St Anselm of Bec wrote: Lord, let me seek you in desiring you; let me desire you in seeking you; let me find you in loving you; let me love you in finding you. Solitude and isolation; searching for Jesus and finding him; prayer as the beginning of all that we do and say…
Author Archives: Bethlehem Abbey
Tools For Tackling Thoughts (Part I)
Tackling the afflictive thought of sex, and any of the afflictive thoughts, takes time, prayer and humility. Now we offer some teaching on three important spiritual tools which help us in this combat. Since we are now in the season of Lent, perhaps these tools can in a special way become part of our spiritual armour…
Lectio Divina: Mark’s Gospel (1:21-34)
This passage confronts us with Jesus the healer; Jesus the one who makes whole again; Jesus who exercises a power which the world has not seen nor experienced; Jesus who prays in community and in solitude; Jesus who is a man inserted into his own religious tradition and practice entirely…
The Second Afflictive Thought – Sex
Should it surprise us that the afflictive thought of sex has always, in some way, weighed down our hearts? It is certainly not merely a modern day struggle! And we should begin by reminding ourselves of the desert fathers and mothers and how they were aware of the…
The Practice of Keeping Vigil
To keep vigil is simply to keep watch. In the Christian tradition it finds its most intense expression in Sacred Scripture as Christ prepares, in prayer to the Father, to face the events of his Passion. Having celebrated the Passover meal with his disciples, he goes into the garden at Gethsemane and…
Lectio Divina: Mark’s Gospel (1:9-20)
As with everything that Jesus says and does, sign is never far away. And the signs that he gives don’t merely point us in a certain direction – if we are attentive enough – they also contain the reality to which they point. So it is with this moment of baptism…
The First Afflictive Thought – Food
The teaching on the afflictive thoughts or vices which we have received is handed on through a series of important writers. Evagrius of Pontus provided a scheme of scriptural texts which could be used to combat the thoughts in his treatise Antirrhetikos (The Combat)…
The Practice of Silence
It is often wrongly thought that Cistercian monks and nuns take a vow of silence. Instead, the Rule of St Benedict proposes a strict discipline around the use of silence in the monastic life, and so develops it, from the outset, as a tool which helps one grow in maturity in this life…
Lectio Divina: Mark’s Gospel (1:6-8)
The compelling magnetism of John the Baptist, as he draws crowds from all Judea and Jerusalem, is fascinating for us also. He seems to be a man totally out of sync with his surroundings – both his fashion sense and his diet mark him down as someone who…
The Afflictive Thoughts and the Spiritual Life: An Introduction
The spiritual life – whether we live in a monastery, in a community, in a relationship or alone – is governed by a central desire, which might be expressed in the question, ‘What do you seek?’ The psalmist, in Psalm 26, expresses his innermost desire in a few, deeply expressive words…
Bethlehem Abbey Cistercian Family 