Wednesday Jul 1, 2009
Blessings to you! On June 26th at 4:00 pm our Father Dominic Nguyen Duc Hanh defended his doctoral dissertation in Rome and received his doctoral degree from the Lateran University. He is the first of our younger brothers to receive a doctoral degree. Other have completed licentiates and master\\'s degrees. Always there is a need in the monastic community to have brothers doing higher studies, even though we have no schools or apostolates. The level of learning in a Benedictine monastery is important to help us serve the Lord.
Here at home, the family and friends of our Brother Francis, who had come for his solemn vows on June 24th, have now departed and life has returned somewhat to normal.
We have dispensed with the cowls for the morning office, which means that it is warming up. We have these cowls as part of our habit. They are large, voluminous robes and are a sign of solemn vows. In the winter, when it is cold, they are wonderful. We can put lots of clothes on underneath them and still look dignified! In the summer, however, they become too hot and we dispense them. Now we wear only the simple habit for the morning prayers.
This week please pray for Brother Bruno Boyko, who began his novitiate with us last year in October. Brother Bruno comes to us from Canada. He is a Ukrainian Catholic by birth and so we had to get permissions for him to enter Roman Catholic monastery. He is wonderful on the internet and keeps our web site current and interesting. Brother Bruno is 46 years old and has had some challenges with eye problems, but he perseveres and is a very fine presence in our monastic community. Please keep him in your prayers.
Some time ago, one of the monks asked me to speak more about prayer and praying in our evening Chapter Conferences. For me, the old definition from the Baltimore Catechism has always been a guide to prayer. It states that prayer is the lifting up of our minds and hearts to God to adore Him, to thank Him for His benefits, to ask His forgiveness, and to beg of Him all the graces we need whether for soul or body.
At the basis of all prayer is this lifting up of the mind and the heart. Lifting up the mind indicates that our thinking, our intelligence, must be focused on the Lord. Perhaps we cannot focus completely or with great concentration, but we can try to focus our mind on God, lifting the mind up to God. Lifting the heart up indicates that we need to let our emotions and our feelings be with God and not elsewhere. This also can be a great challenge, especially if we are in a situation of emotional stress or difficulty.
Think for a minute about the monk in the monastery who comes to Church. He brings with him everything that is going on in his life. We humans can be both so simple and so complex! When a monk comes to Church, he brings his whole self. He must learn how to focus that self, both mind and heart, on the Lord. If the monks has been totally involved in some activity that demanded mental attention right before coming to Church, it will be a bit of a struggle to disengage from one focus and move to another. If a brother has just had a conflict with another brother before coming to Church, there will also be struggle.
As we begin the work of praying in our lives, we begin to find all of the obstacles that can be in the way of praying. Perhaps we can narrow the obstacles down to these two elements: purifying the mind and purifying the heart. This is another way of say that we must learn to transform the energies within us so that in prayer our energies are focused on God.
Part of the discipline of being a monk is supposed to be the capacity to stop whatever he is doing at the sound of the bell, then go to Church and start praying. Far too often the monk thinks that he can just go to Church and pray. What most often happens is that the monk goes to Church and does not pray, but continues to think about what he was just doing while saying the words of prayer.
For all of us it is the same, whether we are monks or not. I remember being told about some eastern Christian teachings in which the challenge is to bring the feelings and the intellect both into the heart and unite them in the presence of God. The feelings in this model were understood as being centered in the belly, below the heart. The intellect was understood as being centered in the head. Both feeling and thinking had to be brought together in the heart, which could then be in the presence of the living God.
It is important in our lives that we pray, but also that we think about what happens in our prayer and how we pray. We begin to find that prayer can be very difficult. For most of us, when we are in difficulties or face enormous challenges, prayer is fairly easy. The difficulties and the challenges serve as a force that unites our minds and our hearts in prayer. We turn to God because we seem to have no other choice.
In daily life, however, we can find ourselves avoiding prayer because there seem to be so many other ways to get things done! If I need to write a letter, why should I pray? I can write without praying! If I need to clean my room, why should I pray? Surely I can clean the room without praying! We begin to think that we can do most of our living without praying, because it seems to work. Then we are confronted with some crisis, so awful situation, some tragedy--and we recognize that only prayer is effective, so we pray.
The challenge for us who follow the Lord Jesus is to learn to pray always, not only when we are in crisis or in a terrible situation--but always! We can begin to recognize that living is always about living in faith. Living is always about lifting our hearts and our minds to God.
When we do not pray, we begin to live in a world of illusion, in which we think that we control what happens, that we are able to do most of our living without God. Once we begin to pray serious, we can recognize that all living is really about living in God, about praying, and lifting our hearts and our minds to the Lord.
As always I promise my prayers for each of you who read this letter. May the Lord give you peace and joy. I will celebrate a Holy Mass for your intentions. Please also pray for me, for the monks of Christ in the Desert and for the monks and nuns associated with our community.
Your brother in the Lord,
Abbot Philip Lawrence, OSB
Monastery of Christ in the Desert
P.O. Box 270
Abiquiu, NM 87510
Here at home, the family and friends of our Brother Francis, who had come for his solemn vows on June 24th, have now departed and life has returned somewhat to normal.
We have dispensed with the cowls for the morning office, which means that it is warming up. We have these cowls as part of our habit. They are large, voluminous robes and are a sign of solemn vows. In the winter, when it is cold, they are wonderful. We can put lots of clothes on underneath them and still look dignified! In the summer, however, they become too hot and we dispense them. Now we wear only the simple habit for the morning prayers.
This week please pray for Brother Bruno Boyko, who began his novitiate with us last year in October. Brother Bruno comes to us from Canada. He is a Ukrainian Catholic by birth and so we had to get permissions for him to enter Roman Catholic monastery. He is wonderful on the internet and keeps our web site current and interesting. Brother Bruno is 46 years old and has had some challenges with eye problems, but he perseveres and is a very fine presence in our monastic community. Please keep him in your prayers.
Some time ago, one of the monks asked me to speak more about prayer and praying in our evening Chapter Conferences. For me, the old definition from the Baltimore Catechism has always been a guide to prayer. It states that prayer is the lifting up of our minds and hearts to God to adore Him, to thank Him for His benefits, to ask His forgiveness, and to beg of Him all the graces we need whether for soul or body.
At the basis of all prayer is this lifting up of the mind and the heart. Lifting up the mind indicates that our thinking, our intelligence, must be focused on the Lord. Perhaps we cannot focus completely or with great concentration, but we can try to focus our mind on God, lifting the mind up to God. Lifting the heart up indicates that we need to let our emotions and our feelings be with God and not elsewhere. This also can be a great challenge, especially if we are in a situation of emotional stress or difficulty.
Think for a minute about the monk in the monastery who comes to Church. He brings with him everything that is going on in his life. We humans can be both so simple and so complex! When a monk comes to Church, he brings his whole self. He must learn how to focus that self, both mind and heart, on the Lord. If the monks has been totally involved in some activity that demanded mental attention right before coming to Church, it will be a bit of a struggle to disengage from one focus and move to another. If a brother has just had a conflict with another brother before coming to Church, there will also be struggle.
As we begin the work of praying in our lives, we begin to find all of the obstacles that can be in the way of praying. Perhaps we can narrow the obstacles down to these two elements: purifying the mind and purifying the heart. This is another way of say that we must learn to transform the energies within us so that in prayer our energies are focused on God.
Part of the discipline of being a monk is supposed to be the capacity to stop whatever he is doing at the sound of the bell, then go to Church and start praying. Far too often the monk thinks that he can just go to Church and pray. What most often happens is that the monk goes to Church and does not pray, but continues to think about what he was just doing while saying the words of prayer.
For all of us it is the same, whether we are monks or not. I remember being told about some eastern Christian teachings in which the challenge is to bring the feelings and the intellect both into the heart and unite them in the presence of God. The feelings in this model were understood as being centered in the belly, below the heart. The intellect was understood as being centered in the head. Both feeling and thinking had to be brought together in the heart, which could then be in the presence of the living God.
It is important in our lives that we pray, but also that we think about what happens in our prayer and how we pray. We begin to find that prayer can be very difficult. For most of us, when we are in difficulties or face enormous challenges, prayer is fairly easy. The difficulties and the challenges serve as a force that unites our minds and our hearts in prayer. We turn to God because we seem to have no other choice.
In daily life, however, we can find ourselves avoiding prayer because there seem to be so many other ways to get things done! If I need to write a letter, why should I pray? I can write without praying! If I need to clean my room, why should I pray? Surely I can clean the room without praying! We begin to think that we can do most of our living without praying, because it seems to work. Then we are confronted with some crisis, so awful situation, some tragedy--and we recognize that only prayer is effective, so we pray.
The challenge for us who follow the Lord Jesus is to learn to pray always, not only when we are in crisis or in a terrible situation--but always! We can begin to recognize that living is always about living in faith. Living is always about lifting our hearts and our minds to God.
When we do not pray, we begin to live in a world of illusion, in which we think that we control what happens, that we are able to do most of our living without God. Once we begin to pray serious, we can recognize that all living is really about living in God, about praying, and lifting our hearts and our minds to the Lord.
As always I promise my prayers for each of you who read this letter. May the Lord give you peace and joy. I will celebrate a Holy Mass for your intentions. Please also pray for me, for the monks of Christ in the Desert and for the monks and nuns associated with our community.
Your brother in the Lord,
Abbot Philip Lawrence, OSB
Monastery of Christ in the Desert
P.O. Box 270
Abiquiu, NM 87510
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