Lenten Post

Hola mis hermanos y mis hermanas,

          I am going to start my post with a devotional that I gave as a meeting opener on Monday.

          We are currently in the midst of Lenten season. To some people Lent is only seen as a catholic tradition, but like most Catholic traditions there is biblical background. If you went to Mass on Sunday you might have heard a blurb about it. I am positive that the Catholics in the USA have the same New Testament scripture each Sunday Mass. Matthew 4:1-11 was the New Testament reading, I understood most of it, but only because I have read it before and it was the full scripture was written in the bulletin.

          I felt like talking about this passage is important for the moment due to the date on the calendar, even though all scripture is important at each moment in life, well maybe Jesus’ words a little more, I mean I am a follower of this divine Man. Anyway, today, Wednesday, marks the first full week of Lent. This day also marks the first full week of Jesus’ entrance into the wilderness.

          I reviewed all three passages in Mark, Matthew, and Luke that refer to Jesus’ 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness; Jesus’ 3 temptations are not in the Gospel John. All three passages have different wording and length, but all say He was in the wilderness for 40 days fasting and being tempted. What else could Jesus have been doing that time in the desert? Did He contemplate His position and purpose in the wilderness?

          If we are to fully follow Jesus, do we follow Him in this 40 days and 40 nights of that He experienced? Contemplating on these passages that His disciples wrote for us and recognizing the suffering and testing He went through seems like a part of being a follower of Jesus. What does contemplation look like? When I think of contemplation, I think of Thomas Merton and his life. Thomas Merton became a Trappist monk early in life, and started his journey in contemplating life and his connection to the Great One. Out of this journey he wrote several famous books, one of them being “New Seeds of Contemplation”.

          I brought this book to Bolivia because I wanted to further develop the art of contemplation. I felt like my upcoming life in a small village in Bolivia will slow my life down, and also give me an opportunity for spiritual development, maybe not though. Anyway, I shared a passage from this book about contemplation. I will also share it on here.

Contemplation is the highest expression of man’s intellectual and spiritual life. It is that life itself, fully wake, fully active, fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is gratitude for life, for awareness and for being. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent and infinitely abundant Source. Contemplation is, above all, awareness of the reality of that Source. It knows the Source, obscurely, inexplicably, but with certitude that goes both beyond reason and beyond simple faith. For contemplation is not vision because it sees “without seeing” and knows “without knowing.” It is a more profound depth of faith, a knowledge too deep to be grasped in images, in words or even in clear concepts. It can be suggested by words, by symbols, but in the very moment of trying to indicate what it knows the contemplative mind takes back what it has said, and denies what it has affirmed. For in contemplation we know by “unknowing.” Or, better, we know beyond all knowing or “unknowing.”

                   Poetry, music and art have something in common with contemplative experience. But contemplation is beyond aesthetic intuition, beyond art, beyond poetry. Indeed, it also beyond philosophy, beyond speculative theology. It resumes, transcends and fulfills them all, and yet at the same time it seems, in a certain way, to supersede and to deny them all. Contemplation is always beyond our own knowledge, beyond our own light, beyond systems, beyond explanations, beyond discourse, beyond dialogue, beyond our own self. To enter into the realm of contemplation one must in a certain sense die: but this death is in fact the entrance into a higher life. It is death for the sake of life, which leaves behind all that we can know or treasure as life, as thought, as experience, as joy, as being. – Thomas Merton

This is just an example of contemplation, and I know there are other sources and maybe finding your own path is the correct. I feel like this is an important subject to talk/write about because for our group we will have opportunities to help and to hurt people even if we don’t know we are doing either. Contemplating could lead to good fruits that we should bear.

I also ended the conversation with another quote that is in a journal/calendar/advice book I received from a friend in my hometown. “The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his life, but that it bothers him less and less,” Vaclav Havel. For me, contemplation is an avenue that needs to be discovered to take a step in understanding the love that Jesus extends to all people.

         

          The past week or so our group met to discuss the meaning of development, and hear individuals speak about the Bolivian context. We are currently reading 3 different books and each of us is still trudging through language lessons. Weekends have provided much needed rest, and have given us more time to add more depth to our relationships.

          We survived Cochabamba’s carnival, but didn’t avoid getting soaked in water and receiving large amounts of foam in the face and upper body, it was good time though. This coming weekend we plan on visiting Tunari Park, which will be a good break from the city. Hopefully it will also be a place to emerge ourselves in God’s beautiful creation, and also a place of rejuvenation. The air should be fresh and our moods happy. The birds will fly and we will walk, but all are counted without us fully knowing!