Tag: silence
The need for Silence
Truly a trustworthy word and deserving of every welcome, O Lord, is your almighty Word, which in so deep a silence made its way down from the Father’s royal throne into the mangers of animals and meanwhile speaks to us better by its silence. Let him who has ears to hear, hear what this loving… Read More ›
The delights of contemplation
If you ask me how to obtain the delights of contemplation, my immediate answer is by living in the wilderness and coming up from it. You know what scripture says: `The Lord God will make the wilderness of Sion like delights, and her desert like the garden of the Lord’. Stay in solitude and be… Read More ›
Prayer requires both the right time and the right place
Anyone who wishes to pray must choose not only the right place but also the right time. A time of leisure is best and most convenient, the deep silence when others are asleep is particularly suitable, for prayer will then be freer and purer. ‘Arise at the first watch of the night, and pour out… Read More ›
Pray with closed doors
Before all things however we ought most carefully to observe the Evangelic precept, which tells us to enter into our chamber and shut the door and pray to our Father, which may be fulfilled by us as follows: We pray within our chamber, when removing our hearts inwardly from the din of all thoughts and… Read More ›
Ours is a time of anxiety
In our age everything has to be a ‘problem.’ Ours is a time of anxiety because we have willed it to be so. Our anxiety is not imposed on us by force from outside. We impose it on our world and upon one another from within ourselves. Sanctity in such an age means, no doubt,… Read More ›
Prefer Silence over Analysis
Contradictions have always existed in the soul of man. But it is only when we prefer analysis to silence that they become a constant and insoluble problem. We are not meant to resolve all contradictions but to live with them and rise above them and see them in the light of exterior and objective values… Read More ›
The Artist and Monk Are One
If, indeed, truth is beauty and beauty truth, then the monastic and the artist are one. Monasticism, in fact, cultivates the artistic spirit. Basic to monasticism are the very qualities art demands of the artist: silence, contemplation, discernment of spirits, community and humility. Basic to art are the very qualities demanded of the monastic: single-mindedness,… Read More ›
Conversion
Each Oblates makes a promise to a life of continual conversion. The following is a brief examination of conscience that could be followed each evening before bed. “Concretely, my examen might include the following steps: — I begin with a moment of grateful remembrance of God’s gifts to me this day and ask for divine… Read More ›
The Dangers of Avoiding Regular Times for Prayer
When you have given over the practice of stated prayer, you gradually become weaker without knowing it … Men first leave off private prayer; then they neglect the due observance of the Lord’s day (which is a stated service of the same kind); then they gradually let slip from their minds the very idea of… Read More ›
Hope is a Slippery Thing
Holy Saturday is a day nobody talks about much in the liturgical year. There are no public ceremonies, no particular liturgies to interrupt the sense of waiting and vacuity that mark the day. For the most part, we are simply left on our own on Holy Saturday. And yet every human being who has ever… Read More ›