Office of Readings: Exodus 19:3-4

_{And Moses went up unto God, and the LORD called unto him out of the mountain, saying, Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel: Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and [how] I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself.}

Retreat Poem

Yet it is far from Christmas, when a star

Sang in the pane...

For now the light of early Lent

Glitters upon the icy step.

(Thomas Merton, "The Winter's Night")

Office of Readings (Exodus 2:1-22)

"I am a stranger in a strange land." (Ex. 2:22)

Even among his own people, Moses said, "I am a stranger in a strange land." Truly, as Saint Augustine states, "Our hearts are restless, O Lord, until they rest in Thee."

St. Thomas and St. Francis

"There were of course many curious and complicated ideas in the philosophy of St. Thomas, besides this primary idea of a central common sense that is nourished by the five senses. Not only is this a Thomist doctrine, it is truly and eminently a Christian doctrine....There is a sort of popular parallel to it in the fact that St. Francis did not only listen for the angels, but also listened to the birds. In Thomas as in Francis there is a preliminary practical element which is rather moral; a sort of good and straightforward humility; and a readiness in the man to regard even himself in some ways as an animal, as St. Francis compared his body to a donkey, and St. Thomas was compared to an ox. Neither of them would have been too proud to wait as patiently as the ox and the ass in the stable of Bethlehem."

(from St. Thomas Aquinas by G.K. Chesterton)

Feast Day of St. Thomas Aquinas, January 28.

Praying isn't...

"...a contest but the doorway

into thanks, a silence in which

 another voice may speak."

(Mary Oliver, "Praying" )

Awake, why sleepest thou, O Lord? Arise, cast us not off forever. (Psalm 44)

And a Child Shall Lead Them

This valley wood is pledged

To the set shape of things;

Here are no harpies fledged,

No rocs may clap their wings.

Here poised in quietude,

Calm elementals brood;

They fend away alarms

From this green wood.

Only, the lawns are soft,

Slow branches sway aloft,

Small pathways idly tend

Towards no fearful end.

--With apologies to Robert Graves, lines from "An English Wood"