Blessings to you! Life is very good at the Monastery at this time. Brothers are returning home bit by bit. The weather is clear and with lots of sunshine. The morning temperatures are still comfortable and the afternoons are not yet too hot. Thanks be to God.

Brother Michael spent all of Easter Time away from the Monastery on a private retreat. He returned yesterday and is settling back into the life once more. Brother Bernard spent two months at Mount Saviour Monastery, serving as the second priest in the community there to help out a bit. He will be home now for many months before another possible time at Mount Saviour. We are happy to have both of our brothers home with us once again.

Brother Christian left on the weekend to go to Belmont Abbey in North Carolina where he is giving their community retreat. He will return at the end of the week.

I am heading off to Mexico once again at the end of the week and will be giving the community retreat to our Monastery of La Soledad and then replacing Prior Ezequiel for a couple of weeks so that he can visit his family in Argentina.

One of the most difficult practices for the spiritual life is keeping the inner focus of one's being on the Lord and on the Lord's will in our lives. Even the early monks spoke about the difficulty of this practice. It is so easy to get distracted by just about anything. And the more important something is, or that we think it is, the easier it becomes to justify our distraction.

How can we develop our capacity to remain focused? There are many ways in the tradition that can help us. The first, of course, is to repeat the Holy Name of Jesus slowly and gently and softly, keeping our whole being intent upon that name. This method has been used for centuries and is still helpful. Another is repeating the Jesus Prayer (Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner) in the same way.

Other have suggested choosing almost any sacred word and repeating it in the same way: Father, Spirit, God, etc. The names of God are very effective. We could also use the name of a virtue: love, peace, joy, etc.

Another way to come to remain in focus is simply paying attention to our breathing for an extended period of time. Such attention can be a prayer if we are giving this attention in the depths of our being for the sake of God. The Cloud of Unknowing (a work from the latter half of the 14th Century, in Middle English) suggests that we can be quiet, with no words, our hearts fixed on the Lord. It is as if there is a small, fiery shaft of our will inclining us to God in the midst of complete stillness.

Always we should remember that there are other ways of prayer as well and this way of silence and quiet. On the other hand, in the contemplative tradition, this way of quiet silence has always been given a sort of privileged place of honor because it stays away from confusing God with thoughts about God.

As with any practice of prayer, it needs to be done over and over and over. That is why it is called a practice! We must practice it if we are to come to know how it works and what effects it can have in our lives.

We must prepare ourselves for difficulty in prayer. If we always have wonderful, joyous experiences when we begin to pray, then something is surely wrong. Prayer is about a relationship with God. The whole tradition reminds us that God will at times withdraw from us in order to test us. We won't like it and our feelings will be offended and our sense of absence can be enormous. Yet it is necessary purify us and help us realize that we must seek only God and not the good feelings and thoughts that can accompany God.

For those of us who live in religious communities, there is a clear relationship between our prayer with God and our living in community. I suspect that the relationship of two spouses must also have similarities. We cannot expect the relationships in a community always to be perfect, harmonious and delightful! We are humans living together! Yet the challenges of community living (or of spousal living) are what purify our love for one another and our love for God.

Another aspect of the practice of prayer is simply commitment to the practice. Abbot John Chapman wrote: "The time of prayer is passed in the act of wanting God. It is an idiotic state, and feels like the most complete waste of time, until it gradually becomes more vivid. The strangest phenomenon is when we begin to wonder whether we mean anything at all, and if we are addressing anyone, or merely repeating mechanically a formula we do not mean. The word God seems to mean nothing. If we feel this curious and paradoxical condition, we are starting on the right road, and we must beware of trying to think what God is and what He has done for us, etc.; or what we are before Him, etc., because this takes us out of prayer and spoils God's work, as St. John of the Cross says."

If we don't spend time in prayer, we can expect nothing. If we do spend time in prayer, we also expect nothing but the results are different.

Be assured of my prayers for you again this week. I will celebrate a Holy Mass for you and for your needs and intentions. Please, please pray for me and for all of the women and men associated with our communities.