Sorry for my Absence [Bishop’s blog]

Sunday, August 25, 2019 – Canton, Ohio

” God is very busy in the background, nurturing you, caring for you, and loving you forever.”

Bishop John Michael

I noted earlier that it is actually easier to write a blog post when I am traveling than when I am home, because when I am at home (or in my office) with all my to-do lists, project plans and calendars around me, my attention is drawn away from the immediacy that this kind of writing needs. In other words, I put it off. And so it is that I have written nothing in quite awhile.

I don’t know if it is a solution, but I am trying something new: writing this as part of my daily prayer routine in the morning. I have also set a timer to limit how much time I put into writing. That is what I find I have to do with all the parts of my routine, since each of them, especially the parts involving reading, can really absorb my attention. In those moments, time disappears for me, and I often discover I have spent an hour on something I intended to spend ten minutes on. Have you ever experienced this?

Mainly, though, the resources that become very present to me as a result of reading scripture, the Fathers and Mothers of the Church, and more contemporary spiritual literature are often the source of inspiration for the rest of the day. And maybe that will give me something to share with you, because when I try to write, as Bishop Louis used to say, “ex burtibus,” I truly feel I have nothing to say. (Bishop Louis Puscas, my predecessor, made up that fake Latin/Romanian expression to describe giving strong opinions “from the belly,” i.e., without documentation or a whole lot of thought.)

Today, I have been struck by how much a contemporary discussion of what we commonly call “mindfulness” is not much different from the advice given by the ancient authors in the collection of patristic texts on prayer known as The Philokalia (you can search that term online). St. Hesychios the Priest, for instance, says “The science of sciences and the art of arts is the mastery of evil thoughts,” (#121) and “A donkey going round and round in a mill cannot step out of the circle to which it is tethered; nor can the intellect which is not inwardly chastened advance in the path of holiness,” (#130). (The Philokalia: The Complete Text Compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St. Makarios of Corinth, Vol. 1, transl. and ed. by G. E. H. Palmer, et. al. London: Faber and Faber Ltd., © The Elling Trust, 1979, pp. 183 and 185).

Being attentive to the here and now, what the 16th-century Jesuit Jean-Pierre de Caussade calls “the sacrament of the present moment” in his classic Abandonment to Divine Providence, is hard, hard work, especially for a person, like me, whose mind is always racing back and forth, regretting the past and fearing the future (perhaps that describes you as well?). But I am learning that it becomes easier and easier once you stop focusing on your own effort at mindfulness and abandonment and start trusting that God is very busy in the background, nurturing you, caring for you, and loving you forever.

“Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).