Benedictine Weekend

Holy Week again is accented in Benedictine friendship.  Friday and Saturday I went on retreat with a small group of Benedictine Oblates.  Since December I've been attending an Oblate group in Kansas City and asking myself the question, "Where have you been all my life?" I would love to find a way of making this kind of group a constant in my life.  Oblates are lay members associated with a particular Benedictine community and can be comprised of people from various Christian traditions--protestant, Catholic, Episcopal, Orthodox, etc.  I love the ecumenical nature of the group.  We have so much to learn from each other as we host each other's experience. While we come from different experience and tradition we share important convictions--firstly we want to follow Christ better and better and secondly we hope to shape this following through the Benedictine rule of life.  It occurs to me that all people have "rules of life" which shape the lives we choose --written and unwritten.  For me it is good to try on this Benedictine way of following Jesus.  The retreat made me feel a bit homesick for my Benedictine friends in Busan.  I spent a very special Holy Week with them last year.   The friendships in Korea and my KC Benedictine friends are invaluable to my own Christian formation.  

I continue to be interested in all things talking about "what it means to be human" and at Benedictine community in Atchison, KS, I found the following quote in our worship together.  

Oscar Armulfo Romero:  

"For the church, the many abuses of human life, liberty and dignity are a heartfelt suffering.  The church, entrusted with the earth's glory, believes that in each person is the Creator's image and that everyone who tramples it offends God.  As the holy defender of God's rights and of God's images, the church must cry out.  It takes as spittle in its face, as lashes on its back, as the cross in its passion, all that human beings suffer, even though they be unbelievers.  They suffer as God's images.  There is no dichotomy between humans and God's image.  Whoever tortures a human being, whoever abuses a human being, whoever outrages a human being abuses God's image, and the church takes as its own that cross, that martyrdom."

Benedictines speak of "welcoming the stranger as if you are welcoming Christ."  This is a commitment I've seen practiced so well and while I associate it with Benedictines I know it is really just Biblical.    Interesting to me Romero is calling the church to something similar and he is exposing how we fail to "welcome Christ" in the suffering stranger.  The church is invited to host God.  What an amazing calling we have!!   Humanity  is to be welcomed as hosts to the "Creator's Image."  What if we really believed that?  When we welcome the stranger, the one who lives by a different creed and culture, the one who suffers from poverty and/or abuse, the one who comes from a different Christian paradigm, we do welcome God, don't we?  The mystery of our host-work is that somehow God hosts us in our hosting.  This Holy Week, might we be called remember and repent of the ways we've abused God by not hosting His own humanity well?