Now we can shake our fists at this and say "how terrible!", or...
Perhaps can we make this a Pascalian moment and say "Okay-
I've got the opportunity now—it's a rare opportunity to
sit quietly in a room alone and
wrestle with
the deep questions of life." Maybe this is a great spiritual opportunity. That's what's been occurring to me.
The great 17th-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal was one of my spiritual heroes— [he] has a famous one-liner
I've always savored. He said "all of humanity's problems stem from
Man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."
Now I know that sounds like an introvert's fantasy, but he's getting at something very interesting.
Namely,
most of us spend most of our time
diverting ourselves from the serious and important questions. So Pascal talked a lot about
"divertissements" in his French—
Diversions or distractions. So instead of dealing with the great questions of "does God exist?"
"Who am I? Why am I here?
Heaven and hell—where am I going?" The purpose of my life, all the great questions. What we do most of the time is
We seek out divertissements.
Distractions. Now Pascal, though he was I mean one of the most brilliant men of his age; one of the pioneers of modern science—
Indeed one of the pioneers of computer sciences. We wouldn't have computers were not for Pascal, so a brilliant man died young, too
who died, I think the age of 39.
Nevertheless, he knew that he frittered a lot of his life away with divertissements. He was famous for
gambling and almost a gambling addiction.
So he said that's the tragedy for most people, is that we don't
have the ability to sit quietly by ourselves in a room alone and deal with the serious
questions. Okay this little Pascalian mole, this Pascalian saying
has been coming to my mind a lot as we've entered in now to this phase of the coronavirus crisis.
The whole society is shutting down; think of me from airports and restaurants and bars and
you know, the places that we go
to do what? To seek out fellowship in divertissements.
All right, all the places we go to seek out diversions have now been taken away from us.
Now we can shake our fists at this and say "how terrible!", or...
Perhaps can we make this a Pascaliam moment and say "Okay.
I've got the opportunity now, it's [a] rare opportunity
to sit quietly in a room alone and
wrestle with
the deep questions of life." Maybe this is a great spiritual opportunity. That's what's been occurring to me.
So can I make some recommendations as we're in now our little period of, now
"imposed monasticism" if you want.
How about recover the Bible?
So, take out your Bibles. Probably most people have a Bible in their home. Is it gathering dust somewhere? Is it in a drawer someplace?
Take it out.
Spend some real quality time with it. I might recommend, especially to Catholics
Read one of the Gospels in its entirety during this time. That's it. I might recommend
Matthew, which we're reading during this liturgical year.
Read it well — slowly,
prayerfully,maybe with a good commentary
Or pick another book, maybe a book of the Old Testament
That you've always been sort of intrigued by or interested in or you've been ignoring it. Well, all right. Here's your time
To be alone in a room with some of the deep questions.
Get back into the Bible.
Now one of the ways to approach the Bible is to use this method which the last several popes have been recommending to us
namely "Lectio Divina".
Now that works. It's a simple four-step process, Lectio Divina.
It's just Latin for "divine reading", by the way, Lectio Divina. You take a passage from the Bible,
So not the whole Gospel, but maybe it's-it's the Gospel for the coming Sunday or take a section that you like a couple paragraphs.
First step lectia, which means read it but don't just read like those doesn't like you read your- your email. No, no read it
slowly and
prayerfully and carefully.
Second step is called meditatio
Meditation, now what happens there?
Find one phrase or one word or one basic idea from that passage that has jumped out at you
Grabbed your attention
Maybe it's something that you never noticed before, you know, you've heard that past as many times
But I "never noticed that word or that phrase."
Now meditate on it and the medieval masters always compare it to the
work of a ruminating animal, that means an animal that-that chews its cud, right? So the animal
Regurgitates the food and then chews on it and gets all the juices out of it.
And so meditation is like chewing on the cud of this
Passage, so you're going to get all that you can out of this particular word or phrase
Third step is called oratio—
prayer.
So now I've read it. I've found a phrase. I've meditated upon it and now, prayer, I'm going to speak to God
Out of bad experience. So what do I say to the Lord based on what I've heard?
from this scripture speak oratio last step is called contemplatio.
Contemplation—now having read ,having meditated, having spoken, I
now listen.
What is the Lord telling me in this passage—
that I just read? In that word or phrase I meditated upon;
what's He telling me in response to the prayer I've just made?
Okay, much more we could say about Letio Divina but those four steps. Here's your chance. Here's your moment.
Coronavirus-imposed monasticism. Here's the time to be alone in your room by yourself
And you can do some serious Lectio Divina. Trust me when I tell you, everybody
The Bible will come to life. If you take the time to do this method the Bible will come to life for you.
Okay. What else can you do during this time of self-imposed exile?
Can I recommend this is your moment to read one of the spiritual classics?
So maybe a lot of us we've heard about these great texts and these great, you know books
But we never read them. See, mind you prior to the Enlightenment,
most of the most brilliant people in the West gave themselves to philosophy, theology, and spirituality, and they left behind
this treasure trove of texts.
One of the problems of the Enlightenment is we just don't know- what we look at math and science and physics and chemistry
Those are all great. They're all great, but we tend to overlook the spiritual richness of our tradition
Well, here's your chance. Here's your time
Could I recommend a couple things?
Get a copy of Saint Augustine's Confessions.
There are a lot of good translations—Maria Bolden's is my favorite. So it's a contemporary translation.
It makes it read a bit like a novel. Frank Sheen has a wonderful kind of classic translation of the Confessions
But get st. Augustine's Confessions.
Read especially the first nine books of it where he tells the story of his life,
The, the miracle of that book is though it's written in the fourth century.
Trust me, you'll recognize yourself in it. It's the story of a soul that's hungry for God
That's thirsting for God and all of the different roads. He went down and trials he faced and difficulties
Take the time during this little monastic period to read Augustine's Confessions
Much shorter text, but man influential as all get-out.
St. Benedict's rule that set the tone for the Benedictine monastic movement which in turn influenced a lot of Western civilization after
the fall of Rome.
Take out the rule read especially the 12
Steps of Humility. I think you'll find in a lot of spiritual richness there.
If you dare; the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, you don't so much read them, you do them.
Maybe if you can find a good director who doesn't have coronavirus
doing the Ignatian exercises during this time Ignatius, you know, calls upon us to do a 30 days—a full month.
But there are shorter versions; eight days, and then there's a way of doing it when you're not away on retreat kind of on your own
get out the
Ignatian Exercises, find a good director. Here's your chance; take an eight-day Ignatian retreat during this time.
If any of that seems too difficult or too archaic, might I recommend one of my favorite books
Thomas Merton— "Seven Storey Mountain" so, written by a twentieth-century figure he's died
1968.
But Merton tells this in, I mean, compelling prose the story of someone journeying from
being a world-wing we'd say someone totally caught up in just the goods of this world and
the journey that brought him from that state, to being a Trappist monk like the most serious kind of monk you can be.
I read it when I was 16 and it changed my life. No kidding.
Here's your chance. "Oh, it's too long. It's 400 pages. I don't have time for these spiritual books." Yeah you do.
Actually, here's your time you do have time. So go to your room by yourself.
Here's a chance to wrestle with some of the deeper questions. So try Merton— "Seven Storey Mountain"
You know, here's something else. I got the grace of living out here in Santa Barbara, California
I've got mountains five minutes north of me. I got the sea about seven minutes south of me.
I love hiking up in the mountains. I love walking on the beach.
Whatever your version of that is, maybe it's the hillside. It's the country. It's the field. That it's the, I don't know, riverfront. Whatever you got
Where you like to go just to be alone.
Go do it. Maybe you can't go to work?
Yeah, there's everything['s] shut down. All right, go for that long walk.
Maybe while you're on that rock-on that walk, take out your
Rosary now, maybe a Catholic's saying "Oh, gosh, the rosary. Oh, man. I got one around somewhere. It's gathering dust in a drawer." Here's your time
Here's your moment. Take it out.
Rosary is a great prayer.
You meditate on the mysteries of Christ , you
If you pray the whole thing 50 times
Remind yourself of your own death now. That's very Pascalian, by the way because at the end of that prayer,
What do you say? "Now and at the hour of our death. Amen."
"Now and at the hour of our death Amen.": "Now and at the hour of our death"
fifty times
You, you remind yourself of your own death and you invoke the most powerful intercessor on heaven or on earth.
It's not a bad way to spend 20 minutes.
Take out your rosary as you're going for your walk and
spend some time alone. You're not in a room. But you're you're alone on the mountainside. You're alone on the beach
dealing with some of the big questions.
Might I reccommend this to to everybody: put away the iPhones!
Just drives me crazy, when, like I'm out on the beach or something, you're up in the mountains and you're surrounded by this
gorgeous countryside and you got people looking at their goofball iPhones—put it away!
Put your head up and look at God's creation. Thank him for it!
"Gosh, maybe I haven't even noticed the beauty of nature around me. I've been so caught up in all my 'divertissiments'."
All right. All right.
It's time to put away the divertissiments. Time to be alone by yourself in that room, or out in the woods or whatever.
Good. Here's the time to wrestle with the deep stuff. So can I urge everybody—don't simply think of this time as a
burden or "what a terrible moment". Remember Jean Pierre de Caussade said that
everything that happens is
In some way the will of God
either actively or permissively
Has God at least permitted this time to happen. Well clearly,
Okay, therefore there's some reason for it
Maybe this is it. Maybe it's time for you
to sit alone in a room by yourself and
wrrstle with the really deep questions.
Thanks so much for watching if you enjoyed this video I encourage you to share it and be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel