While very  few of us will ever take such pronounced steps toward newness of purpose as does the new postulant who seeks entrance at the abbey door, most of us respect such vision and share it.

How Corrie and her sister Betsie must have thanked God for the spiritual training they had received at home!  They remembered those sweet and privileged years as they walked together in the cold and dark morning to stand in ranks for roll call at Ravensbruck, the German concentration camp to which they were sent.

They remembered Papa’s gentle, generous, well-disciplined life, with several daily episodes of private and family prayer and Bible-reading, as well as a keen interest in Bible discourse and study.  Tante Jans lived with the family and kept up a steady stream of evangelical writings.  Brother Willem was a pastor and spoke whenever he could to warn against the impending dangers of the rising German Reich.  Tante Anna was the “extern sister,” always busy in the kitchen or looking after the house.

“Discipline,” as we think of it today in terms of crime and punishment, was probably somewhat lacking, but training in kindness and faithfulness and the well-ordering of life were stringent.

Corrie’s life and the martyrdom of so many of her family members is a testimony to the effect of the Gospel of Jesus Christ that was lived inside that narrow little house on the Bartiljoristraat.

Corrie was faithful as long as she lived to remind those with whom she spoke that the Bible is God’s love letter to us, and that He is glad to help us perfectly understand it.  Begin with prayer, she recommended, and then she suggested keeping track of the following, day by day . . .

• What was the most beautiful passage, and why?
• Was there a warning in the text?
• Was there a promise to believe?
• Did a prayer arise in your heart while reading?

This would be a “Lectio” practice that could train us very well in Cor Unum Abbey.  It would never grow old, even after we do!

Better still, this manner of Divine Reading might help us to remain as young at heart and strong in the work of the Lord as was “Sister” Corrie ten Boom.  The Gospel worked for the ten Boom family, and they lived by it.  Love was the watchword, and love’s cost was paid in full.  Papa ten Boom died in a corridor, arrested with his family for hiding Jews during the war.  Before soldiers separated them, he prayed for his beloved children, blessing them, and for their “watches,” the Jews they had left at home, safe in their Hiding Place.

Corrie survived to share with the world the Gospel that she and Betsie had preached, even to women who were taken away to be cremated.  When she was released, only days before all the women her age were murdered, she traveled around the globe and gave this testimony, “There is no pit so deep that the love of God is not deeper still.”  This God she knew from the Bible, and she read the Scriptures daily her whole life long, until a stroke disabled her.  Then, she had them read to her.

For us, too, in Cor Unum, no matter what we must face in life, our Divine Reading will be for us divine strength to keep ourselves in the love of God and to live within His divine purpose.

Thank You, Father, for this faithful family, for the lives they lived and the death they suffered for Jesus’ sake.  Amen.

Corrie ten Boom,

courtesy of the ten Boom Museum website