Posts Tagged ‘Matthew 6:5-8’
Look with Love – Br. Luke Ditewig
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Br. Luke Ditewig
Scholastica
Young children often call out: “Look at me! See me play. See what I can do.” Adults don’t often yell it out so directly, yet we want to be seen. We receive love by being seen and known. This this core need can get distorted. A good desire to participate, help, and lead as well as to be seen can become overly focused on attention.
Eugene Peterson wrote: “Hypocrisy is slow-growing. In its early stages it is difficult to detect. And that is why no one is conscious of becoming a hypocrite. . . . Distraction from intended good ends up as hypocrisy.”[1] Distraction. Jesus says: The world is not a stage for you to show off good deeds. Beware of practicing your piety in order to be seen by others. Don’t announce your compassion. What you could receive can distract from the good you do. Doing good can distract from being. Read More
Evelyn Underhill, and the God Who Comes to Us, Secretly – Br. Curtis Almquist
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Commemoration of Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), Mystic and Writer
Br. Curtis Almquist
In the calendar of the church we remember today an English woman, Evelyn Underhill, born in 1875. She had a vast influence on the spiritual formation of her own generation, and to generations since. In her prolific writing, speaking, and retreat leading she was revered as faithful, as insightful and passionate, as wise and practical, and all of it laced with her disarming humor.[i]
She taught how the “mystical life” is not just for the saints, but for all of us.[ii] Mysticism, for her, is how God is always coming to us in “the Sacrament of the Present Moment.” Pay attention to now. God’s presence is always in the present. Now. There will be “thin places” where God breaks through to you, often mysteriously, in here-and-now. Pay attention to now.
Evelyn Underhill comments on the Gospel lesson we have just heard: Jesus’ saying, “When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”When you pray, shut the door. “Shutting the door” can be very challenging. She says: Read More