March 29 - Having It All

Six minutes of worship! It makes us want to say WOW! . . . and giggle! Six whole minutes! For many of us, that is more than six times what we were doing before!

Closing everything out as best we can, especially shutting the door on our own busy-ness and distracted-ness and the post-modern tendency we have, the need to FEEL busy and involved and even a little distraught. If life imitates art, we look more like Salvadore Dali originals than Rembrandts, that’s for sure!

We call to mind . . . we are the Abbots and Abbesses here. We command our souls and chart our days. We discover those hours that we cannot control, and we seize those we may. Today, above all, we remember what TRUE religion is meant to be:

Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. (James 1:26, 27)

Before we let Brother James be the one who sets a match to our convent, let us consider . . . would he? We are here in Cor Unum that our relationship with the Father and His Son, our Lord, would so deepen, that it might be so strong and vibrant, that His love would be manifest in us and through us in ways we have been – too busy! – to exercise heretofore. Who does not know a widow they might visit? An orphan, even an orphan of divorce, we couldn’t take to a movie?

Like Virginia, Cor Unum is for lovers! We know we love; we just haven’t always found time to put love into action. We love God first and best, just as Jesus taught us, and in this Abbey we will ever remember that our love for Him will overflow in love for others, and in wisdom to love them well and to their profit, too! We are neither exclusively contemplative sisters and brothers, nor “active” sisters and brothers, we are the loving, obedient servants who dwell here in the monastery of the heart, and we will have it all! Of course, we may have to have a little less of some things in order to get it! Onward and upward, dear ones!



"Having It All"
Abbatial Photo