Short Monastic-Book Pilgrimages. A Benedictine oblate blog

After my blog about buying “Word & Spirit 17 Monastic On-going Formation” for $1.95, another oblate at St. Leo Abbey sent me a link to where someone is selling “Word & Spirit 7" (an earlier journal in the series) on E-Bay for $37.69 plus $3.50 shipping.

I am learning much from the book I bought. Every few pages I read a new-to-me idea about monastic formation (how men and women are trained/learn/develop as monks/nuns/sisters). Such insights cause me to stop reading and begin thinking. I am on page 11.

Here is what I am mulling over now from pages 10 and 11 (with footnote references omitted):

“Caught up in a wave of professionalization and compartmentalization, monastic communities are subject to losing sight of the importance of the "wisdom figures" and spiritual directors without portfolio who constitute such a vital reserve of sanctity and holiness in monastic life. The "educating of the heart," so essential to generations of monastic formation, did not always find a comfortable fit in the fonts of new programs that came into being under the rubric of monastic formation.

“There was also a form of damage control that was required
when some experimental programs of monastic formation became untracked. In the name of pluralism, ongoing formation became a Procrustean bed of centering prayer and Jungian psychoanalytic theory, Meyers-Briggs and the Enneagram, twelve-step therapies and Journaling. Helpful as some of these methods may have been for individual or community spiritual development, they often had the effect of slighting the components of mainline monastic spirituality that were expected in formation programs. The discipline of lectio divina and traditional ascetical practices seemed to be overlooked by many involved in formation, replaced by a set of individualized "career" specializations and even more basic "survival" skills for human development.”

I do not know what else “Word & Spirit 17 Monastic On-going Formation” may describe, but in relation to the lay person seeking a more ascetic/monastic manner of living in the world, the heart-centered daily conversion seems to be path for me.

Both “Word & Spirit 17" and a book I got last year, "The Love of Learning and the Desire for God," by Jean Leclercq, OSB. Fordham University Press, New York, 2001, were acquired during trips to the St. Leo Abbey bookstore when I was not looking for a book or expecting to buy one. But as soon as I looked at the cover of each book, I knew I would buy it — without knowing that each was a used book or that it was the only copy at the bookstore. And as I picked up each book I thought "this is why I came today."

Both of these books have special places in my small library, like old teachers they say, "First, you must know the question."
__________________________

Footnotes:

Picture is Santiago de Compostella by jamesdale10. My blog about this pilgrimage site is here.

Here is a prior blog on the book "The Love of Learning and the Desire for God."

Keeping Tabs. A Benedictine oblate blog

I use the book Benedictine Daily Prayer (BDP) to pray the divine office.

But BDP requires a lot of flipping from one section to another during the day and even during any particular office depending on the season or feast day.

Homemade cardstock dividers, some with text that will be used in a divine office, help avoid the flipping problems.


Some time ago I blogged about when I replaced all of my old dividers with new ones, and today I did some minor revisions and updates.

Today I added a new divider for the short little final blessing:

“May the Lord bless us,
keep away all evil,
and lead us to eternal life, Amen.

“Let us bless the Lord
Thanks be to God.”

I also added the Lord’s prayer to one of the existing dividers.


But the major change I worked on today was to redo all of the tabs on the dividers so I could change the color of the tabs.


In the past I used different colors rather arbitrarily — thinking that I needed each tab to be as different as possible from its neighbors. But I did not like that and in fact it only confused me!

So, I now have a three-color scheme based on where the dividers/tabs are in the book.


White is the color of the tabs for the dividers in the front of the BDP book, for such things as the daily Readings, Compline, the Little Hours, and a different translation for Psalm 23 for Sunday Lauds than the Psalm 23 used in BDP.


Red is the color (the red looks orange in some pictures) of the tabs for the current divine office. These tabs move in a group in the middle of the BDP book.


Black is the color of the tabs for the saints, feasts and special days which are in the back of the book.

The cardstock dividers with tabs often move through the day or the year. I also have permanent tabs on some of the pages, for the various Common for Feasts and Proper of Seasons. But I still have cardstock dividers for the Commons and Propers that I keep in the very back of the book until I need them on a particular day.

The last divine office housekeeping I did today was to print out the liturgical calendar from Universalis. While there are many web sites that have liturgical calendars, Universalis is the only one I found that has the Psalm week listed right on the calendar. Very handy. I keep the printed Universalis calendar with my stack of books I use for reading and study.


The books shown above are the ones that I am reading for the divine office and monastic study:

Benedictine Daily Prayer This book has sold for $49.95 for several years but is now on sale:
Sale Price: $34.97. Wow.

The Rule of Saint Benedict translated by Leonard Doyle

Benedictine Monachism, Dom Cuthbert Butler, 1924. Classic work of Benedictine spirituality and monasticism from the Rule of St. Benedict. Butler traces modern practices back to their origins and explains the elements of Benedictine practices.

The Love of Learning and The Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture by Jean Leclercq. The book is a series of lectures given to monks at the Institute of Monastic Studies at Sant’ Anselmo in Rome, Italy, in 1955.

OK, now I am ready to start the new liturgical year that began back in November!

Nothing’s new except seeking the old. A Benedictine oblate blog

I try to read a few pages in a monastic book each day, but I neglect this practice more often than I enjoy it.

After the morning office a few days ago I got my current monastic book(1) and opened it to where I stopped reading, but I got called away and it was not until late at night that I saw the book again, still there, opened and unread.

Happily, yesterday and today I was able to read several pages. The book is now summarizing the role of monasticism and particular monks in the Carolingian renaissance (about 790 AD to about 900 AD). That renaissance was brought about by Charlemagne’s efforts to bring order to the West.

Charlemagne “attacked disorder in every domain: doctrine, morality, worship, and monastic observance.”

In terms of the liturgy, Charlemagne wanted to restore the older liturgical practices and to accomplish that, “it was thought closer contact with Roman liturgy had to be renewed.” And to bring about such renewal, Charlemagne encouraged the study and learning of Latin. It was thought that if priests did not know Latin, they could not properly understand the “Sacred Scriptures.”

Monks served as major teachers of these renewing activities. Their works led to more learning, reading, and the spread of Latin.

The desire for renewal by the use of Latin in the liturgy is a discussion topic today (both pro and con) as a result of Pope Benedict XVI’s actions, but the 21st century is the not the first time a similar work has been started, it also happened in the 800s AD during the Carolingian renaissance and was moved ahead by monks who also took the Benedictine name.

These early works by Benedictine monks further solidified the monastic tradition in the West on its three pillars: sacred reading, liturgy, and work.

___________________________

Footnote:

The Love of Learning and The Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, by Jean Leclercq

It’s life, not knowledge. A Benedictine oblate blog

Peace is at the heart of monastic culture. In "The Love of Learning and the Desire for God," by Jean Leclercq, OSB. I read today:

“The whole organization of monastic life is dominated by the solicitude for safeguarding a certain spiritual leisure, a certain freedom in the interests of prayer in all its forms, and above all, authentic contemplative peace.”

This might be thought of as somewhat paradoxical because the monastic life is so filled with books, reading, study — I might even say learning — but it is learning of a different sort.

Jean Leclercq provides the insight:

“As can be seen, this fundamental activity of monastic life is based on literature. For monks in general, the foremost aid to good works is a text which makes possible the meditated reading of the word of God. This will greatly affect the domain of monastic exegesis, entirely oriented toward life, and not toward abstract knowledge.”

So, a monastic’s reading is directed toward life in constant communion with God — in contemplative peace.

This fundamental redirection of the monastic life can be seen in the first sentence of the Rule of St. Benedict:

“Listen, my son, to your master's precepts, and incline the ear of your heart.” The first step into monastic culture.

__________________
Reference

"The Love of Learning and the Desire for God," by Jean Leclercq, OSB. Fordham University Press, New York, 2001.

Monastic Culture. A Benedictine oblate blog

I began reading "The Love of Learning and the Desire for God," by Jean Leclercq, OSB. The book is a series of lectures given to monks at the Institute of Monastic Studies at Sant’ Anselmo in Rome, Italy, in 1955.

The subtitle really tells what the book is about: “A Study of Monastic Culture.” I am interested in monastic culture because it has made such a great expansion and fulfillment of my own spiritual life — and I am an oblate (defined here).

I liked one part of the preface, the author described the scope of his lectures and wrote that virtually all citations would be to books written before the beginning of the 1400s. My kind of books!

__________________

Reference

"The Love of Learning and the Desire for God," by Jean Leclercq, OSB. Fordham University Press, New York, 2001. (At Amazon)