The Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1980, declared in a book of prose that “the Scriptures constitute the common good of believers, agnostics, and atheists.” For Milosz, whose life was scarred by the Nazi and Communist takeovers of his native land, the moral authority and literary beauty of the Bible was a refuge against the lethal and banal propaganda spewed forth from those godless governments and armies, even though he could not bring himself to believe in God.
Word to Enkindle
This Lent I’m studying the “wilderness” or “desert” in Scripture, and especially in the journey of Israel from Egypt to the Promised Land. The dangerous wild is a powerful image for the spiritual life, and it plays a large part in the lives of figures like Jacob, Moses, David, Elijah, John the Baptist and Jesus. What about in yours?
A curious pattern of exile is evident in the endings of several Old Testament books. After God promises Abram the land of Canaan, the patriarch must immediately flee to Egypt because of a famine (Genesis 12); his descendants, the sons of Jacob, repeat the expedition for the same reason (Genesis 42-47).
One of the shibboleths of our times is the word diversity. Our use of the word can easily signal our social, political and philosophical sympathies. It is ubiquitous in our culture, advertising and corporate life, and it is frequently portrayed as a moral value, one of the few claimed by our ostensibly secular society.
St. Benedict concludes the Prologue of his Rule for monks with an uplifting exhortation: “Do not be daunted immediately by fear and run away from the road that leads to salvation. It is bound to be narrow at the outset. But as we progress in this way of life and in faith, we shall run on the path of God’s commandments, our hearts expanding with the inexpressible delight of love.” For Benedict, the monastic life is a school in which the monks, who graduate only at death, never cease learning how to love the Lord. The relentless rigors of work and prayer stretch the heart, pushing it outward and generating an ever-greater capacity to love and be loved.
Catholic Schools Week (Jan. 30 to Feb. 5 this year) is a time to reflect on the gift of Catholic education and to support the many men and women who work so hard to offer that education to children throughout the world.