Dear Fellow Novices,
Happy Feast of St. Joseph!
Today (Wednesday, 3/24/21), at 7:00 PM, we will have our March NSL [Novices in the School of Love] meeting via Zoom. Bill will send out an invitation earlier today with a link for you to join the meeting.
“Humility is a beautiful quality to find in a person.”
We begin a new book this month–Living In the Truth, by Fr. Michael Casey, a Trappist monk from Australia. It deals with the virtue of humility, as taught by St. Benedict in his Rule. St. Benedict was correct in his understanding of just how important a role humility plays, not only in the monastic life, but for all Christians. If charity is the greatest virtue, then humility is the keystone that holds all the other virtues in place. Without it, the exercise of every other virtue can succumb to pride, and eventually become a useless form of hypocrisy.
I ask you to read the Forward and the first three chapters, to be prepared for our discussion at the meeting. The Forward is only one page, and the three chapters are a total of about 55 pages. Chapter Three will be easy, because it deals with St. Benedict”s chapter on humility in the RB, and will be something of a review for you. Chapters One and Two lay the groundwork for understanding and appreciating this often misunderstood quality of the spiritual life. Fr. Casey does a good job with this subject and his first sentence in Chapter One gets right to the point:
So, to return to an earlier sentence…
“Humility is a beautiful quality to find in a person.”
In his own simple and direct way, Fr. Casey will show us why.
I hope you all can make it to our meeting.
I look forward to another great visit and discussion with all of you.
God’s Peace,
Jeff