Jesus invited us to meet. Saint Benedict’s talked about it; a plethora of saints have talked about it; Fr Giussani constantly talked about it; Pope Benedict XVI talks about it: nothing can substitute for personally knowing Jesus. Want to be a Christian? Go and meet Christ in Scripture, in the Holy Eucharist, in personal and communal prayer, in doing good works. In short, meet Jesus Christ by the ears of your heart and in your minute by minute human experience.Saint Benedict asked a question that ought to be remembered:
What, dear brothers, is more delightful than this voice of the Lord calling to us? See how the Lord in his love shows us the way of life. Clothed then with faith and the performance of good works, let us set out on this way, with the Gospel for our guide, that we may deserve to see him who called us to his kingdom (RB, Prologue, 20-1).
After reading the Holy Rule, I read the following from The Way of the Disciple:
We must come humbly to God’s inspired written Word in the Gospel to allow him to reveal to us through it the presence and reality of his living Word. The written Word is but an echo of the living Word, God’s Son Jesus Christ, whom he does not cease to speak into the world and our hearts.
The table of the written and proclaimed Word is never far from the table of Christ’s Body and Blood. The full Christ is not simply the person we come to know vicariously through the text of the Gospel, but that person as we encounter him fully alive in the Word and Sacrament and Body of the Church.
The human language concerning him is the call to come to the person of Jesus himself. The written Word, even when profoundly meditated upon, can at best bring us to the threshold of the living person of Jesus.
Nothing can substitute for this personal encounter, this merging of the horizons of the person of Jesus with my own, this convergence of my and our existence with his, here and now.
The Way of the Disciple
Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis
The author is now a monk of St Joseph’s Abbey, Spencer, MA and goes by the name of Brother Simeon.