St. Columbanus called Christians “hospites mundi,” guests of the world. He gives the classic statement of peregrinatio when he speaks of it as going into exile, seeking the place of one’s resurrection, the pilgrimage to heaven, the true home. “Therefore let us concern ourselves with heavenly things, not human ones, and like pilgrims always sigh for our homeland, long for our homeland.
Freedom from the idolatry of money, for a Christian, means that money becomes useful only as a sacrament—as a sign of the restoration of life wrought in this world by Christ. The sacramental use of money has little to do with supporting the church after the manner of contributing to conventional charities and even less with the self-styled stewardship that solicits funds mainly for the maintenance of ecclesiastical salaries and the housekeeping of church properties.
Perhaps, as in the case of metallic substances there exists in some a natural attraction toward some other thing, as in the magnet for iron, and in naphtha for fire, so there is an attraction in such faith toward the divine power according to what Jesus said: “It you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you shall say unto this mountain, ‘Move to another place,’ and it shall be moved.”
O God, mightily we pray for wisdom, courage, and strength to serve thee and this nation faithfully in the days that lie ahead.
It is the contemplative saints who most know the fear and pain as well as the joy and freedom of entering emptiness; they have chosen to confront that which has to be thrust upon the rest of us. They have stretched and yielded themselves to experience cleanly and clearly the hunger and brokenness of their own hearts and of our world. They have willingly sought to deprive themselves of anesthesia. They have claimed their desire to bear the beams of love, regardless of the cost.
“Do not worry about anything,” Paul writes to the Philippians, and then continues, “but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be made known to God” (4:6). This compact direction contains some very specific words about developing a life of prayer in the face of debilitating distractions.
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The path I walk, Christ walks it.
May the land in which I am be without sorrow.
May the Trinity protect me wherever I stay,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Glory to you, hidden Son of God,
because your healing power is proclaimed
through the hidden suffering of the afflicted woman.
Through this woman whom they could see,
the witnesses were enabled to behold the divinity
that cannot be seen.
Our understandings of vocation as individual and corporate response to and expression of relationship with the living God move beyond a matter of compulsive obedience to superior order or an acquiescence to preordained determinism.