Did anyone ask, “So then, how DO WE continue in the love of God?”

Reading on in John 15, Jesus helps us with that . . .

“If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love.”

We continue in the love of God just as Jesus did . . . we keep Jesus’ commandments to us just as He kept the Father’s commandments.

If we are not sure we may ask, “What are those commandments?”

Oh look! He tells us right away! We don’t even have to ask!

In fact, so that our joy might be full, He is telling us everything we have needed to hear!

“And this is my commandment,” He says, “that you love one another, (even) as I have loved you.” That’s it? It wasn’t a trick question? “Just” love one another? For joy and answered prayer and fruitful lives and fruit that REMAINS – just – LOVE ONE ANOTHER?

There must be a catch . . .

Yes?

No?

We’ll talk about that tomorrow!

released by Jon Sullivan into the Public Domain

Wikipedia

           When we see leaf, flower, and fruit on the branch, we know with certainty that the vine lives.  All the “show” may be in the branch, but the “tell” comes from the vine.  The tree may be old and largely decayed, the stump may appear more dead than alive, but if there hangs a cluster on the branch, the vine lives.

          In our case, the vine is life and health to us, even unto eternity.  Pruning comes to the branches, which then provide fruit . . . more fruit . . . much fruit . . . and FRUIT THAT REMAINS, by the will of God.  Here is food for thought!

         We’ve all watched blossoms turn into squash or tomatoes or peaches. It’s mysterious and miraculous to us, even thought it happens in millions of gardens around the world all year long (remembering greenhouses and the eternal summer of the two hemispheres.) But spiritual fruit, and fruit that remains? No earthly vine can accomplish that latter part, but this is, we are, the engrafting that has turned history and humanity toward heaven. In the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, may we bear fruit, and may our fruit remain! 

          How do we do it?  We “cultivate” nearness.  Apart from the vine, we can do nothing, though we have sometimes tried to bring forth fruit by branch power, branch anger, branch management and wound up with a barren branch.  

          Now we are learning to do what we’re good at . . . branches that remain in the vine bear fruit.  Jesus tells us just how it is done, and for us in Cor Unum, it is our standard of every day life: 

          “If you abide in me and my words abide in you, you shall ask what ye will and it will be done for you.”  (John 15:7)  Fruit comes forth in prayer, and the one who abides in Jesus, with Jesus’ Word abiding in Him, knows the fruitfulness of answered prayer. 

         There is more . . .         “Just as the Father has loved me so have I loved you; continue in my love.”  The life of the vine is rooted in the most healthy, the most vital love of the Father.  When our Cor Unum life is planted there, we will be a fruitful cloister . . . or cluster, if you will.    

Unknown; cropped, cleaned up, and levels adjustment by Howcheng

And the king said to me, “Why is your face sad, seeing you are not sick? This is nothing but zsadness of the heart.” Then I was very much afraid. (Nehemiah 2:2)

What did we think would come next? After our morning offering:

“Holy, holy, holy, Lord, God of power and might; heaven and earth are filled with Your glory?”

Now . . . bowing? Scripture reading? Silence? More worship?

Good idea! Great idea! Oh, we will practice all of the above, but first . . . dear ones . . . first . . . let us find joy!

Before anything else, before we open our Bibles or even fall on our knees, unless we can do both, simultaneously, let us find joy. Let us not bring a morose, defeated, self-referential heart before our God this morning.

Remember Nehemiah? Cup-bearer to the king? He bore the weight of the destruction of a nation in the fullness of his heart, but he TREMBLED to bring sorrow and dejection into the presence of the potentate. We can learn from Nehemiah! Yes, we mourn with those who mourn, and the Holy Spirit prays with groanings that cannot be uttered (more about that to come,) but our God is not mourning … His Son has returned to His right hand, leading captivity captive!   (Psalm 68:18)

Let’s find JOY, and see where it takes us at break of day!

Derrynfian Chalice

Kglavin, Wikipedia, by permission

And they were calling to one another:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;

the whole earth is full of his glory.” Isaiah 6:3, NIV

         What a glorious, God-centered time we shall have together, separately. When we wake up in the morning, we are never alone. All over the world, monastics rise to greet the dawn – they awaken the dawn! – and some of them even live in convents! (Psalm 108:2) In the city, in the suburbs, in townhomes, trailers, and tents, married with children, students, wives and widows, Cor Unum Abbey takes its place among the sanctified of the earth and of the ages. With worship and prayers and all the consolations of the Word of God, the day begins.

         Here in Cor Unum Abbey, we are making an adventure of the real monastic experience, which is to say, we bring into our daily lives whatever degree of personal discipline and diligence required that we may say, with the Psalmist, “I have set the Lord always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.” (Psalm 16:8) We are numbered among those for whom neither business nor pleasure will rob us of friendship with God.

         When you wake up in the morning, when the clapper sounds up and down the dormitory hall in the Abbey . . . or just when your alarm clock goes off . . . try this:

         Say with your first breath, even under your breath . . . “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty; the earth is filled with the glory of the Lord.” (Isaiah 6:3 and Revelation 4:8)

         Say it again, and again. Say it until you pick up your Bible to study or until you go to prayer or worship . . . or until you sit down for coffee with your spouse or your cat.

         Say those words, and mean them. You might choose another phrase proclaiming God’s glory and majesty, but we use those words here in Cor Unum because they are among the proclamations resounding before the throne of God, day and night. Angels crying out and twenty-four elders falling down, casting their crowns before the Lord, while we slept and at the moment we wake up, continually. Join in! Say them tomorrow and every morning. and plan to say them first thing every day as long as you live. Say them over and over again, commanding your soul and your day, and do not give in to those encroaching mental and emotional demands that come early to rob your peace and pervert your attention. First … God! First … worship!

         Before long, you will find that the reality of the holiness and the supremacy of God has made its way deeper into all the rest of the hours of your day. We are the Sisters of Cor Unum Abbey, taking our places among the angels and the saints who see the face of God!

Sunrise at CuaLo

HandyHui, Wikipedia

         Life can be a bit peculiar to us sometimes, but rarely more so than our own hearts.

We looked yesterday at some of the attractions of enclosure . . . stillness, worship, TIME to seek God. It should not surprise us that inactivity, uselessness, and ennui are some of the crushing difficulties, too.

A little stillness, injected at our pleasure into our busy lives, is a balm. When the “worship is good” at church or at a retreat, we delight ourselves in it. We so lament the schedules and rigors and distractions of our lives that swallow our time and keep us from God, but we alone can “seize the day.”

I speak to those who have time and those who will make time. Twenty minutes of Quiet Delight can, as we have seen, set the tone for our day.   Twenty minutes daily can change our lives by changing our perspective and our inclinations!  Even five or ten minutes of pure enjoyment in the Incomparable Presence of the Lord are not without effect, and not least of all because we aren’t there for the affect.

We must stand to, however, dear ones! Jesus was not given a “pass” by the enemy in His relationship with the Father, and neither are we. There will be dozens of times when it feels as though our Quiet Delight is anything but, when it is absolutely clamorous with intruding thoughts and lusts for activity and stimulation. Those twenty minutes will seem like the biggest possible waste of the day.

It will help us to recognize that in stillness we see what is going on in the cloister of our hearts, what it’s like in there when we leave the governance to all the impulses of the day and of our carnal souls. It’s horrifying!  All the worries of all the years of our lives, all the unanswered fears and unresolved conflict and unanswered questions and unmet expectations and all the demands personal and spiritual that have yet to be confronted by truth and decision. Because we do not stir them up with stillness, they romp and screech and jeer at us, right inside, where we are making an abode for Jesus Himself. That is not right.

Stillness works, coupled with a quiet delight in the Lord our God.  As we persevere, peace will prevail at last, at first with no measurable change in our twenty minutes of stillness but in our every day souls. By our own volition, day by day, we choose the Nearness of God for our good. (Psalm 73:28) We choose this expression of worship with this one expectation, that God is, for us, enough.

Questions will find their answers or they will find their rest. The push and pull of being human will begin to balance quite naturally on the head of this point of light, “The LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him.” (Habakkuk 2:20, NIV) Remember, my dear Sisters, we ourselves have become the temple of the Lord. (1 Corinthians 3:17)

This will never be, for us, a journey into Karma or mindlessness or oneness with ourselves or the universe. Oh, precisely where we do not want to be! This is an investment in the simple truth that if God reigns on high over all His creation, and because He is pleased to make His abode with us and to be for us a dwelling place, then we will sit at His feet for the joy of being where we belong.

Jumieges Abbey

by Urban at fr. Wikipedia

         Let us find a quiet moment, the next opportunity we have to be as quiet as we may be, and let us seek the near Presence of God.   Stay . . . for five minutes. Let us direct no thought toward the day ahead, or even toward the effects and benefits of God’s Life and Love. There will be loads of time for that! Stay for ten minutes if it is possible; stay just to be near. Direct no thought toward peace, righteousness, sin, failure, or joy. That’s the important part. This is not a mental activity. With it we humble our minds to the love of God. Only stay in the His Presence. Let the one determination be to be with Him, to be near, and having made that determination, be near and give the matter no further thought.

         Let your heart be fully delighted in Him, but without words, without summing up. Stay for twenty minutes. For these moments, don’t pray or repent or give thanks or meditate or worry if thoughts and impulses do wander. Ignore thought and impulse of every nature; just ignore them. Direct the heart to enjoy the Lord our God in perfect stillness of soul and mind, where even imperfection is completely unimportant. Just stay.

         Stay longer; stay for half an hour.   When our time is up, we are candidates to remain, here in Cor Unum. Rest assured, there will be time, lots of time, for worship, for thanksgiving, for repentance, for prayer, but in the Presence of a king, even an earthly king, the true servant does not clamor for attention; he waits. We will learn to listen, to watch, to ask, to know, but first we delight in His Nearness for His sake, alone.

         Dear ones, we’ve been together, some of us, for years now. The new volume is underway, and it would be magnificent and magnificently helpful if you would post comments along the way, those of you who are inspired to attempt and to enjoy these practices. Please see my comment on today’s entry … I hope to see yours. Bits and pieces of what you say along the path will be included in the next book, successes and failures and queries, altogether. I’ll let you know and make sure you don’t mind if I include them. For now, if you step into these halls, please share with others the experience of it. And thank you from my heart.

Sennanque Cloister

JShapiro, Wikipedia