We will remind ourselves today that we are dedicated to “conversatio morum suorum,” commonly called a change of manners.  It is the conversion of the interior  style of our lives.

The postulant entering a monastery will change within the first hours into a simple postulant’s habit; she will eat her next meal and all of the rest of them for the rest of her life according to what is placed before her, and when she has a few minutes of time to herself, it is directed and her resources are extremely limited.  The list of books to which she will never again have access would wind around the world, yet  to her the convent library represents a wealth of material focused upon the object of her life, the knowledge and the nearness of God.

The new Sister is immediately assimilated into the rule and scope of the order, and she soon learns that even her thoughts are going to have to be overhauled, with gentle but unrelenting expediency, into the unfeigned and unfailing love of God.  This, if she has been well-advised, is what she came for.

In the Abbey, she is not even at liberty to change for her own sake, but for Jesus’.  With the realization that conversion for selfish reasons is no conversion at all, she begins to progress.  The goal of every moment of every day … the goal of her life … is the love of God, abiding in it, abiding in Him.  Every practice within the cloister walls is designed to relieve her of self-referential motives and impulses.  The worship of God and the practice of never forgetting His nearness, is the new pinnacle of  life for her.

We have been practicing the rudiments of “Lectio Divina,” the simple system of reading which directs the monastic toward God in the Scriptures and toward a path in life of ongoing, never-ending, conversion into the likeness of His Son.  Before we faint away under the bright lights of monastic aspiration, let’s take up the Romans 12:1 and 2 verses of last week and read them here in quiet, slowly and prayerfully, watching and listening to what the Spirit of God will highlight and what He will reveal.

Romans 12:1, 2 … Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.  Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Read them aloud if possible, sometimes emphasizing one word and sometimes another.  We might pray, today and always, for the grace of reading the Word of God with the same inflection that the Spirit of God would put upon the words and phrases.  Look at the passage, read it, hear it, say it, pray it, read it again, read it again, slowly, be thankful for it, worship through it.

All of this might add only a few minutes to our regular and disciplined study of the Word, but it will enhance our reading forever.  Nothing happens quickly in the Abbey, unless a storm is coming in and the windows are up.  Even then, what happens quickly takes place in silence.  Can you imagine?  Slowly, but with sudden happy results, in the quiet places of our lives, we will see the difference it makes when we behold the Lord in His Word, when we hear His Voice as we read.

Tomorrow in Cor Unum, we will meet, through the “grille” of time, one of the most prolific writers, one of the most sought after speakers of the twentieth century,  for whom the world was a cloister and the Spirit of God was the Superior, someone who will have something to teach us about making sure God’s Word lights our paths.

Abbaye de Chiaravalle

G. dallorto

by permission