As we look at Lent as individuals and as community, it as a time for renewal in lectio. It is a time for opening ourselves in a renewed and special way to letting the Lord open up our lives in relationship with him through lectio. We allow his word be heard and resound, and then respond to it after giving it ample time.
True friendship only grows when friends give each other time. The Lord wants us to be his friends in a most deep and intimate and total way. We enter into the divine relationship with the realization that this divine relationship occurs in our lives in human ways. One of them is spending time with a friend. Lectio is precisely that. We sit down, and we know the Lord is present in his Word. We sit down and let him speak to us, and we speak to him. We spend that time with him which opens out into real contemplation. The Holy Spirit brings us into deep communion with God with the gifts of wisdom, understanding, and knowledge.
I invite everybody to spend time on reflecting on these chapters in the Rule. As we meet in our different groups during the next two weeks, we will try to look at it and say, What do we as a community want to do to support each member of the community in living the Lenten mystery in fullness? Let us come together to one of the greatest Easters of our lives. May each of us fully experience, and we as a community experience, the fact that we have been baptized into Christ and have risen with Christ. We are even now called to live the risen life.
And may the Divine Assistance remain with us always. Amen.
This is part five of a talk given on the Rule of Saint Benedict by Abbot M. Basil Pennington, OCSO; Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery. Sunday, February 4, 2001
© Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery, 2006
