Category: Quotes

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Photograph: Rhys Tranter

“The Greek word for alms, eleemosyne, comes from éleos, meaning compassion and mercy. Various circumstances have combined to change this meaning so that almsgiving is often regarded as a cold act, with no love in it. But almsgiving in the proper sense means realizing the needs of others and letting them share in one’s own goods. Who would say that there will not always be others who need help, especially spiritual help, support, consolation, fraternity, love? The world is always very poor, as far as love is concerned”

— St John Paul II, 28 March 1979

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Fr John Nepil, To Heights and Unto Depths: Letters from the Colorado Trail. Photograph: Rhys Tranter
Fr John Nepil, To Heights and Unto Depths: Letters from the Colorado Trail. Photograph: Rhys Tranter

Taken from Fr John Nepil‘s To Heights and Unto Depths: Letters from the Colorado Trail:

“Creation felt symphonic Everything from the wildflowers below to the stratus clouds above spoke of order and design. The ancients had a word for this-one that would in time become intensely meaningful for Christians. They called it logos.

Some words are impossible to translate and logos is to be counted among them. Polyvalent in its essence, logos can be defined as ‘word, speech, discourse, thought, reason, and meaning’. Rooted in the verb legein (‘to gather, bind, link, or unite’), logos was employed by the Greeks to describe the unifying link of all creation. First described by Heraclitus around 500 b.c., logos was more than a principle of unity; it was the idea upon which the wise man lived. Plato would develop this intuition of logos as the mind, distinguishing it as the agent of creation that he called the demiurge. Stoic philosophers such as Cleante and Seneca saw in it the harmony of the universe, governed by the divine spirit. And at the end of the pre-Christian era, the great Jewish philosopher Philo would see the logos as the first power emanating from God, calling it ‘the bond of the universe’.”

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In a November entry of The Genesee Diary, Henri Nouwen reflects on the writing and spirituality of Brother Lawrence:

“To live a spiritual life is to live in the presence of God. This very straightforward truth was brought home to me forcefully by Brother Lawrence, a French Carmelite brother who lived in the seventeenth century. The book The Practice of the Presence of God contains four conversations with Brother Lawrence and fifteen letters by him.

He writes: ‘It is not necessary for being with God to be always at church. We may make an oratory of our heart wherein to retire from time to time to converse with him in meekness, humility, and love. Everyone is capable of such familiar conversation with God, some more, some less. He knows what we can do. Let us begin, then. Perhaps he expects but one generous resolution on our part. Have courage.’

‘I know that for the right practice of it [the presence of God] the heart must be empty of all other things, because God will possess the heart alone; and as he cannot possess it alone without emptying it of all besides, so neither can he act there, and do in it what pleases, unless it be left vacant to him.’

Brother Lawrence’s message, in all its simplicity, is very profound. For him who has become close to God, all is one. Only God counts, and in God all people and all things are embraced with love. To live in the presence of God, however, is to live with purity of heart, with simple-mindedness and with total acceptance of his will. That, indeed, demands a choice, a decision, and great courage. It is a sign of true holiness.”

— Henri Nouwen, The Genesee Diary

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Dorotheus of Gaza, quoted in an entry from Henri Nouwen’s The Genesee Diary:

“Don’t look for the affection of your neighbor. He who looks for it is troubled when he does not get it. You yourself, however, have to give witness to the love for your neighbor and to offer him rest, and thus you will bring your neighbor to love.”

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A short passage from this morning’s Office of Readings in the Breviary (Friday, Week 10 of Ordinary Time):

“It is medicine for our spiritual health. Whoever reads it will find in it a medicine to cure the wounds caused by his own particular passions. Whoever studies it deeply will find it a kind of gymnasium open for all souls to use, where the different psalms are like different exercises set out before him. In that gymnasium, in that stadium of virtue, he can choose the exercises that will train him best to win the victor’s crown.

If someone wants to study the deeds of our ancestors and imitate the best of them, he can find a single psalm that contains the whole of their history, a complete treasury of past memories in just one short reading.”

— From the discourses of St Ambrose on the Psalms

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Author Robert Pirsig and his son Chris in 1968
Author Robert Pirsig and his son Chris in 1968

While packing for a trip I pick up an old book I haven’t read for a long time. It’s a 1976 edition of Henri Nouwen’s The Genesee Diary: Report from a Trappist Monastery.

It documents a sabbatical year that the Dutch-born priest and teacher spent at the Cistercian Trappist Abbey of Genesee on New York State, immersing himself in a life of silence, prayer, and manual labour.

The book is enjoyable for its many humorous observations about Nouwen’s daily life, and also for its psychological clarity on the issues he struggles with in this environment.

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Thomas Merton’s hermitage at the Abbey of Gethsemani

A beautiful day. We rise early. I head out into the rain and collect coffee and pastries.

Later, as the sun comes out, we go walking until late into the afternoon.

After Mass, we listen to the sounds of birds and traffic, and settle down for a quiet evening. I read this in Thomas Merton’s journals:

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