Monday of The Third Week of Lent

O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is;

2 To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary.

3 Because thy lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee.

4 Thus will I bless thee while I live: I will lift up my hands in thy name.

5 My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness; and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips:

6 When I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the night watches.

7 Because thou hast been my help, therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice.

8 My soul followeth hard after thee: thy right hand upholdeth me.

9 But those that seek my soul, to destroy it, shall go into the lower parts of the earth.

10 They shall fall by the sword: they shall be a portion for foxes.

11 But the king shall rejoice in God; every one that sweareth by him shall glory: but the mouth of them that speak lies shall be stopped.

--Psalm 63

In down-to-earth Hebrew, to meditate is to chew one's cud. The familiar cattle of Hebrew existence proved a helpful image for the devout believer, "whose delight is the law of the Lord and who ponders God's law day and night" (Psalm 1). The browsing cow nibbles constantly at the lush pasture and when it has filled its stomach lies down, regurgitates what it has gathered and chews "meditatively" on its cud until the cud is fully assimilated.

--William G. Storey

In practice, the way to contemplation is an obscurity, so obscure that it is no longer even dramatic. There is nothing left in it that can be grasped and cherished as heroic or even unusual.  And so, for a contemplative, these is supreme value in the ordinary routine of work and poverty and hardship and monotony that characterize the lives of all the poor and uninteresting and forgotten people in the world.

Christ, who came on earth to form contemplatives and teach the ways of sanctity and prayer, could easily have surrounded himself with ascetics who starved themselves to death and terrified the people with strange trances.  But his apostles were workers, fishers, publicans who made themselves conspicuous only by their disregard for most of the intricate network of devotions and ceremonial practices and moral gymnastics of the professionally holy.

The surest asceticism is the bitter insecurity and labor and nonentity of the really poor. To be utterly dependent on other people.  To be ignored and despised and forgotten.  To know nothing of decency or comfort.  To live in much dirt, and eat bad food.  To take orders and work hard for little or no money: it is a hard school, and one which most pious people do their best to avoid. 

Many religious people, who say they love God, detest and fear the very thought of a poverty that is real enough to mean insecurity, hunger, dirt.  And you will find those who go down and live among the poor not because they love God (in whom they do not believe) or even because they love the poor, but simply because they hate the rich and want to stir up the poor to hate the rich too.  If people can suffer these things for the venomous pleasure of hatred, why do so few become poor out of love?

--Thomas Merton

 And the Spirit of God came upon Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the priest, which stood above the people, and said unto them, Thus saith God, Why transgress ye the commandments of the Lord, that ye cannot prosper? because ye have forsaken the Lord, he hath also forsaken you.

21 And they conspired against him, and stoned him with stones at the commandment of the king in the court of the house of the Lord.

22 Thus Joash the king remembered not the kindness which Jehoiada his father had done to him, but slew his son. And when he died, he said, The Lord look upon it, and require it.

2 Chronicles 24:20-22, KJV

Because I am a woman involved in practical cares, I cannot give the first half of the day to these things but must meditate when I can, early in the morning and on the fly during the day.  Not in the privacy of a study--but here, there, and everywhere--at the kitchen table. on the train, on the ferry, on my way to and from appointments and even while making supper or putting Teresa to bed.

--Dorothy Day