Lectio Divina 1

Dear Brothers,

     I received this note from Reverend Father a couple of weeks ago, “Dear Fr Mark, Would you be willing to give the community chapter on Sunday, February 27th on Lectio Divina?”  So for a few minutes that’s our business.  Constitution #21 gives us a definition: “… this excellent monastic practice, by which God’s Word is heard and pondered, is a source of prayer and a school of contemplation, where the monk speaks heart to heart with God…”
     We begin Lectio by facing the truth: we need God’s help.  And so, however briefly, we ask for it.  We’re in this together; He and we.  How many times have we heard Cardinal Newman’s motto: Cor ad Cor loquitur, heart speaks to heart.  On both side openness of heart is a necessity if there is to be intimacy.  We don’t cover a broad wide field but with God, we penetrate what we have.
     It is almost 50 years now since Abbot Columban sent me to Rome for a year of study in Monastic Spirituality.  I recall one of the American students over there as a griper.  He tended to complain especially about the Father Master of the students.  Now, the Fr Master was a good, solid teacher.  He was not an exciting teacher, but solid and monastic.  On one Sunday, after a conference by the Fr Master, the student was complaining, “What new thing did he tell you?  Name one.”  I don’t remember what I said to him, maybe nothing.  But Lectio Divina is not about new stuff.  It’s about God’s sacred Word.
     A figure: Picture a man who buys a field.  The field is out in the middle of nowhere.  The soil is poor; nothing there but scrub.  But this man scrapes together everything he can and buys some equipment because he knows something about that field nobody else knows.  With his new drill he goes down 10’, 100’, 1000’, many thousands of feet and then he plunges into an enormous ocean of oil.  Isn’t that a good figure of our digging into God’s sacred Word?  No! It’s a terrible figure!  For this reason; when we come to Lectio, God’s sacred Word, we are not alone.  It’s something we do together, He and we.  Every bit of it is rewarding.

     I have 2 pictures in my mind: the way things are now and the way things were when I entered the monastery.  I entered in 1947.  In those days, there were no periodicals, no newspapers, and no time except for a few tiny bits: 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there,  that sort of thing.  One of my fellow novices, I noticed, never wasted those little bits of time.  He’d either be at prayer in the novitiate chapel or in the reading room with his breviary meditating on the antiphon we’d be having at day hour.  If there was adequate time, on a Sunday perhaps, he’d have a longer reading: A sermon of Augustine or Bernard or one of those people.  By God’s mercy to our community he was one of those picked to help make the new foundation.  We knew him as Fr John Baptist.
     Flashing ahead now: 64 years.  There is still a difficulty with regard to Lectio Divina.  I realize that some of us carry a heavy workload and responsibilities.   For most of us, I believe, and hour or two of solid Lectio is very possible.  On this point, our private rooms can be a blessing.  The difficulty now is the great abundance of newspapers and periodicals: Time; Economist; Bloomberg Business Week.  Those people are experts at getting our attention.  They know how to sell us a product, namely, their magazines.  But do they nourish our souls?  How strong would we be if the only thing we ever ate was popcorn?  If we give them anytime at all, we should at least be sure that our Lectio Divina is firmly in place.  Every day at Mass we hear God’s Word in the Gospel, in the responsorial psalm, and in the first reading.  Anyone of them or all three would reward solid Lectio.  Not only study out of a commentary, that can help; but especially prayer.  We are not alone in our Lectio.  Another great source is the Psalter.  Every day we pray it many times in our Divine Office.  Sacred Time.  I suspect some of us pray it privately, at our own pace, pausing when we want to linger.  Like all of God’s Word, it rewards Contemplation.
     I’ve already mentioned Fr. John Baptist.  As I was thinking over this talk last week, I realized that this coming Wednesday, March 2nd, it will be ten years since he suffered his stroke.  As we know, he was never the same after that.  After some weeks in the hospital, he was over at Oakwood until a year later when, in his final hours, we brought him home.
     The Sunday following his death, Reverend Father had five of us say a few words about him at Chapter: Fr Dismas, Br Phil, Br Pat, Br Martin, and myself.  As it happens, I have a copy of what I said then and I  would like to read it to you.  It isn’t about Lectio Divina per se, but it is about one of us who was faithful to Lectio.

     I entered Our Lady of the Valley in Rhode Island on the feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel in 1947.  There was about 20 in the Choir novitiate and Fr John Baptist was among the seniors.  He was the first one in that group I admired.  I admired him specifically because of the way he husbanded his time.  He never wasted time.  He was either at prayer in the Chapel or at Lectio working over his breviary perhaps.  I don’t think he ever lost that trait.  After dinner you could expect he’d be walking up and down reading St. Augustine or somebody.  Around 4:30 pm he’d be in Church and he was always generous at work.  Especially he loved his brothers and he served us.  He took his vocation very seriously.  As we Americans say, “he meant business!”
Three years ago, in small group discussions, we were preparing a house report for the regional meeting in May of 1999 and for the General Chapter in October of 1999.  The minutes of those meetings were posted and I was struck by Fr John Baptist observations.  So I photocopied them.  Here is a bit of his practical observations on friendship: 

Fr John Baptist's Words 

     What unites us and what divides us?  A common faith, i.e. the Catholic faith understood in the same general way, and therefore a common daily program of monastic living together unites us.  For instance, those who take the National Catholic Reporter as their chief reading matter, and those who take the complaints and accusations of the Wanderer as their chief source of opinion on Catholic affairs, will be hostile, suspicious, and reserved towards each other.  Those who have widely different views on obedience, authority, and silence in the monastery will not be friends with each other.  Similarly, those who scorn and ridicule the past of the Church, the Order, or this house, and those who revere these same elements will be at war with each other underneath the surface.
     What to do in these circumstances?  Don’t fan the flames of division.  Explain one’s enthusiasms and one’s rejections in terms that appeal to commonly held truths and virtues.  Listen to what others say, and weigh their statements carefully.  Try to understand what the other person has at heart in what he advocates, and see how far you can accept it. 

Fr Mark Concludes   

      Wise words for a wise man.  Most of us know he was in the Marine Corps during the Second World War.  The motto of the Corps is “Semper Fidelis”.  It fits him to a “T”.  Always faithful.  Semper Fidelis.  That’s the man.
     So brothers, Father John Baptist finished his course.  We haven’t.  We have the same tools to work with that he had: Lectio Divina, prayer, work.  May God grant us too, the grace to be always faithful.  Semper Fidelis.  Amen.

+ Fr Mark