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Keeping Time
Did you know that the first group of people to use clocks were Christian monks? Monks desired the ability to pray around a rigorous and exact prayer schedule. Benedict of Nursia, the great architect o... -
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You Are the Tree
In the film Of Gods and Men , director Xavier Beauvois tells the story of a small group of mostly French monks living in Algeria during a time of civil unrest. These monks live a life of quiet fideli... -
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The Monk and the Cup of Tea
The story is told of a learned professor who went to visit an old monk who was famous for his wisdom. The monk graciously welcomed him into his temple and offered him a seat on a cushion. No sooner ha... -
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Small Acts of Beauty
In their excellent book on reconciliation, Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice share a story about how small acts of beauty, done well, can lead to reconciliation: A friend told us of visiting a very ... -
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The Way We Answer the Door
The Rule of Benedict is a document that has ordered the life of Benedictine monks for 1500 years. That remarkable document, written by Saint Benedict of Nursia, instructs the monks in how they are to ... -
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For Use, not For Ownership
As a novice in a Catholic religious order, Ronald Rolheiser was taught the importance of religious poverty by having to write “Ad Usam” inside every book he was given. This was to teach him that the b... -
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Your religion is what you do with your solitude -
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How to Avoid the Frenzy of Contemporary Events
A contemplative politics entails a two-part movement, one that parallels Thoreau’s injunction to be wary of trivia and devoted to eternal truths. The first involves an askesis, a kind of self-discipli... -
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Hold firmly that our faith is identical with that of the ancients. Deny this, and you dissolve the unity of the Church. -
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A life of prayer, fasting, and spiritual disciplines can easily be a life of empty religious effort if the goal isn’t communion with God. We don’t need self-improvement; we need to come home. -
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Where Our Owning Habits Become Selfish
Medieval Dominican friar Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), in his commentary on the Lord’s Prayer, specifically the fourth petition (“give us this day our daily bread”), points out several ways that our own... -
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The early church was strikingly different from the culture around it in this way - the pagan society was stingy with its money and promiscuous with its body. A pagan gave nobody their money and practi... -
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Our modern theology, which in many ways has ceased to be personal, i.e. centered on the Christian experience of "person," nevertheless - and maybe as a result of this - has become utterly in... -
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Why did this minor mystery religion from the eastern Mediterranean—marginal, despised, discriminated against—grow substantially, eventually supplanting the well-endowed, respectable cults that were su... -
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Good vs. Bad Discipline
While formally or structurally speaking, there are mechanisms of discipline operative in both the convent and the prison, in both the factory and the monastery, more specifically, these disciplines an... -
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Religion has accepted the monstrous heresy that noise, size, activity and bluster make a man dear to God. -
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It is just as much a matter of discipline for a church member practically to deny his stewardship as to deny the divinity of Christ. -
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The Church does not stand in a vacuum. Beginning from the beginning, however necessary, cannot be a matter of beginning off one’s own bat. We have to remember the communion of saints, bearing and bein... -
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Let us practice the fine art of making every work a priestly ministration. Let us believe that God is in all our simple deeds and learn to find Him there." -
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In the beginning the church was a fellowship of men and women centered on the living Christ. Then the church moved to Greece, where it became a philosophy. Then it moved to Rome, where it became an in... -
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The Christian life depends the single personality from the collective, not by isolating him but by giving him the status of an organ in the mystical body. -
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We are settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually about abandoning ourselves. -
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The practices of solitude, silence and listening to God started to slow me down and enabled me to focus my attention more and more on coming to Jesus and following him rather than talking about Jesus ... -
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Discovering Simplicity
During a retreat at the Taizé compound in France, a young American shared a remarkable discovery. He said: “Back home, surrounded by all my possessions, I often feel uncertain about many things. Here,... -
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I often found myself preferring the company of people outside my congregation, men and women who did not follow Jesus. Or worse, preferring the company of my sovereign self. But soon I found that my p... -
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Pursuing the Common Good Throughout History
Pursuing the common good has been a strong marker of the Christian church from the very beginning. The early church had many habits that they became known for, of course—including meeting frequently, ... -
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The normal course of day-to-day human interactions locks us into patterns of feeling, thought, and action that are geared to a world set against God. Nothing but solitude can allow the development of ... -
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No voluntary act of spiritual discipline is ever to become an occasion for self-promotion. Otherwise, any value to the act is utterly vitiated. -
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Christianity is without doubt the earthiest of all religions. Unlike most other religions, it doesn’t call you out of the physical, out of the body, or out of the world. Rather it tells you that God e... -
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Slavery ended in medieval Europe only because the church extended its sacraments to all slaves and then managed to impose a ban on the enslavement of Christians (and of Jews). Within the context of me...
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G
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I
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K
L
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N
O
P
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S
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T
- Talents
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U
W
- The Way
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Y
Top_level_categories by Reference
Genesis
Exodus
Leviticus
Joshua
Judges
Ruth
2 Samuel
2 Kings
1 Chronicles
2 Chronicles
Esther
Job
Psalm
- Ps 1 (5)
- Ps 2 (1)
- Ps 6 (1)
- Ps 8 (5)
- Ps 9 (2)
- Ps 10 (1)
- Ps 12 (1)
- Ps 14 (1)
- Ps 15 (1)
- Ps 16 (1)
- Ps 18 (1)
- Ps 19 (10)
- Ps 20 (1)
- Ps 22 (4)
- Ps 23 (16)
- Ps 24 (9)
- Ps 25 (1)
- Ps 27 (8)
- Ps 30 (4)
- Ps 32 (6)
- Ps 33 (5)
- Ps 34 (19)
- Ps 36 (1)
- Ps 37 (4)
- Ps 39 (2)
- Ps 40 (2)
- Ps 42 (6)
- Ps 46 (21)
- Ps 47 (1)
- Ps 48 (1)
- Ps 51 (18)
- Ps 52 (1)
- Ps 55 (1)
- Ps 56 (1)
- Ps 57 (2)
- Ps 62 (2)
- Ps 63 (2)
- Ps 65 (2)
- Ps 67 (1)
- Ps 68 (2)
- Ps 71 (1)
- Ps 72 (4)
- Ps 73 (3)
- Ps 78 (2)
- Ps 80 (2)
- Ps 82 (6)
- Ps 84 (2)
- Ps 85 (3)
- Ps 86 (3)
- Ps 88 (1)
- Ps 89 (1)
- Ps 90 (8)
- Ps 92 (2)
- Ps 94 (1)
- Ps 95 (4)
- Ps 96 (2)
- Ps 98 (6)
- Ps 100 (5)
- Ps 103 (9)
- Ps 104 (4)
- Ps 105 (1)
- Ps 107 (1)
- Ps 111 (1)
- Ps 112 (2)
- Ps 113 (2)
- Ps 115 (2)
- Ps 117 (1)
- Ps 118 (2)
- Ps 119 (9)
- Ps 121 (1)
- Ps 122 (1)
- Ps 124 (1)
- Ps 126 (2)
- Ps 127 (5)
- Ps 128 (1)
- Ps 133 (5)
- Ps 135 (1)
- Ps 136 (2)
- Ps 139 (16)
- Ps 141 (2)
- Ps 143 (1)
- Ps 145 (4)
- Ps 147 (6)
- Ps 148 (1)
- Ps 150 (1)
Proverbs
- Prov 1 (1)
- Prov 2 (1)
- Prov 3 (19)
- Prov 4 (7)
- Prov 5 (1)
- Prov 6 (1)
- Prov 9 (1)
- Prov 10 (2)
- Prov 11 (5)
- Prov 12 (6)
- Prov 13 (4)
- Prov 14 (9)
- Prov 15 (4)
- Prov 16 (10)
- Prov 17 (6)
- Prov 18 (8)
- Prov 19 (9)
- Prov 20 (2)
- Prov 21 (7)
- Prov 22 (7)
- Prov 23 (3)
- Prov 24 (2)
- Prov 25 (1)
- Prov 26 (1)
- Prov 27 (7)
- Prov 28 (2)
- Prov 29 (7)
- Prov 30 (2)
- Prov 31 (11)
Ecclesiastes
Song of Solomon
Isaiah
- Isa 1 (13)
- Isa 2 (4)
- Isa 5 (4)
- Isa 6 (3)
- Isa 7 (1)
- Isa 9 (14)
- Isa 11 (2)
- Isa 12 (1)
- Isa 25 (1)
- Isa 26 (5)
- Isa 28 (4)
- Isa 30 (7)
- Isa 32 (1)
- Isa 35 (1)
- Isa 40 (26)
- Isa 41 (11)
- Isa 42 (2)
- Isa 43 (10)
- Isa 44 (2)
- Isa 45 (1)
- Isa 47 (2)
- Isa 49 (3)
- Isa 51 (1)
- Isa 53 (11)
- Isa 55 (13)
- Isa 56 (1)
- Isa 57 (4)
- Isa 58 (7)
- Isa 60 (6)
- Isa 61 (16)
- Isa 64 (2)
- Isa 66 (2)