Posted on by Kurt Bodling

secrets revealed

“While it is unclear just how the Greek concept of mystery influenced early Christianity, the concept of mystery as ‘hiddenness’ appears in the writings of the apostle Paul and other early Christian mystics–even as it has an entirely different flavor from the pagan contexts out of which the language of mystery emerged. The earliest Christian mystics don’t talk about ritual secrets that only initiates can access; rather they talk about secrets that are revealed–through Christ, through the Bible, through the Christian sacraments, and eventually, through personal experiences of the presence of God.”

McColman, Carl. The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism: an Essential Guide to Contemplative Spirituality. Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books, 2023, p. 59

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

focus on the Word made flesh

“In a time when the ‘Fatima secrets’ and the Medjugorje phenomena, not to mention the millennialism of Hal Lindsey and others, are stirring up anxiety, fanaticism, and even hysteria among simple unbelievers, we need Saint Romuald’s sober focus on God’s true, total and definitive revelation in the Incarnate Word.”

Matus, Thomas. The Mystery of Romuald and the Five Brothers. Trabuco Canyon, Cal.: Source Books / Hermitage Books, 1994, p. 103. (about facing the year 1000, as he was facing the year 2000 when he wrote)

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

Mary and Martha

"The mystics in history have also offered different ways of understanding Mary and Martha. The fourteenth-century manual of contemplation The Cloud of Unknowing suggests that Mary represents the contemplative life while Martha symbolizes the active life. In other words, Mary stands for those who live in cloistered communities of monks or nuns, devoting their lives to prayer and meditation, while Martha represents those who live ‘in the world,’ with families and households and the ordinary responsibilities of secular life.

“… On the other hand, Teresa of Avila in her mystical masterpiece The Interior Castle refuses to see one sister as somehow more exalted than the other.”

McColman, Carl. The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism: an Essential Guide to Contemplative Spirituality. Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books, 2023, p. 95.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

secrets revealed

“While it is unclear just how the Greek concept of mystery influenced early Christianity, the concept of mystery as ‘hiddenness’ appears in the writings of the apostle Paul and other early Christian mystics–even as it has an entirely different flavor from the pagan contexts out of which the language of mystery emerged. The earliest Christian mystics don’t talk about ritual secrets that only initiates can access; rather they talk about secrets that are revealed–through Christ, through the Bible, through the Christian sacraments, and eventually, through personal experiences of the presence of God.”

McColman, Carl. The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism: an Essential Guide to Contemplative Spirituality. Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books, 2023, p. 59.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

source of inerrancy

“The insistence on an ‘infallible’ or ‘inerrant’ Bible has grown up within a complex cultural matrix (in particular, that of modern North American Protestantism) where the Bible has been seen as the bastion of orthodoxy against Roman Catholicism on the one hand and liberal modernism on the other. Unfortunately, the assumptions of both those worlds have conditioned the debate. It is no accident that this Protestant insistence on biblical infallibility arose at the same time as Rome was insisting on papal infallibility, or that the rationalism of the Enlightenment infected even those who were battling against it.”

Wright, Tom. Simply Christian. London: SPCK, 2006, p. 157.

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lectio’s depths

"Lectio is a practice in which you slow down, creating space in which you can gently learn to seek, and discern, God’s presence hidden in the sacred text and in the subtle stirrings of your heart and mind.

“By opening up to the divine presence through the written word, you simultaneously open yourself up to the deeply relational nature of the Christian contemplative life, which is indeed the heart of the mystical path.”

McColman, Carl. The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism: an Essential Guide to Contemplative Spirituality. Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books, 2023, pp. 256-257.

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a showcase for scripture

“The better we know the Bible, the more we are coming close to the windows, so that, without the windows having got any bigger, we can glimpse the entire sweep of the biblical countryside. Even the simplest acts of Christian worship ought therefore always to focus on the reading of scripture. Sometimes there will be space for the congregation to meditate on one or more of the readings. Sometimes there will be opportunity to respond; the church has developed rich resources of material, taken not least from the Bible itself, which we may sing, or say, by way of pondering what we have heard and continuing to thank God for it. That is how basic liturgy begins to be constructed: a showcase for scripture, a way of making sure we are treating it with the seriousness it deserves.”

Wright, Tom. Simply Christian. London: SPCK, 2006, p. 130.

Comment: Tom Wright also taught and wrote as “N.T. Wright”. I like how this paragraph clarifies how liturgical worship is scriptural worship; how if you honor the Bible, then you have to honor the liturgy. The historic liturgy in Christianity focuses on God and God’s word, not on me or how I’m feeling or what I’m bringing or what I’m thinking or doing, not on what I need or want.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

Bible reading and being in nature

“By the reading of Scripture I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure, a cooler blue, the trees a deeper green, light is sharper on the outlines of the forest and the hills and the whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music in the earth beneath my feet.” (8 August 1949)

Merton, Thomas. The Sign of Jonas. San Diego: Harcourt, Inc., 1981. (originally published 1953), p. 115-116.

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the path to Christian doctrine

"The church’s official ‘doctrine of the Trinity’ was not fully formulated until three or four centuries after the time of Paul. Yet when the later theologians eventually worked it all through, it turned out to consist, in effect, of detailed footnotes to Paul, John, Hebrews and the other New Testament books, with explanations designed to help later generations grasp what was already there in principle in the earliest writings.

“But it would be a mistake to give the impression that the Christian doctrine of God is a matter of clever intellectual word-games or mind-games. For Christians it’s always a love-game.”

Wright, Tom. Simply Christian. London: SPCK, 2006, p. 118.

Comment: It’s clear, according to N.T. Wright, that Christian doctrine is more than simply a slow development of simple statements recorded in the Bible. He says here that doctrine is basically footnotes to the Scriptural text. At least when it (the Bible) is expounded properly.

It would seem, then, that Tradition must in this light be measured against Scripture. If the teachings of Tradition are not apparent in Scripture, then they aren’t footnoting anything. Which makes no sense. Pay attention to Wright’s idea of the “love-game” in tension with the “word-game”. If a doctrinal exposition and explanation is not growing out of the love-game, there’s reason to suspect it.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

meditate like ants and bees

"In the Christian monastic tradition, meditatio is not primarily a technique for emptying the soul. Meditation is an exercise in attentiveness, purification, and concentration, but its primary goal is the fullness or maturation of God’s Word within us. According to the most ancient tradition, meditation is biblical. And in lectio divina, three important ‘moments’ constitute meditatio: the ant’s work, the bee’s work, and discernment.

"The ant’s work is to harvest the food. Our food is God’s Word. … One who is more familiar with Scripture will have the advantage of recalling a greater number of texts.

"We must not only harvest our food, but also work with it like a bee. … In other words, the monk’s work is to meditate, i.e., to reveal the hidden sense of Scripture, to produce the honey of evangelical wisdom. Monastic tradition calls this second step of meditation ruminatio. …

“God’s Word entering our lives begins a work of discernment, of purification, of krisis–transformation and conversion. Whereas with lectio we read Scripture, during meditatio God’s Word ‘reads’ us. This can prove a painful process.”

Barban, Alessandro. “Lectio Divina and Monastic Theology in Camaldolese Life” in Belisle, Peter-Damian, editor. The Privilege of Love: Camaldolese Benedictine Spirituality. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2002, pp. 56-57.