February 14 – What We Do for Love

Love is in the air today . . . and every day in the monastery! The cloistered life is founded upon the love of God and of His Son, the Word made flesh.

When Origen, the 3rd century monastic, began teaching the idea of sacramental reading, he explained that Jesus Christ, being Himself the Word Incarnate, was there in the reading. To him and those who learned from him, Jesus Himself is the “interpretive key” to all Scripture, and that instruction is as sound today as it was then.

Origen taught that the Presence of Jesus in the Word, because it is a Living Word, could touch and teach all those who read it in faith. He taught Ambrose and Ambrose taught Augustine . . . and many today are teaching us the same thing.

Francis Frangipane suggests kneeling in prayer with an open Bible, acknowledging that Jesus is the Word of God. It is for the true monastic to put truth into action; if we believe it, we act upon it. We believe that the Father waits for us in secret, and so we find our way to Him. We believe that He is near to those who call upon Him, and thus we lift our voices and pray. We believe that in His Presence is fullness of joy, and so we bring our souls into heavenly courts. We believe that Jesus is the Word made flesh, now risen to the right hand of God. By that faith, we read Scripture prayerfully, interactively, learning to know the Father as we go, praying, repenting, rejoicing, bending our will to Jesus’ lovely nature day by day.

Tomorrow, the four tenents of “Lectio Divina” . . .