The Journey to Resurrection Day 2

(Lent, Holy Week and Easter in a Monastery)

“Making Room for God”

Meister Eckhart says we need not search for God, only to create an Auditorium where God may be discovered.

The journey begins today after my first steps onto the Monastery Campus of St Ottilien. Here is a small village filled with buildings and barns, a chapel the size of a small cathedral, Monastic living quarters, refectory, and guest house. Just the walk from the train station to the Portal of the Monastery (Klosterpfort) about a kilometer in all helps to shed the baggage one carries of ones personal preoccupations and worries. Shedding these “daily” concerns is part of creating a space

For God says Meister Eckhart. Trully our worries and our anxieties as worthy as they are, become many times barriers to our spiritual wellbeing and growth. We get stuck in the problem, like a cat in a paper bag with no exit. Certainly Jonas three days in the Whale were days to just worry and ponder on the predicament Jonah had created for himself. It was not until the whale spewed him out that he could regain perspective on his vocation and calling.

Making room for God I have discovered sometimes merits an escape from our daily routine and a journey to places of quiet and peace and reflection where we can let God find us, and we can rest in Gods loving and gentle Presence. Monasteries exist just for that reason. Apart from being where Monks live out their calling. Monasteries are places for others to set aside their cares and worries and create a neutral space for God to once more enter in and do his magic!

These days it is harder and harder to find places where Silence is truly treasured. Where talking and conversing are the exception and not the rule and where the noisiest time of the day are when the birds wake up in the morning and when they nest at night as they sing the daily Canticles of the Benedictus and the Magnificat alongside the Monks, opening and closing the daily rhythm of the Universe.

We cannot find the Heart of the Universe if we do not make room in our own hearts for the Universe to enter in. This is our task daily, weekly, monthly and yearly.

The community of the Paraclete Fathers have a Rule for prayer almost anyone could adhere to. One hour a day, three hours once a week, one day a month and one week a year, set aside for God to enter into the small spaces of our heart.

This is how we make Room for God and create an Auditorium for God to dwell deep within us as we set aside our worries and concerns and allow God to find us in Silence and in Contemplation.

Pax Bene

Pic Passion-tide Plant at the Monastery