January 27 – Excuses, Excuses

In keeping with the idea of the small, do-able “conversatio” changes we will be making in Cor Unum, here’s the story one Sister could tell of the time the Lord gave her this instruction, “Kneel at your bedside three times a day.”


Nothing more. He, the Sovereign God, did not say to stay for an hour or to bring a prayer list. Just kneel. Only that.


She, however, responded in an immediate spiritual panic. “I can’t!” was her unspoken response.

“I can’t!” was the response of her heart to the God she loves. She thought of how busy and hectic were her mornings, tumbling into each busy and hectic day, how seldom she could find time to make her bed, much less kneel beside it. Still, there is something about the unequivocal instruction from the heart of God to the heart of the monastic.


She could tell us that she realized the idea of taking time to kneel beside her bed thrice daily, though the practice might only consume three total minutes of her day, seemed to her a gargantuan, oppressive, and perhaps foolish undertaking . . . and then she realized why it did.


“The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have [it] more abundantly.” (John 10:10)


With these words rolling through her soul, she recognized that to hesitate was to make excuses before God, and then she wondered how much of her life was tainted by excuses ... she tells us that the survey of that landscape filled her with dread.


Abundant life spread out on a banqueting table; the minions of hell pulling her chair out from under her. Has ever a man or woman entered into monastic life unopposed?


How do you suppose she chose?


"He Brought Me to His Banqueting Table"
Abbatial Photo