10/20/2020 7:01:47 AM
Happy that faithful servant !
“”
Blessed Columba Marmion (1858-1923)
Abbot
Monastic Prayer (Christ the Ideal of the Monk, trans. a nun of Tyburn Convent, Sands & Co., 1934; rev.)
Happy that faithful servant !
When we are faithful to keep habitually the sense of God's presence, the ardor of love is constant; all our activity, even the most ordinary, is not only "kept pure from all stain" (Rule of Saint Benedict, ch. IV) but, moreover, raised to a supernatural level. Our whole life is irradiated with heavenly light "coming down from the Father of lights" (Jas 1:17) and is the secret of strength and joy. This habit of the presence of God disposes the soul for divine visits. It may happen, and to certain souls it happens frequently, that they find a real difficulty in making their prayer at the time assigned: weariness, sleepiness, a state of ill health, distractions, hinder, in appearance, all efforts to attain prayer. This is spiritual dryness. Let the soul, however, remain faithful and do what it can to stay near the Lord, even if it is without sensible fervor: "Yet I am always with you; you take hold of my right hand" (Ps 72[73]:23); God will draw near to it at another moment. It can be said of these visits of the Lord what the Scripture declares of his coming at the close of our earthly life: "You know not at what hour the Lord will come" (Mt 24:42). If everywhere, in the cell, in the cloister, in the garden, in the refectory, we live recollected in the Divine Presence, Our Lord will come, the Trinity will come (cf. Jn 14:23), with hands full of light and glory which will possess us to our very depths and sometimes have a considerable repercussion on our inner life. (…) By our recollection let us then be "like those who wait for their Lord" (Lk 12:36). The Lord finding us ready will make us enter with him into the festal hall.