Benedictine Sisters of FL

Holy Name Monastery
Founded 1889

love

“By your perseverance you will secure your lives.”

by Leave a Comment

“Remember you are not to prepare your defense beforehand, for I shall give you a wisdom in speaking that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute.  … By your perseverance you will secure your lives.”  In another translation we read: “This will be your chance to tell the Good News. Do not worry about what to say in court. For I will give you wise words. None of your enemies will be able to prove that you are wrong. They will not be able to say that your words are false.”

Much is written in support of the practice of imagining or role-playing various scenarios before actually confronting someone or being caught in a confrontational situation.  I don’t mean to belittle the value that might have to ease the knots in your stomach but these words of Jesus quoted by Luke remind us, when we actually get in a situation we can depend on God for Jesus says: “I myself will give you a wisdom, wise words, in speaking.”

A few months back my sign (Scorpio) read: “Worry is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do but gets you nowhere.”  Sometimes that “rocking chair” could work ruts in the carpet…

One group of researchers have evidence to proof that we worry about – (commentary is mine.)

40% of our worries are things that will never happen [Whew, that’s a huge chunk we can let go of]

30% are about the past – which can’t be changed anyway – so dump the gunny sack and look to today

12 % are about criticism by others, mostly untrue – and many imaginary – why do we so often assume that other people are going to spend time their precious time thinking about “me”?

10% are about health, which only gets worse with stress – better to relax, loosen up and let our bodies work their own magic on the knots (I hear you: “that’s easier said than done.”)

8% are about real problems that can be solved – so here is where we need to spend our energy and focus our prayer.  Remember Jesus’ promise (and He is a person of his word): “By your perseverance you will secure your lives!”  So, “hands off” and “zip the lip” offering God the right solution because our limited eyesight most likely will see only a rather self-serving solution …  “God-sight” knows the key to the best fix for all concerned.

 Worry and fretting allows what we see as problems to come between us and God.   It is the view that God has somehow lost control of the situation and we’ve lost trust in God’s omnipotent care for us.  A legitimate concern should draw us closer to God and cause us to rely on His providential love for us.

By our Corporate Commitment we profess to respond to the needs of the people of God with the “compassion of Christ.”  But how can we do that if we have not learned to depend on the compassion of Christ?   Saying the words is one thing; living with a firm conviction that compassion begets compassion is all together another matter.   Let us seek ways to be compassionate. Not wishy, washy – for COM-passion means “with passion” – with fervor, excitement, enthusiasm, even obsession.  Compassion is a component of the good zeal our Holy Rule commends.

Mother Evangelista Kremiter – founding superior of the Atchison Benedictines and certainly was a mover and shaker in founding our federation – is quoted as saying: “Our lives, not words, make us credible.  Words move but example motivates.”  May our lives, individually and collectively, be an example that motives all who meet us to be people of compassion.

~Reflection by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB

 

 

As we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving ….   Consider what you are doing for someone(s) less fortunate that you and your family ..  donate money or canned goods to a food bank or place a surprise in their mailbox or on the doorstep, work a church event ….. or invite a live-alone person for a meal and conversation ….  or  how long has it been since  you’ve worn some things hanging in the closet for eons ….

  “Bend a knee”  a whisper THANK YOU!

 

 

First Reading:   Malachi 8:19-20a         Second Reading:  2 Thess 3:7-12
Gospel:   Luke 21:5-19
Continue Reading

Sixth Sunday of Easter

by Leave a Comment

The theme of this gospel is clearly love but not the kind of love we see on film or on TV or hear on the radio or a CD.  In church hymns, too, we frequently sing about love.  But, as Oliver sings in the musical based on Charles Dickens’ story, “Where is love?” We ask: What is love?  Love is a gift freely given. Sometimes we hear this word “love” used in such a way that we degrade, lessen or weaken its significance.  The way Jesus and John use the word for love just doesn’t apply to chocolate, a long drink or an afternoon nap.  We may like and enjoy those things a lot, but we don’t “love” them in the way we love our neighbor.

It is notable, I think, that Jesus gives us just ONE love commandment. He does not say, “Love me, love my father or love God as I have loved you”. No, he says, “If you want to be my disciple, then you must love one another.” If we really love our brothers and sisters we do not have to worry if we love God. But, if we do not love everyone unconditionally, then there is no other way we can claim to love Jesus. We need to love like God loves, without exception.

Deep down, we all want to be loved.  We like people to be our friends.  Yet, because of our past experiences, the influence of parents and other people around us, the pressures of our society and our traditions, and plain bad habits, we often do not know how to love, do not know how to forgive, do not know how to be reconciled.  We do not practice the skills we know that promote healthy relationships.

Sometimes people will love us back; sometimes they will not. People learn to love by being loved.  We learn to share love and communicate our feelings by imitating the models we live with.  Remember your mom coaxing you when you received a gift or a compliment: “What do you say?”

When I genuinely love others, there will always be some who cannot love me back but there will be others who will really respond in love. And it may be that my love has empowered them to be loving too.  Benedict reminds us in the Prologue to the Rule – we heard it read just yesterday: “See how the Lord in His love shows us the way of life…. What is not possible to us by nature, let us ask the Holy One to supply by the help of grace … while there is still time, while we are in this body and have time to accomplish all these things … we must run and do now what will profit us forever.”  We know, but too often forget, that Jesus never told his disciples to LIKE each other.  He said: “LOVE one another.”  And, how does Jesus express love?   We know it is given freely and without reserve.  He gives us a “how to” when He says: “I am gentle and humble of heart.”  This is how we are to love one another: in humility with gentleness.   Just as we cradle and carry a precious glass object, we value and treasure our free gift of love with special caring.

It’s a life-long journey, isn’t it?  We may have fleeting moments when “perfect love” rises to the surface of our motivation to action.  I think it was St. Irenaeus who said a very long time ago that “The glory of God is a person fully alive.”  (John Powell)

You see, love is God’s very nature; God cannot not love. How does God love?  Full hearted and unconditionally.   Jesus gives us just one commandment that encompasses all the others. He does not say, “Love Me as I have loved you”. No, he says, “If you want to be my disciple, then you must love one another, as I have loved you.”   If we really love our brothers and sisters, including strangers and even enemies, we do not have to worry if we love God.  In one of our “love” hymns, we sing “Where love abides, our God is ever there.”

St. John does not say to us, “Wherever there are Christians, there is God” or “Wherever there is a Christian church, there is God”.  No, he says, “Wherever there is love, there is God”.  Wherever there is a person filled with love for others, God is there.

~Reflection by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB

 

 

First Reading:   Acts of the Apostles 10:25-26,34-35,44-48         Second Reading:  1 John 4:7-10
Gospel:   John 15:9-17

 

Continue Reading

Ash Wednesday

by Leave a Comment

Ashes of death on our foreheads,
seeds of hope in our hearts. 
As we begin the journey, beyond the cross,
let us remember,
God prepares us for life, not for death,
for resurrection and not for crucifixion,
for love and not for hate.
In a world where death holds us bound, and violence seems to reign
in thought and deed,
may this journey of Lent get us ready
to be God’s good news
of hope and wholeness,
peace and reconciliation,
and resurrection life.
Christine Sine

Continue Reading

Feast Day of St. Scholastica

by Leave a Comment

The Feast of Scholastica, the founder of Benedictine life for women, is observed on February 10.

Benedict had a sister, Scholastica, who also dedicated her life to the pursuit of God. She too founded monasteries and became an abbatial figure. The only story we have of Scholastica is told when Benedict was already an abbot of renown. The incident demonstrates clearly that the brother and sister were emotionally close, and, both of them, a spiritual influence on the other till the time of her death.

During one of their annual visits, Scholastica, inspired by the depth of their conversation, asked Benedict to remain overnight in the place where they were meeting in order to continue their talk and reflection on spiritual things. Benedict wouldn’t even think of it. It was getting dark; it was time to get back to the monastery; it was time to get on with the regular routine of the spiritual life.

Unable to persuade him with words, Scholastica put her head down on the table in deep prayer. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a great storm brought flash floods and Benedict realized that he could not possibly return to the monastery that night. And the Dialogues say, “he complained bitterly.”

He said, “God forgive you, sister! What have you done?”

Scholastica answered simply, “I asked you for a favor and you refused. I asked my God and I got it.”

This story is a vein worth mining for a lifetime:

It tells us that law is never greater than love.

It tells us to be intent on pursuing the values of life, not simply its rules.

It tells us that discipline is necessary in the spiritual life but that religious discipline is not enough, that depth is a process and that depth costs.

It tells us that God lurks in strange places. And waits for us. And puts in our paths just what we need in order to become what we are meant to be.

It reminds us that a woman has as much power in the eyes of God as any man and that we must recognize women, too, as spiritual guides.

God fractured Benedict’s rigidity in favor of a greater vision. Has your rigidity been fractured yet?

—from Radical Christian Life, by Joan Chittister (Liturgical Press)

 

 

Continue Reading

Give It a Second Chance

by Leave a Comment

This weekend’s Gospel is asking us to take a good look at ourselves.  The tree in the parable is showing signs of life but it bears no fruit.  We ask ourselves: Is that me?  Am I barely managing to “hang in there?”   Am I being called to more than that?  Yes, God has higher hopes for each of us,  if we will but give grace a chance.

We can ask ourselves, for instance,

  • Am I a good or sour influence within my community (or my family circle)?
  • How do I relate with outsiders? Is my presence a positive element or do I fall into the gossip and negativity trap?  Do I pass judgment without giving God credit for knowing the whole story?
  • What is my attitude towards people I do not know or who aren’t “useful” to me?
  • What kind of contribution (including being physically present) do I make to the life of this community?
  • In general, what kind of contribution do I make to our greater society? What COULD I be doing?

We need to realize that God always and everywhere loves us.  But that love is only fully completed in us when we become a genuinely loving and caring person, one who loves both God and others in word and action.  We have the choice to open ourselves and come closer to God, to experience the gift of LOVE personified in Jesus.  The choice is up to us.  God’s love is there for the taking.  What are you waiting for?

Today we will celebrate St. Benedict’s day – in muted tones since it’s Lent.  Benedict is recognized as a man of great wisdom, compassion and common sense.  It is the spirit of Benedict’s Rule that has survived because Benedict, even in his youth, had a deep understanding of human psychology.  A glimpse into his early years lets us know he spent much time with his grandparents who lived a few miles from his home.  Along the hilly trek to their summer home, he and his twin sister Scholastica passed the huts and caves where hermits lived.  You can bet that their curiosity would have brought them back over the years to visit with both male and female hermits.  It is evident from the Rule that Benedict absorbed the wisdom and practical advice from this older generation.  He tempers discipline with compassion and he recognizes the spiritual quest as a joyful pursuit of God within the structures of ordinary life.  It is this joyous delight in everyday spirituality that makes the Rule come alive for so many.

Portions of his Rule shows us he had the cultivation traits of the gardener in our Gospel having mercy on his fruitless fig tree.  We know that after some time of living with his original Rule, he added advice based on his lived experience with a great variety of characters.  Imagine having to warn his men not to sleep with knives, to wear clean underwear on a trip.  His prudence shines through when, in so many words, he says: this is what works for us now – if our daily schedule and the details of communal living -don’t fit your situation, adapt it.

Pope Francis has reminded us more than once of something we know deep down – sometimes, especially in the midst of trouble – we tend to forget.  He says: “There are no situations we cannot get out of.  We are not condemned to sink into quicksand, in which the more we move the deeper we sink.  Jesus is (always) there, his hand extended, ready to reach out to us and pull us out of the mud, out of sin, out of the abyss of evil into which we have fallen.  We need only to ask for the grace to recognize ourselves as sinners.”

The barren fig tree in today’s reading is given a reprieve.  It is allowed another chance to respond favorably and to produce fruit.  Every Lenten season offers us a chance to fertilize our tree, the tree which is our life, and to see how it can be more fruitful.  For some of us, we just don’t know, this may indeed be the last-chance year, the last Lent to take care of our tree and coax it to produce new life.  Our God is tickling our finger tips.  What are we waiting for?

~ Reflection by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB, Prioress

 

First Reading:  Exodus 3:1-8a,13-15     Second Reading:  1 Corinthians 10:1-6,10-12
Gospel:  Luke 13:1-9
Continue Reading

Saint Benedict’s Day – March 21st

by Leave a Comment

Saint Benedict’s Day

 

Young Benedict was a seeker of Truth.  A well-kept, well-fed young man from a prosperous family, he attended university in his quest for the Truth.  But what he found there neither answered the questions he had nor satisfied his longings.  The life of hedonism that surrounded him there only disgusted him and left him bruised and empty.  He had searched for the meaning of life in an academic environment without success.

We thank God that Benedict did not give up on his search for life’s meaning on the day he abandoned his studies.  Instead he walked away from everything he had known to look elsewhere.  He constructed a solitary existence, far from the distractions of human society, to search for life’s purpose.  Alone, he besought God’s merciful presence, and God answered him.  When others came to him in the hope of joining him, he did not turn them away.  He recorded his experience as a spiritual mentor and his guidelines for the monastic life in his Rule.  We, the Benedictine Sisters of Florida, are the happy heirs of St. Benedict’s legacy.

Benedict’s life-long search for God required tremendous courage, faith and perseverance.  His willingness to leave his beloved solitude in order to share his wisdom with others was an act of self-sacrifice and generosity.  On this feast of St. Benedict’s passing to his heavenly home, let us ask God for a measure of those same qualities.  Let us prefer nothing to the love of Christ, and may He bring us all to everlasting life.  (RB 72:11)

~by Sister Eileen Dunbar, OSB
Continue Reading