If prayer is a gift of the Spirit—as Rom 8:26 suggests—then it should have a container, a time and space that give it dimensions that are relatable to us human creatures.  Jesus says as much: we should make space by shutting the door of our inner room (Mt 6:6) and set aside an adequate amount of time, one hour, to commune with the Lord (Mt 26:20).  The Aramaic word that Jesus would have actually used for prayer, צלותא, or slotha, literally meaning “to set a trap for,” affirms the fact that prayer is not about letting our minds float around in spiritual outer space so that we can have a breather from this world, but instead a matter of human intentionality, using everything in this world, all the way down to the most basic elements of our existence, time and space, to invite the possibility of communion.  Perhaps we literally go to an inner room in our house—wristwatch in hand—to accomplish this purpose.  Perhaps shutting the door to our inner room is a matter of closing our eyelids at a critical moment of stress.  Perhaps we squeeze in a very genuine seventeen minute “hour of prayer” between the noisy upstairs neighbors and our crying newborn.  Whatever the case may be, we must pray; the consequences of not praying, of not having that graced tesseract and window of love available to us, are unacceptable and, in fact, not human.  Ave Crux, Spes Unica. 

The religious novitiate is an intense experience for anybody.  No matter how religiously competent you are, receiving a letter in the mail from someone literally called the “novice master” with a detailed list of expectations for your one year stay at her or his novitiate carries a weight and force that is difficult to deny.  Upon arrival, you receive a religious habit, a divine office book, a room assignment, and an obedience.  Your name goes up on the cooking schedule—even if you’ve never prepared a single meal in your life—and out to local parishes that are eager to plug you into their ministry schedules.  While most of the day is consumed by attending hours-long spiritual conferences and periods of manual labor, the evenings are an absolute delight: a community meal, followed by recreation, night prayer, and the descent into “grand silence.”  This is where the logic of the novitiate becomes evident, as a highly intentional space that facilitates the opening of the inner ear, so that the voice of the Beloved may be heard and savored, especially in the silence of the night.  What happens after the novitiate—vows, career path, vocation, ministry, etc.—matters very little, as one moment with the Beloved is enough meaning to sustain a person for a lifetime.  In the week ahead, let’s make the decision to enter the interior novitiate that has already been prepared for us.  There, we shall enjoy the sweet communion of our salvation in the silence of the night and beyond.  Ave Crux, Spes Unica.

Simone Weil was a philosopher, mystic, and political activist who died at the tender age of thirty-four.  Her entire life was entrenched in the great wars of her day which forced her to face the hard realities of the human experience.  As an intellectual, she attacked important questions of meaning with an uncommon precision and lucidity.  As a Jewish person, she cultivated a deep sensitivity to the movements of grace in the world and a deep respect for the mystery of life.  Though it is unclear whether she was ever actually baptized, she had a profound spiritual experience while visiting Assisi in the spring of 1937.  In an instant, like Francis, the patron of that place, her mind and heart were Christified, that is, broken open to the radical goodness of it all: time became eternity, darkness became light, and suffering became beauty.  After that experience, she started writing the French word for God with a cross through the “i”—D✝eu—which is to say that, for her, the ground of being and the ultimate reality of our existence is just a concept until it is viewed through the humility, brokenness, vulnerability, and trust of Jesus.  In the week ahead, may we, too, be awakened to the fact that all things are crucified in and with Christ, and, in so doing, become more and more opened to the sweet possibilities of hidden communion in our daily lives.  Ave Crux, Spes Un✝ca.

The mother of Dominic de Guzmán, a 13th century Spanish priest and mystic, had a dream before her baby boy was born: a dog, instead of a child, emerged from her womb and leapt into the world carrying a torch in its mouth, apparently a reference to Jesus’ proclamation that he had come “to set the world on fire” (Lk 12:49).  She was convinced that her son had been consecrated for a divine mission, so she named him, Dominic, meaning “belonging to the Lord.”  In a funny twist of fate, when this boy had become a grown man, some forty-five years later, he founded the Order of Preachers to serve the needs of the Church in a rapidly evolving Europe, but, by popular acclamation, they became known as the Dominicans, which can also mean, “God’s dogs” (Domini canes).  This red-headed, white-habited, rosary-carrying mendicant gathered a group of kindred spirits who travelled the countryside preaching the gospel with him.  They slept on the floor, begged for food, and owned nothing.  In an age that was dominated by papal bulls and crusades, the witness of their fraternity and fidelity impressed many.  Today, there are over twenty-five thousand Dominicans worldwide who carry on this same tradition of sharing the fruits of their contemplation with others.  On this feast of St. Dominic, the self-effacing man of God who truly did set the world spiritually ablaze, let’s, like him, be loyal little puppies and allow our single-hearted service to the one true master inject joy and happiness into our hurting world.  Laudare, Benedicere, Praedicare +

Worship and happiness are inextricably linked realities that are at the heart of the human experience.  However I orient myself spiritually is what my life becomes practically.  There are, of course, us religious folks who worship in explicit ways as we seek to achieve feelings of interior purity, which we claim to be the meaning of happiness.  But, there is also secular worship, such as the liturgy of watching the NFL on Sundays as a way to enter into a heightened emotional state that many men consider to be happiness, or the happy feeling of power and control that many of us experience when we go through our gossipping rituals—even addiction is an act of worship, albeit idolatry, that is so popular because of the happy feelings it produces!  If we are actually serious about happiness, however, the grownup kind that goes beyond endorphins, we should just get to the point and cast our gaze upon the crucified Christ, broken open, radically vulnerable, self-emptying, yet trusting.  Nothing separates this man from the truth; no room for “spiritual feelings” or “righteousness” or “pleasure,” just a person’s life pressing against reality in a way that can only ever bring the peace of being.  Would that my own personal pursuit of happiness demonstrate such clarity and come to such a bold and lasting conclusion.  Ave Crux, Spes Unica.