Thursday, October 13, 2011

A Thought from the Theology Institute

Greetings,

Last Saturday, the Monastery hosted our fall Theology Institute. Each fall and spring, a speaker is invited to talk on a theme that usually covers a year or two. Saturday, the title was "Searching for Sold Ground." And one of the speaker's main points is still resonating with my heart.

He compared our current time of anxiety in the world today to the story of the disciples walking away from Jerusalem to Emmaus. They were hopeless; I hadn't noticed it before, but he pointed out that they say, "...we were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel..." Luke 24: 21. Past tense, they are no longer filled with that hope. They were not able to see or believe the Truth in their life without this hope. Jesus had died and was buried, the disciples had scattered, the apostles were in hiding; their world was filled with uncertainty and anxiety. It took Jesus re-entering their life, their world and revealing the Truth to them in such a way that their hope was
so deep that their hearts burned.

The speaker connected those hopeless, distracted disciples to each of us. When I let distressing circumstances distract me from the Truth, I am forgetting to keep that hope deeply rooted in Jesus. When I forget that the 'real' world is truly God's world, I am forgetting to keep my hope deeply rooted in Truth of God. This hope in Christ and God's presence will keep my heart burning. Trusting that no matter where I am (or how lost I am), God always knows where I am and can deal with wherever that may be.

The image?...Our sisters take their early heritage from the monks in Einsiedeln. This window in our chapel honors those early sisters and monks who hoped in Christ, drew strength from Our Lady of Einsiedeln, and followed the Gospels from the Alps of Switzerland to the Plains of the Midwest. The trust and hope in the Truth of God and Christ must have burned deeply in their hearts to take such a leap of faith.

Blessings,

No comments: