Oblate Retreat - July 23-25, 2004 - Rest & Relaxation the Benedictine Way

The first weekend retreat of the Ridgely Benedictine Oblates  - Rest and Relaxation the Benedictine Way was held July 23 – July 25 , 2004.

From check in to check out, the oblates experienced prayer, praise, eucharist, community, adoration, silence, conference and discussion.

Ably lead by their Directress, Sr. Mary Paul, thought provoked by the retreat speaker, Abbot Aiden Shaw, pilgrim-lead to Norcia, Subiacco, Monte Cassino and Rome by past Directress, Sr. Patricia Gamgort and discussion-inspired by Sr. Miriam Ruth, past Directress and Sr. Roni, the oblates ran the gamut from conversatio to lectio, from Eucharist to Scripture, prayer to prayer and from meal to meal.

Abbot Aiden, from St. Anselm Abbey in Washington, DC caused us to ponder and discuss and even left us with an assignment to draw the house that is us.

After the first evening’s lecture, he asked us:

·        What does power mean?

·        How do I use it?  How does it use me?

·        Who has power over me?

·        How much power do I give others over me?

·        How much power do I give Jesus?

Power is my ability to produce an effect and my ability to or willingness to undergo an effect.

God’s love for us and ours for him must come before ALL else.  Love is at the top and showers down on everything.

Abbot Aiden handed out the following meditation by St. Irenaeus of Lyons:

It is not you who shape God.  It is God

Who shapes you.  If then you are the work

Of God, await the hand of the artist who

Does all things in due season.

Offer him your heart, soft and tractable,

And keep the form in which the artist has

Fashioned you.  Let the clay be moist,

Lest you grow hard and lose the imprint

Of his fingers.

Then the Abbot went on to say we should acknowledge what power the Bible has over us.  Scripture has as much power as we give it.  If we hear questions in the scripture but settle for non-answers, we are fooling ourselves but not God.  Remember, the Bible is good news, not just information.  We should let it shape us.  Are we willing to be the clay for God to use and shape?  Are we willing to use the scripture to shape us?  He then gave us a quote from Deuteronomy 32:12 – Choose Life and from St. John 13, an invitation from Jesus to:

·        Live in God – honor the discipline of prayer.

·        Bear fruit – He doesn’t ask us to succeed.

·        Receive an offering from Jesus for joy – a joy we will know when we bond with Christ and it is a practice of healing by God (not to hurt another – “please forgive me.”

An abbot friend of Abbot Aiden’s told him, “When you become Abbot, pull out all the words in the Bible you wish God had not said and then re-read those passages again and again and again.”

If you think self is involved in anything, go apart and wrestle with God (as Jacob did – SEE Genesis 32).  Even though you may sustain an injury, the result will be that we will become people with bigger hearts.

In St. Luke, in the story of Jesus and Zachaeus, we are all too something (too short, too tall, too prejudiced).  Admit your shortcomings, stop using it as a crutch or as a weapon.  Admit it is there, accept it and use it.

Memorize – It is not you who shapes God;

                   It is God who shapes you.

Saturday evening we went on a pilgrimage to St. Benedict’s hometown, where he was a hermit and where he established his monasteries.  Sr. Patricia brought paintings, frescoes and actual photos she had taken in Italy to bring the Beginnings of Benedictinism alive for us.  We went from Norcia (Nursia) where St. Benedict was born, to Subiacco where he became a hermit to Monte Cassino where he wrote the Rule.  Sister also took us to Rome, the Beginnings of Christianity.  We also found out that it is believed that St. Benedict and St. Francis knew each other.  At Monte Cassino there have always been monks from St. Benedict’s time until now.

The room where St. Benedict wrote his Rule was NOT destroyed during WWII – the doorway still stands.

In Rome, Peter’s bones are there as well as all the Pope’s.

The last morning, the lecture of the Abbot pointed out that whether we like it or not we were born into a metaphor – everyone has a vocation.  That is to live in union with God as we are.  And a secondary vocation of what one does with one’s life is a collaboration of God and me.

You were born a person, a metaphor for consciousness – it means I accept responsibility for what I am.  You and I can be metaphors for God, but it depends on us.  I must be:

·        Alive to the mystery of God

·        Alive to the mystery of Life

·        Responsive to what is my Vocation.

Our covenant is that we, by choice, are linked to one another (all others) and to God.

Hebrews 3 – You are God’s house – metaphor – our assignment:  to sketch the house you are.

Imagine yourself as a living house.  God comes in to

Rebuild that house.  At first, perhaps, you can understand

What He is doing.  He is getting the drains right and

Stopping the leaks in the roof and so on:  you knew that

Those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised.

But presently He starts knocking the house about in a

Way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make

Sense.  What on earth is He up to?  The explanation is

That He is building quite a different house from the

One you thought of—throwing out a new wing here,

Putting on an extra floor there, running up towers,

Making courtyards.  You thought you were going to be

Made into a decent little cottage:  but He is building a

Palace.  He intends to come and live in it Himself.

                                      Mere Christianity

                                      Book IV Chapter 9

                                      C. S. Lewis

I lived in a house

With two real windows and the other two painted on.

Those painted windows caused my first sorrow.

I’d touch the sides of the hall

Trying to reach the windows from inside.

I spent my whole childhood wanting

To lean out and see what could be seen

From the windows that weren’t there.

                                      Gloria Fuertes

Ring the bells that still can ring.

Forget the perfect offering.

There is a crack in everything—

It’s how the light gets in.

                                      Amnesty

                                      Leonard Cohen