Spiritual Tidbits
from the Tradition
excerpted from our newsletters.
If you are at manual labor in your room and it comes time to pray, do not say: 'I will use up my supply of branches or finish weaving the little basket, and then I will rise,' but rise immediately and render to God the prayer that is owed [God]. Otherwise, little by little you come to neglect your prayer and your duty habitually, and your soul will become a wasteland devoid of every spiritual and bodily work. For right at the beginning your will is apparent.
Hugh Feiss, Essential Monastic Wisdom: Writings on the Contemplative Life, (New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 1999), p.40.
John Wesley’s common phrase “inward and outward holiness” emphasized the essential link between heart holiness and holy living. Referring to I Peter 1:15, Wesley writes, ”perfection is another name for universal holiness – inward and outward righteousness – holiness of life arising from holiness of heart.”
First Peter 1:15 instructs us, “as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct.” No dimension of life, from our attitudes and sexuality to our use of money and care of the earth, falls outside the scope of holy living. We are to have the mind of Christ (Phil 2:5), walking just as Jesus walked (I John2:6).
The Wesley Study Bible, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2009, Page 1506.
One of the elders said: Just as a bee, wherever she goes, makes honey, so a monk, wherever he goes, if he goes to do the will of God, can always produce the spiritual sweetness of good works.
Thomas Merton,The Wisdom of the Desert, Boston: Shambhala Library, 2004, Page 160.
Fiery Spirit,
fount of courage, life within life of all that has being!
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O sacred breath O blazing love O savor in the breast and balm flooding the heart with the fragrance of good, O limpid mirror of God who leads wanderers home and hunts out the lost,
.......................
O current of power permeating all in the heights upon the earth and in all deeps: you bind and gather all people together.
A Prayer from Hildegard of Bingen, trans. by Barbara Newman, "Sequence for the Holy Spirit," in Saint Hildegard of Bingen, "Symphonia"
"My beloved in the Lord - I speak to you as wise people, able to know yourselves - we know that those who know themselves know God ...
Prepare yourselves while we have some who pray for us that the fire that Jesus came to send upon the earth [Lk 12.49], may be enkindled in your hearts, so that you may be able to exercise your heart and senses to discern the good from the bad, right from left, the eternal from the passing."
Anthony, Letters, from Hugh Feiss, Monastic Wisdom: Writings on the Contemplative Life, (New York: HarperSanFrancisco), 1999, p.116.
Alone with none but you, my God,
I journey on my way.
What need I fear, when you are near,
O king of night and day?
More safe am I within your hand
Than if a host did round me stand.
My life I yield to your command,
And bow to your control;
In peaceful clam, for from your arm
No power can snatch my soul.
Could earthly foes ever appall
A soul that heeds the heavenly call!
Attributed to St. Columba in Ray Simpson, ed. Celtic Blessings: Prayers for Everyday Life, (Chicago: Loyola Press, 1999).
Lord,
When it’s dying time,
I shall not die,
For while I lived I crucified myself.
And being dead to self,
You kept my resurrection,
In the vault of all things sealed.
We are one, you and I.
Your death has conquered mine,
Your fearlessness has left me fearless
And your life is mine forever.
Amen.
Calvin Miller, Celtic Devotions, (Downers Grove, IL: Inter Varsity Press, 2008), p.95.
Abbot Palladius said: "The soul that wishes to live according to the will of Christ
should either learn faithfully what it does not yet know, or teach openly what it
does know. But if, when it can, it desires to do neither of these things, it is
afflicted with madness. For the first step away from God is a distaste for learning,
and lack of appetite for those things for which the soul hungers when it seeks
God.”
Thomas Merton, trans. The Wisdom of the Desert: Sayings form the Desert Father of the Fourth Century, (Boston: Shambhala, 2004), p.87
