes down from heaven, from the Father of Lights [3]. God is the supreme archetype of paternity—his total, complete, gratuitous giving of self. It is that paternity we want to understand, and to understand ourselves as sons in relation to that paternity. The… Read More ›
Being Beloved Children of God (Part 1)
Sons of God. Obsculta, fili or Obsculta, o fili, Saint Benedict says [1]. Most translations mistranslate that. Usually the translations say, “Listen, my son.” That is not what Saint Benedict said. He said “Listen, O son.” He is speaking to us precisely in our dignity and reality as sons. We have been baptized into Christ,… Read More ›
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
by M. Basil Pennington OCSO The Young Abbot Bernard, the founding abbot of Clairvaux Abbey in Burgundy, was one of the most commanding Church leaders in the first half of the twelfth century as well as one of the greatest spiritual masters of all times and the most powerful propagator of the Cistercian reform. He… Read More ›
Zeal
As we just heard in chapter fifty-eight of the Rule about receiving our brethren, Benedict says to see if the newcomer truly seeks God. The signs for that are in three zeals. Zeal is defined as eagerness in this text of the RB 1980. The Latin sollicitus means zeal. Zeal for the work of God,… Read More ›
Being formed through listening
… It has been said that our Father Saint Bernard knew the Bible by heart. I do not know how true that is, but he was certainly filled with the Bible. Benedict is that way, too. And you will be, too, if you keep going to the Office, pray the psalms, listen to readings, and… Read More ›