To Know The Cross: Holy Week Meditation

As you ease into Holy week, here is a meditation to help you find some focus and balance…MC

To Know the Cross

Thomas Merton

A Meditation for Holy Week from “Bread and Wine.”

The Christian must not only accept suffering: he must make it holy. Nothing so easily becomes unholy as suffering.

Merely accepted, suffering does nothing for our souls except, perhaps, to harden them. Endurance alone is no consecration. True asceticism is not a mere cult of fortitude. We can deny ourselves rigorously for the wrong reason and end up by pleasing ourselves mightily with our self-denial.

Suffering is consecrated to God by faith – not by faith in suffering, but by faith in God. Some of us believe in the power and the value of suffering. But such a belief is an illusion. Suffering has no power and no value of its own.

It is valuable only as a test of faith. What if our faith fails the test? Is it good to suffer, then? What if we enter into suffering with a strong faith in suffering, and then discover that suffering destroys us?

To believe in suffering is pride: but to suffer, believing in God, is humility. For pride may tell us that we are strong enough to suffer, that suffering is good for us because we are good. Humility tells us that suffering is an evil which we must always expect to find in our lives because of the evil that is in ourselves. But faith also knows that the mercy of God is given to those who seek him in suffering, and that by his grace we can overcome evil with good. Suffering, then, becomes good by accident, by the good that it enables us to receive more abundantly from the mercy of God. It does not make us good by itself, but it enables us to make ourselves better than we are. Thus, what we consecrate to God in suffering is not our suffering but our selves.

Only the sufferings of Christ are valuable in the sight of God, who hates evil, and to him they are valuable chiefly as a sign. The death of Jesus on the cross has an infinite meaning and value not because it is a death, but because it is the death of the Son of God. The cross of Christ says nothing of the power of suffering or of death. It speaks only of the power of him who overcame both suffering and death by rising from the grave.

The wounds that evil stamped upon the flesh of Christ are to be worshiped as holy not because they are wounds, but because they are his wounds. Nor would we worship them if he had merely died of them, without rising again. For Jesus is not merely someone who once loved us enough to die for us. His love for us is the infinite love of God, which is stronger than all evil and cannot be touched by death.

Suffering, therefore, can only be consecrated to God by one who believes that Jesus is not dead. And it is of the very essence of Christianity to face suffering and death not because they are good, not because they have meaning, but because the resurrection of Jesus has robbed them of their meaning.

Anima Christi

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I was meditating on this traditional prayer today and thought I would pass it on…Monty

Anima Christi

Soul of Christ, sanctify me.

Body of Christ, save me.

Blood of Christ, inebriate me.

Water from the side of Christ, wash me.

Passion of Christ, strengthen me.

O good Jesus, hear me;

Within thy wounds hide me;

Suffer me not to be separated from thee;

From the malignant enemy defend me;

In the hour of my death call me,

And bid me come to thee,

That with thy saints I may praise thee

Forever and ever.

Amen 

Ash Wednesday Meditation

ASH WEDNESDAY by Roberta Egli

“O fragile human, ashes of ashes and filth of filth! Say and write what you see and hear.”* 

We begin our Lenten landscape journey in the rather bland monochromatic place of dust and ashes. Whenever I clean out the fireplace, attempting to clean and create space for a new fire, I am reminded that ashes, just as dust are difficult to gather into one place. Ashes and dust are messy business and the more we attempt to clean our homes and perhaps our very lives of the messiness of dust and ash, the more it simply falls softly into a different space.

On Ash Wednesday, many of us will gather as communities of faith to be marked with the sign of a palm-ash cross on our foreheads. The palms that last year heralded the arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem in worship have now turned to ashes that mark the beginning of our Lenten journey, of turning to face the shadows of the cross. On our way towards the cross we will walk with Jesus as he encounters a variety of terrain but we begin here, in the essence of our mortal bodies—ashes and dust.

For some of us, being reminded of our mortality may seem quite morbid but there is hope to be found among the ashes of our existence. Hildegard of Bingen was a German mystic of the twelfth century who was a writer, poet, composer, innovator, and person who longed for a deep relationship with God. Her words remind us that there is nothing that needs to hold us back in living full lives as we remember that we began as dust and we will return to dust. Rather than being afraid, let us embrace each day fully with our whole selves as we walk through the various landscapes of life. Where will Jesus meet us this Lent? Perhaps we will meet him at the rocky springs beside the well with the Samaritan woman (John 4:7-30) or in the mudflats where Jesus is waiting to heal us as he spits into the dust of earth (John 9:1-41).


Prayer: God of mercy, we hear your call to return to you with all of our heart. As we reflect upon our response to this call, free us of our fear so that we may follow Christ through all the landscapes we will are invited to enter this season of Lent. In the name of Christ we pray, AMEN.

*[The Ways of the Lord: Hildegard of Bingen, foreword by Homer Hickam, edited by Emilie Griffin; translation by Mother Columba Hart and Jane Bishop, selections from the 1990 Paulist Press translation of Scivias (Harper One: New York 2005)]

You are not what you do…

“As long as we continue to live as if we are what we do, what we have, and what other people think about us, we will remain filled with judgments, opinions, evaluations, and condemnations. We will remain addicted to putting people and things in their “right” place.”

― Henri J.M. Nouwen

The Tree

Great meditation from Eugene Peterson…mc

The Tree

 

There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. Isaiah 1:1

 

Jesse’s roots, composted with carcasses

Of dove and lamb, parchments of ox and goat,

Centuries of dried up prayers and bloody

Sacrifice, now bear me gospel fruit.

 

David’s branch, fed on kosher soil

Blossoms a messianic flower, and then

Ripens into a kingdom crop, conserving

The fragrance and warmth of spring for winter use.

 

Holy Spirit, shake our family tree,

Release your ripened fruit to our outstretched arms.

 

I’d like to see my children sink their teeth

Into promised land pomegranates

 

And Canaan grapes, bushel gifts of God,

While I skip a grace rope to a Christ tune.

Information & Transformation

“So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”

2 Cor.5:16-17

“But now we have been released from the law, for we died to it and are no longer captive to its power. Now we can serve God, not in the old way of obeying the letter of the law, but in the new way of living in the Spirit.”

Rom. 7:6

Through the centuries the church has been making the same mistake over and over again as it has defined Christianity by what you know instead of Who you know, or better yet, Who knows you. We’ve confused information (learning about God) with transformation (being known and recreated by Him in His image, not our own).

When we define Christianity by what we know…it becomes a doing based religion, a treadmill of shoulds and a list of tasks derived from the information we have acquired. That is not the freedom found in being a new creation, or the new way of the Spirit, it is life under the old Law of performance.

There is a big difference between these two dynamics however. As I was thinking about these two realities, the following considerations and contrasts came to mind:

information is finite – transformation is infinite

information improves – transformation creates

information is temporary – transformation is permanent

information is the known – transformation is the unknown

information is safe – transformation is risky

information is predictable – transformation is unpredictable

information requires study – transformation requires trust

information promotes self-sufficiency transformation demands dependence

information breeds familiarity – transformation embraces the unfamiliar

information is inanimate – transformation is alive

information is a noun – transformation is a verb

information takes hold – transformation lets go

information is knowledge – transformation is truth

There is so much more for us to encounter and experience in God, but we must be willing to allow the information to translate into a liiving reality in the graceful grip of God. The journey in and down to the soul-ular level is a journey that will change your life.

It’s time to experience being a new creation, and life lived in the new way of the Spirit…if it is a new way, then why do we keep doing the same old things? Perhaps it’s time to move from information to transformation.

Dei Gratia,

Monty

re:boot Nov. 4th 2010

1 Samuel 15:22-23

But Samuel replied: “Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams. For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has rejected you as king.”

Thoughts: Saul, the first king of Israel, did not know much about silence or listening to God. Like David, he was gifted, anointed, and a successful military/political leader. Yet we never see him seeking to be with God like David. In this passage, Samuel the prophet reprimands Saul for doing many religious acts (i.e. offering burnt offerings and sacrifices) but not quieting himself enough to listen, or “to heed” God (vs. 22).

“We all must take the time to be silent and to contemplate, especially those who live in big cities like London and New York, where everything moves so fast…I always begin my prayer in silence, for it is in the silence of the heart that God speaks. God is the friend of silence – we need to listen to God because it’s not what we say but what He says to us and through us that matters. Prayer feeds the soul – as blood is to the body, prayer is to the soul – and it brings you closer to God. It also gives you a clean and pure heart. A clean heart can see God, can speak to God, and can see the love of God in others.”  ~ Mother Teresa

Question: How could you make more room in your life for silence in order to listen to God?

Prayer: De-clutter my heart, O God, until I am quiet enough to hear you speak out of the silence. Help me in these few moments to stop, to listen, to wait, to be still. to allow your presence to envelop me. In Jesus’ name, Amen

*From the Daily Office, Scazzaro

Empty Me…

I have just returned from leading a 3 day Sacred Space retreat. My mind all abuzz with the epiphanies the retreatants were having, the God-moves that took place in the quiet corners of people’s soul, and the rhythm of the Divine Hours being practiced by the monks at the Abbey that we experienced as we quietly slipped in and out of their practice… receiving something they had no idea they were giving.

This morning, as my spirit honed in on this particular prayer to breathe into my soul, it seemed to speak about all that God was doing in and through the men and women who were at Sacred Space…read and pray this slowly and ask the Spirit to illuminate the parts that your heart needs…

____________________
Empty Me…

Gracious and Holy One,
Creator of all things
and of emptiness,
I come to you
full of much that clutters and distracts,
stifles and burdens me,
and makes me a burden to others.

Empty me now
of gnawing dissatisfactions,
of anxious imaginings,
of fretful preoccupations,
of nagging prejudices,
of old scores to settle,
and of the arrogance of being right.

Empty me
of the ways I unthinkingly think of myself as powerless,
as a victim,
as determined by sex, age, race,
as being less than I am,
or as other than yours.

Empty me
of the disguises and lies
in which I hide myself from other people
and from my responsibility
for my neighbors and for the world.

Hollow out in me a space
in which I will find myself,
find peace and a whole heart,
a forgiving spirit and holiness,
the springs of laughter,
and the will to reach boldly
for abundant life for myself
and the whole human family.

Ted Loder
______________________________

Rumination…

This prayer is full of ruminatorial opportunities! (but I’ll focus on just one)

The line that first drew me in was, “Empty me now of…the arrogance of being right.”

I wondered, ‘

“what would happen in our lives if we took 30 days and decided that we would choose to be kind instead of fighting to prove that we are right?”

How would we handle the tension in our souls that worships the god of rightness more than the God of love.

Could I possibly see and believe that I can choose to be kind over being right without having to give up on what I believe…yes I think I could, but that would require a mind like Christ’s.

He was able to be 100% right in every situation when the people around Him were so lost and wrong, yet love and kindness flowed from His soul.

I often ask myself, “even if I prove myself to be absolutely right in this moment, does it really have an eternal significance?”

Most often it does not, and my need to be right can easily take second place to my call to be kind and demostrate love without really giving up anything that matters, and gain much that does through kindness.

Our need to always be right lurks in the shadows of most all conflict…

Our need to always be right reveals the insecurities that fill our identity…

Our need to always be right becomes a god that we fashion and dress in religiosity and truth justifications…

Our need to always be right keeps us from enjoying the people in our lives…

30 days…can you do it…will you allow yourself to enter into and feel and become aware of the tension that you are experiencing with a need to be right…

When you sense the Holy Spirit placing some Divine Duck Tape over your mouth again and again, let me encourage you to laugh and smile at yourself as you see how often you need to apply the filter. It’s okay, it is all a part of the process and journey of becoming, and on the way, your kindness just might unleash the soul of smeone who desperately needs it.

Dei Gratia,

Monty

True Spiritual Power

As I was meditating on some thoughts penned by A.B Simpson this morning, I was again struck with the truth that we never really tread new spiritual ground, there is always someone who has been there and experienced God’s truth before us. So often I think I am onto some incredible revelation and am then humbled by a blog, or even the words of a God-follower from centuries ago that have already said what I was trying to say.

A.B Simpson seems to always be quite a few steps ahead of me in my God-journey. Recently I was in Thailand speaking with Alliance missionaries. During a men’s luncheon, my talk was on “Three Types of Men”…the power-drained, the power-full, and the power-filled.

The heart of the talk was to move men out of a powerless existence as well as a powerful existence. It seems we are either one or the other. We either abdicate our spirituality or we take control of our faith in a legalistic religious fashion. Neither one draw us nor place us in the presence of God. Both are spiritual toxins that need healing, restoration and repentance.

The movement God is calling us towards is being power-filled. To be powerful is to have the right answers, know the right stuff, and behave externally the right way. This leads to ego, ritual and religion. To be power-filled is the surrendered life, where we make room in our soul for God to dwell and the life of Christ to expand over the self life.

So, it really was no surprise when I read Simpson today and basked in his words that were penned long before mine indicating the same spiritual truth. Listen in as he calls us to enter the life of the power-filled and not the power-drained or the power-full.

Dei Gratia,

Monty

__________________

A spiritual man is not so much a man possessing a strong spiritual character as a man filled with the Holy Spirit. So the apostle Paul said: Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you.

The glory of the new creation, then, is not only that it recreates the human spirit, but that it fits it for the abode of God Himself, and makes it dependent upon the Son, as the child upon the mother. The highest spirituality, therefore, is the most utter helplessness, the most total dependence and the most complete possession of the Holy Spirit. The beautiful act of Christ in breathing upon His disciples and imparting to them from His own lips the very Spirit that was already in Him expressed in the most vivid manner the crowning glory of the new creation. And when the Holy Spirit thus possesses us, He fills every part of our being.

~A.B Simpson

A Benediction

I am always on the search for great poems, verse, meditations or benedictions to use in group settings, teaching environments or personal reflection times with God. This week a ran across a benediction that really caught my heart. While I was not able to track it’s genesis, I think it strikes at the heart of what I long for in my own spiritual journey.

Reflect and enjoy,

Monty

***********

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships. so that you may live deep withing your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitations of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain into joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.

Amen