The Abbot’s Notebook for November 9, 2016
Blessings to you! Another week has passed. This past Sunday night we began our Annual Retreat here at Christ in the Desert. Bishop Michael Barber, S.J., Bishop of Oakland, is directing our retreat and is very good indeed. When I see the other brothers responding to positively to a retreat master, I am always happy. The Annual Retreat renews our life here in the monastery and is a time of special graces and blessings.
One of the topics that Bishop Barber put directly in front of us is the need to spend time in prayer. Even monks sometimes get distracted and continue to live their lives without putting their hearts and minds in the presence of God. When Guests come and see the monks praying in choir, they all presume that the monks are praying in their hearts. But that is not always true. Monks are just like everyone else and what we do by habit can often become simply something that is done without the heart or the mind being present.
This is important in any life! Far too often we humans begin to live from habit and not from our hearts and heads. Love in a marriage can grow cold and even die unless that connection is renewed and cultivated regularly. Love in a religious vocation also can die and a man or woman can leave religious life because the heart and mind are no longer present in the religious vocation.
The challenge for our spiritual life is always the same: live in God. The challenge is not just to think about God. The challenge is prayer: lifting of the heart and the mind to God. For some, it is relatively easy to think of God, but to keep the heart, the will, centered on God throughout the day is not easy. This means that we must always be seeking God’s will. It means that instead of just living, we have to think and decide about the best way of living, the way of the Lord.
When I reflect on this challenge, I think of the Lord’s words to us in the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 6: “But when they saw him walking on the lake, they thought he was a ghost. They cried out, because they all saw him and were terrified. Immediately he spoke to them and said, “Take courage! It is I. Do not be afraid.”
I need that reassurance from God because I fail so miserably at times to continue in awareness of His love throughout the day. Sometimes I take a Bible verse and try to repeat it throughout the day in order to maintain an awareness of God’s presence, God’s personal presence, in my life. This week, during the retreat, I have been repeating: “It is your face, O Lord, that I seek; hide not your face from me.”
Even the early monks and nuns recognized the value of repeating a verse from the Scripture throughout the day as a means of remaining aware of the Lord and in order to continue to relate to the Lord personally. If we just use the same verse every day, then once again, it tends to become rote and often meaningless. It becomes “just repeating words” rather than a gate which opens in the presence of the living God.
Personally, I find myself inconsistent in my spiritual life, even after so many years of striving for consistency and striving to be aware of God’s presence. There are days when I work to become more consistent, but even then I get distracted and come to the end of the day without much done in terms of remaining consistent. If I sort of abandon all my other obligations and work only at my spiritual life, then at least sometimes I remain a bit more consistent. Even as I write this I can see that the answer is to work only at my spiritual life!! But I justify my other focuses by telling myself: you must get this done, so just work on this.
Instead, I need to say: “There is only one thing necessary and that one thing necessary is to seek God and to pray.” Why can’t I do that? Just human weakness, I suppose. Or it could be that I just let myself get distracted and forget the one thing necessary. Whatever it is, I continue to struggle because as I age, I realize that the only important thing in my life is clinging to God completely and remaining faithful in His Church and in the teachings of His Church. To remain faithful in the Church is to cling to Christ Himself.
When I was younger, I thought more or less the same way as now but I did not feel any urgency about it. I figured that I had a long time to give myself to the Lord. As I get older, I am still not overly concerned about it because I know that God loves me. On the other hand, I recognize that I also want to love the Lord with all my being. That desire to give myself completely gets stronger as I get older and keeps me aware of my brokenness and my failures.
As I do each week, I will offer Holy Mass for you and for your needs and intentions. Please remember to pray for me and for all the men and women of our communities. We continue to increase and need the help of many prayers to maintain our focus on seeking the Lord. I send you my love and prayers.
Your brother in the Lord,
Abbot Philip
