How to Read: Lectio Divina in an English Benedictine Monastery

In this paper I want to explore a contextual variation of the practice of Lectio divina. This variation is based on the narrative of the Road to Emmaus in Luke 24:13-35 and the contributions of several Latin@ scholars in the field of biblical interpretation and spiritual practices in the Latin@ community. I also draw on my own experience working as pastor and spiritual companion within this community.

2017

This chapter sets out to explore the identity of contemporary Catholic English Benedictine monasticism in relation to the wider society of which it is part. Contrary to the characterisation of monasteries as an anti-social ‘flight from the world’, I focus on the many ways in which monastic communities exist in continuity with wider society and secular norms. This performance of proximity – grounding monastic identity in the continuity between the monastic and lay life, rather than the sharp contrasts – is illustrated in three domains: food, kinship, and work.

"'At the Gate, At the Shrine: Laity and the Monastery’ focuses on the reception of laypersons within English Benedictine monasteries during the High Middle Ages. From the physical boundaries of gatehouses to the more transient boundary between saint and cure-seeker, monasteries were locations in which the temporal and spiritual spaces met, contrasted and combined. This paper considers who in the laity entered this domain and how they spent their time within these monastic setting. So as to answer this, the paper considers evidence from various primary materials including gathering statistics and evidence from twelfth-century hagiographies and questioning the role of the porter, the ‘bouncer’ of the monastic gatehouse. By using accounts of miraculous healing it is possible to gain a greater understanding of lay use of this space and the willingness of monastic institutions to welcome, and promote, their presence through hagiographic representation. However, not only does this paper attempt to question who came but also how they used the space and where they were permitted to go. Many monasteries were willing to allow laity into their churches, especially in the cases of cathedral priories, these were also spaces meant for secluded spiritual reflection for the monastic brotherhood living there. Furthermore, whilst some were welcomed the paper will also reflect on the issue of those who were not as evidence of the distinction between lay and monastic space. The combination of Ruth and Harriet’s own research provides a paper which considers this issue of laity in the monastery on a multi-faceted front and in a very real way by focusing attention on the evidence for lay presence from the perspective of churchmen; the authors of these sources. What can be learnt, and what remains a mystery, about laity at the gate and at the shrine?"

Stewart | "We"? Reflections on Affinity and Dissonance 93 rereading spiritual classics write these reflections in a small Benedictine monastery in Japan founded from our community of St. John's in Collegeville, Minnesota. This house is filled with instantly recognizable elements that echo features of the home monastery. The cloister gates are crafted in the same distinctive pattern of wood slats, allowing visitors a glimpse of the monastic enclosure. Because all of the furniture was made in our woodworking shop as a gift to our brothers when they moved to a new site, the chairs feel right. The habits they wear are of the American Cassinese variety, with hoods fixed to the scapular by a button rather than sewn on. My abbot's photograph is on display. Some of the monks are men I lived and worked with in Minnesota; the Japanese have been my students.

Journal of Pragmatics, 1998

Based on observations of interaction among the members of a Russian Orthodox monastery in central Texas, this article explores a discourse practice which has fallen into nearly complete disuse in the surrounding culture: the blessing sequence.

Theology, 2015

One of the unintended consequences of Arundel's decrees may have been a new impetus to 1 the translation into English of older texts with an impeccably orthodox pedigree or an unimpeachable authorial reputation, and Syon was probably a leading centre in the production of such texts. It had the library resources, the connections with lay and ecclesiastical opinion-formers, qualified and intelligent members, access to scribal, textual, and translatorial resources at Sheen, and the status and brand-name to guarantee it as a centre of orthodox spirituality and devotion': Roger Ellis, 'Religious Writing', in F ifteenth-century vernacular spiritual writings 'after Arundel' solidified a canon comprising fourteenth-century English mystics and works associated with them, translations of patristic and monastic Latin treatises, instructions for living a pious life from a variety of sources, and the lives and works of saints. 1 Within the context of the increased production and circulation of vernacular devotional manuscripts, the excerpting and compiling of sources in compilations and miscellanies, and the coalescing of an established tradition of devotional texts in Middle English, vernacular spiritual writings became increasingly concerned with advising their readers about appropriate reading practices and the use of books for devotional purposes. Whereas, in the fourteenth century, comments about reading were sometimes confined to short chapters and paragraphs that urged the reading of saints' lives, in the fifteenth century these discussions expand to provide lengthier instructions on devotional reading in the home, cell, church, and refectory; and guidance on appropriate reading strategies, book selection, and proper book handling. Instructions on how to read and pray developed as a

Hendrik Dey & Elizabeth Fentress (eds.), Western Monasticism ante litteram. The spaces of monastic observance in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, Tunhout, Brepols, 2011, pp. 117-135

Some, in their fear of hell, are actually in the habit of organizing monasteries in their own dwellings, and unifying themselves in a community with their wives, children, servants and neighbors under a solemn oath, and consecrating churches in their own houses dedicated to the martyrs, under this pretext calling them monasteries (RC 1). (*) This paper was written under the auspices of the research project HUM2006-06800/HIST (MICINN) .

Religions, 2019

Drawing from long-term ethnographic research with a global network of contemplative Christians, this paper discusses an emerging teaching role for North American monasteries as the numbers of avowed religious decline. Since the Trappist community of St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, first developed the Christian meditation technique called Centering Prayer in the 1970s, monks and nuns have increasingly become teachers, models, and stabilizers of non-monastic practitioners who attempt to transform their ways of being and thinking towards monastic-inspired sensibilities. Their guidance includes the use of face-to-face, literary, and virtual means to teach methods of contemplative intersubjectivity and a commitment to lives based on service, hospitality, and humility, as well as on study and formalized rites. The paper focuses on non-monastics’ strong attraction to monastic teachings on ambiguity as a source of creativity and wonder in uncertain times, as practiced through ...

2014