Sunday Meditation

     This is another series I'm inaugurating, in observance of the sanctity of Sunday. Every Sunday morning I'll post a brief passage on which to meditate, from the writings of the Church Fathers, the saints, or from books that I have personally found helpful and inspiring. Whenever possible, I'll provide a link for the source of the passage in the event someone may want to purchase a copy, usually through the title of the work. While, inevitably, my personal focus is on Catholic (with a big "C") doctrine, I'll try to select passages whose themes are catholic (with a small "c"). Hopefully, these meditations will stay with us, not only through Sunday, but throughout the week, to help guide our steps and keep our minds on higher things.

     I begin with a passage from a book that I turn to again and again for my non-Scriptural spiritual reading: They Speak by Silences, by "a Carthusian." (For some basic information about the Carthusian order -- and it is a very beautiful, fascinating way of life to which I wish I were called -- click here.) The author preferred to remain anonymous, as befits a cloistered contemplative monk. His writings were actually personal letters, intended as guidance for novices and fellow monks, and were collected and published after his death.

. . . All these miseries which criss-cross our lives are at bottom of little account . . . It is only the surface of the soul which has been slightly ruffled; the depths have remained untroubled. Alas for us that we do not live sufficiently in those depths where peace reigns, but far too much on the surface where we get disturbed. There you have the true secret of our Carthusian calm and joy. The daily upsets of hurt and wounded feelings are found no less among us than anywhere else. They form part of our existence here below, and we are still living in this world! But we do not let them distress us. A whole part of ourselves emerges from and dominates them, and all our endeavour is to live by this loftier part. It is there we preserve our serenity of soul; and it is there that our 'palm tree in the desert' grows, beneath the shade of which we rest 'in peace'.

     With God's grace, I will try to live in those peaceful depths of my soul where the Spirit dwells, and by doing so, hopefully smooth my too-often ruffled surface!