As monks our entire lives are oriented towards union with God and divinization. Divinization can sound esoteric and evoke images of ethereal beings no longer fully human. However, if becoming divine in and through Christ is what divinization entails, and if God is love, then Paul gives us a very good non-esoteric catalog of some […]

Although today’s gospel doesn’t say so explicitly, Jesus’ night in prayer does seem to have been in service of selecting his twelve apostles. That he seems to have made a poor choice in choosing Judas Iscariot can be both comforting and disconcerting. Comforting because for us discerning the Father’s will and choosing the best course […]

Seeking Jesus because you need him and seeking Jesus because you love him can be complementary aspects of our relationship to Christ. However, seeking Jesus (as did the crowds in today’s gospel) only because you need him and require his help is indicative of a still one-sided and immature relationship that lacks the mutuality of […]

Saturday of the 21st Week of the Year: Some notions of humility would find this virtue exemplified in the third servant with the one talent who humbly admitted his failure to trade with that single talent. In contrast, the servant who received five talents and made five more seems proud and even boastful. And yet […]

Greatness and littleness seem to be mutually exclusive. Any yet in the spiritual realm, as we know, littleness paradoxically opens us to greatness. Once greatness is achieved, however, littleness must be preserved if true greatness is not to be lost. Bernard, often mistakenly (but understandably) thought to be the founder of our Order, is someone […]

The paradox of a scroll tasting sweet to Ezekiel despite being inscribed with lamentation and woe, suggests that it wasn’t the lamentations and woe, per se, that made it sweet, but rather that these were calling God’s rebellious people back to fidelity and friendship. In this sense, all suffering that serves to draw us back […]

Matthew 17:14-20 A man came up to Jesus, knelt down before him, and said, “Lord, have pity on my son, who is a lunatic and suffers severely; often he falls into fire, and often into water. I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him.” Jesus said in reply, “O faithless and […]

The fear of failure can be a very inhibiting state of mind that can constrict our lives and interfere with our full human development—both spiritually and psychologically. Peter can serve as a powerful antidote to this fear. Despite several major failures in his life he doesn’t allow fear of further failure deter him. And so […]

Although the formal period of prophecy is said to have ended with John the Baptist, God’s claim to Jeremiah that he constantly sends his servants the prophets still holds true in our own time. Our problem is that we don’t recognize the voices of prophecy sounding in the course of every day calling us to […]

Jeremiah was clearly a humble man: After having repeatedly warned his fellow Israelites of their impending doom, he makes no effort to smugly remind them of this when disaster falls. On the contrary, he identifies himself completely with their sinfulness, intercedes on their behalf and, as we know, quietly suffers with them in the tragic […]