Meg: The Monk of the Eastern Church is Father Lev Gillet

Father Lev Gillet: The Monk in the City, a Pilgrim in many worlds

by Fr. Michael Plekon

[Spring-Summer, 2000]

The whole teaching of the Latin Fathers may be found in the East, just as the whole teaching of the Greek Fathers may be found in the West. Rome has given St. Jerome to Palestine.

The East has given Cassian to the West and holds in special veneration that Roman of the Romans, Pope Gregory the Great. St. Basil would have acknowledged St. Benedict of Nursia as his brother and heir. St. Macrina would have found her sister in St Scholastica. St. Alexis the "man of God," "the poor man under the stairs," has been succeeded by the wandering beggar, St. Benedict Labre.

St. Nicolas would have felt as very near to him the burning charity of St. Francis of Assisi and St. Vincent de Paul. St. Seraphim of Sarov would have seen the desert blooming under Father Charles de Foucauld's feet, and would have called St. Thérèse of Lisieux "my joy."[1]

A complex man, a wandering monk: Father Lev Gillet. An introduction to his biography.

Book Review:

Maureen McCabe, OCSO Inside the Psalms, Reflections for Novices.
Monastic Wisdom Series Number Three. Forward by Bernardo Bonowitz, OCSO. Cistercian Publications Kalamazoo, Michigan. 2005 ISBN-13: 978-0-87907-009-0 Available:sales@litpress.org

I was packing for some travels and put this little book (135 pp.) on my suitcase. As I had a little extra time sat down to skim it for a moment. Read the intro and first two chapters. The Preface: The Formative Power of the Psalms and Psalm 1: Meditatio Day and Night and Psalm 2: Communion in Christ.

I put the book back on my desk and did not take it along. This book was deep and steep. It deserved a systematic and careful read. Don’t open if you think it is one more devout testimonial to the psalms.

Book Review: Terrence G. Kardong, OSB
Pillars of Community:
Four Rules of Pre-Benedictine Monastic Life.

Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press. 2010.
ISBN 978-0-8146-3315-1
ISBN 978-0-8146-3921-4 e-book.


Father Terence has done the Benedictine family a big favor. This 260 pp paperback is a surprisingly fun read for those of us who have plowed through the actual rules that St. Benedict quotes in his Rule for beginners. For novice directors this book is an opportunity for painless study.

Come and See: The Monastic Way for Today by Abbot Brendan Freeman. Forward by Father Michael Casey, OCSO. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press. Cistercian Publications, Monastic Wisdom Series number 22. 2010. USD $19.95. ISBN 978-0-87907-954-3(e-book),ISBN 978-0-87907-022-9.

Another book on monastic life, but this one is different. This abbot of 30 years from New Melleray, IOWA is not doing a commentary, but providing a window. Authentic insight comes from living it, but the abbot interprets the life for the members with his on-going chapter talks.

Running with Expanding Heart, meeting God in Everyday life by Mary Reuter, OSB.
Forward by Patrick Henry. Liturgical Press: Collegeville MN. www.litpress.orgISBN 970-08146-3308.3
Copyright: 2010. $14.95

Sister Mary Router, OSB is a gifted teacher. She can take complexity and mediate it skillfully in ordinary language without losing any of the profundity.

Sister Mary is a member of St. Benedict's Monastery in St. Joseph, MN. She served as prioress and has taught theology many years at St. John's University and College of St. Benedict.

This 117 pp paperbook is meant to be read slowly and as a whole. It's another text on mysticism that seems to attract readers and associates of the monastic way of life.

The book will endure because the wisdom is from lived experience.

DVD-Video:
An Insider’s View: Orthodox-Catholic Dialogue
Presentation by Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia.
Copyright: 2010 Orientale Lumen Foundation, Inc.

This less than one-hour talk by Bishop Kallistos gives almost a news briefing style summary of where we are in 2010 with Orthodox-Catholic Dialogue.

There is a paper that is under consideration by the 60 member worldwide commission. The over 30 points are mostly disputed doctrinal coordinates that will take many years to carefully work through to the satisfaction of the membership. This confidential paper serves as the topics of dialogue to come to terms with differences and desires for unity amidst distinctions.

Biography now available in English of Elisabeth Behr-Sigel,
one of the most important Orthodox theologians of the twentieth century.


TOWARD THE ENDLESS DAY
The Life of Elisabeth Behr-Sigel
Olga Lossky
Translated by Jerry Ryan; Edited by Michael Plekon;
Foreword by Olivier Clément


ADVANCE PRAISE

"Elisabeth Behr-Sigel was a remarkable woman who lived in remarkable times. In a new century and in a changed world, we need her story desperately. Olga Lossky provides the window to a life that challenges us more with every passing day. We can be grateful to Jerry Ryan and Michael Plekon for bringing this book to the English-speaking readership.” —Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Brown University

Review: Dorothy C. Bass, Editor, Practicing Our Faith, A Way of Life for a Searching People
. Includes Suggestions for Conversations and Reflections. Second Edition Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Imprint. www..Josseybass.com
copyright 2010. ISBN 978-0-470-48411 paperback. $19.95.

This second edition is an important contribution to the on-going catechetical ministry of teaching our faith as something to be lived rather than only studied and learned.

Resources for Preparation for Confession

Antonopoulos, Archimandrite N. (2002), Return: Repentance and Confession, The Return to God and His Church. Akritas Publications.

This 86-page book from the Orthodox Tradition helped teach me more about repentance than about sin and moral degrees of gravity. The point is Christ, and sin separates us out from our own presence and the Presence of Jesus, Our Lord. Repentance is the way back through the door of mercy. This return has a tradition through the sacrament of Confession.

Leclercq, J. (1961), The Love of Learning and the Desire for God. New York, NY: Fordham University Press.

This book was published the year I entered the convent (as it was called in those days).

In reading this book I understood for the first time that the culture of the monastery is lectio divina.

Each monastic is doing his or her lectio and sustaining a God consciousness.

Without the practice of lectio divina we simply take on another culture, e.g., a university, a hospital, a hotel, a cottage industry, a farm, etc.

Murray, P. (2002), A Journey With Jonah the Spirituality of Bewilderment. Blackrock, Co. Dublin: The Columba Press.

This book is a delightful sustained meditation on the Book of Jonah.

Training of the Mind

Today we know so much more about the brain, the mind and the way differing parts of the brain have differing functions.

The logical mind is located in the left hemisphere.

The symbolic functions of the mind are located more in the right hemisphere.

Return to Sources:

de Lubac, H. (1998), Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture (Vol. 1 and 2). Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing. These two volumes are almost 1,000 pages of text and notes. I have read them carefully three times to get a sense of this masterful resource for someone like me.

This contemporary Church Father compiled in a compelling way the whole development of how the senses of Scripture are to be understood and taken seriously as a contemplative support for lectio divina.

On Nov 18, 2009, at 3:47 AM, "Paul Mowat" wrote:

Meg: Paul has taken years to make sense of healing from addictions and the teachings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers. His unpublished manuscript is searching for a home, but here is a two page description. Am sure he would love to hear from you.

Title of thesis: A Therapeutic Model that uses Desert Spirituality for the Healing of Addiction
Summary:

Pastoral/soul care is down to anyone who finds him or herself in a position to reach out and come alongside someone on life's journey. It is essential for christian pastoral/soul care to acknowledge the presence of God in the situation and share this knowledge with whomever he or she is seeking to care for. God's presence gives the individual sufferer the assurance of hope in whatever the circumstances.

The Writings of Nil Sorsky

Meg: For this study you will find two basic texts of Nil Sorsky’s writings. I suggest you start with Father George Maloney's fine study that is one of the Paulist Classics of Western Spirituality. Then, we are privileged to have a critical edition published by Cistercian Publications.

Nil Sorsky, The Complete Writings from the Classics of Western Spirituality series.

This book is written by George A. Maloney,S.J. published by Paulist Press, Mahwah, New Jersey: 2003 (ISBN: 0-8091-3810-7).

Living in Christ: Essays on the Christian Life by an Orthodox Nun

By Mother Raphaela
St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press 1998
Crestwood, New York
ISBN: 978-0-88141-199-7

Meg’s comments: In contemplative monasteries the Abbess gives short chapter talks almost weekly. These are reflections on the lived experience of the monastic way of life. Perhaps this book should be read not so much for its content but for its method. What would 19 little talks be for each of us?

Hidden Holiness

By Michael Plekon
Foreword by Rowan Williams
University of Notre Dame Press 2009
Notre Dame, Indiana
ISBN: 978-0-268-03893-9

From the Forward:

Father Michael Plekon has written before about holiness in the modern Orthodox world, and has done so with learning, profound sympathy, and imagination. Here he extends his reach, boldly, to discern the marks of Christ-like holiness in figures both inside and outside the Orthodox Christian family, not to say at the edges of any sort of explicit Christian faith.

Survival or Prophesy? The correspondence of Jean Leclercq and Thomas Merton.

It is Monastic Wisdom Series: Number Seventeen. Cistercian Publications. Available from Liturgical Press Collegeville MN. BX4705M542A 2008.

This exchange of letters between two monastic giants is instructive for juniors. Note the passion for the monastic life. Their conversation, now a half–century ago, is prophetic and we are still living into the consequences. I’ll list ten points for you to notice in your reading of the text:

A Blessed Life
Benedictine Guidelines for Those Who Long for Good Days

By Wil Derkse
Translated by Martin Kessler
Liturgical Press 2009
Collegeville, Minnesota
ISBN 978-0-8146-1863-9
$11.95

From the introduction:

…Two things are clear at once. Benedict’s program is fully dynamic: we need to hurry to give a good turn to our life. For the rest, it will subsequently appear that we, having made that choice, still have a long and patient way to go.

The second element is that Benedict offers a way of life which grants joy and contentment, a life on which blessing rests. Who does not long for “good days”?

The Benedictine perspective wants to be attractive, as we will read further on in the Prologue. That does not mean that this way is easy, but that is true of everything worthwhile. How much practice is needed before anyone can play the cello concert of Edward Elgar superbly?

Anyone who begins this way is often attracted by something or more often, by someone: an experience of a concert, or the film about the cellist Jacqueline du Pre, or a teacher. It costs a lot of effort and much guidance by experienced musicians to develop into a cellist who in turn know how to touch the souls of others. But what gratification and joy when the music really succeeds! At that point, the patient drudgery and persistent practice is forgotten.

Benedict presents to his candidates a comparable road: “We will therefore establish a training school for the service of the Lord. In its plan we hope to prescribe nothing that is too difficult, or that is too heavy.

Seeking Life
The Baptismal Invitation of the
Rule of St. Benedict

By Esther de Waal
Liturgical Press 2009
Collegeville, Minnesota
ISBN 978-0-8146-1880-6
$19.95

Meg: This book, though small, is a large contribution to excellent scholarship and devotion for those of us who follow the Rule of Benedict. It came just in time for lent. I fully recommend it to those of us who renew those Baptismal Promises on Easter Saturday Vigil. Ash Wednesday is the time to start this annual pilgrimage toward our ongoing-conversion.