Prayer and the renewal of religious life

Prayer and the renewal of religious life

Paulo Ueti

Abstract

The moto of Benedictine spirituality (way of life) is Ora et Labora. Two sides of the same coin. One does not exist without the other. Although prayer is (maybe) primarily an individual/personal act, for Christians prayer is a community experience that strengthen mutual relations, therefore relation with God (1Jn). To the Benedictine tradition prayer is the core of community life, shaped and structured by the rhythm of daily liturgy. The act of pray stablishes discipline (internal and external) which is expressed by a life of deep obedience (deep listening), stability (physical, spiritual and psychological — body, spirit and soul) and constant conversion (metanoia — changing perspectives that informs and shape behaviour). In this article I will explore the meaning of the monastic life as a school of the Lord (RB) and prayer and liturgy as its main tool to be a parable of God into the world.

L’abstrait

Le ‘moto’ de la spiritualité bénédictine (mode de vie) est Ora et Labora. Deux faces d’une même pièce. L’un n’existe pas sans l’autre. Bien que la prière soit (peut-être) avant tout un acte individuel / personnel, la prière est pour les chrétiens une expérience communautaire qui renforce les relations mutuelles, donc la relation avec Dieu (1Jean). Pour la tradition bénédictine, la prière est au cœur de la vie communautaire, façonnée et structurée au rythme de la liturgie quotidienne. L’acte de prière établit la discipline (interne et externe) qui se traduit par une vie d’obéissance profonde (écoute profondément), de stabilité (physique, spirituelle et psychologique — corps, esprit et âme) et de conversion constante (metanoia — changer des perspective pour influencer et façonner le comportement). Dans cet article, je vais explorer le sens de la vie monastique en tant qu’école du Seigneur (RB) et de la prière et de la liturgie en tant qu’instrument principal pour être une parabole de Dieu dans le monde.

NT. This was publised originally in : Muthuraj Swamy & Stephen Spencer (org). Listening Together: Global Anglican Perspectives on Renewal of Prayer and the Religious Life (English Edition). 2020.

“Let us set out on this way,

with the Gospel for our guide,

that we may deserve to see Him

who has called us to His kingdom.”

(Prologue of the Rule of Saint Benedict, 21)

“Rejoice always,

pray continually,

give thanks in all circumstances;

for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus

(1Thessalonians 5:16–18)

Introduction

This dialogue is the acknowledgement that prayer and life in community are gifts from God and transforming tools of our existence and essential requirements for Jesus-shaped life. The baptism is a ritual that marks the immersion into something (project, community, experience) being for Christians the sacrament that publicly expresses our death to sin, it has no longer power, and resurrection to Christ, in a path of constantly searching for the new life (Romans 6:1–16). The Rule of Saint Benedict (RB 4) teaches “to prefer nothing to the love of Christ” and “to be frequently occupied in prayer” are some of the instruments of the good deeds (Barros, Na Estrada do Evangelho: uma leitura comunitária e latino-americana da Regra de São Bento, 1993, p. 205). Those two helps to keep our mind, body and spirit aligned to the will of God and away from our own desires. It builds wholiness (wholeness and holiness).

We are living, the majority only surviving, in a fragmented world. This fragmentation hits us as individuals and, consequently, the world order (kosmos), causing devastating effects for the human life and for the planet. Our way of life in this capitalist and neoliberal world gets us stuck in individualist and meritocratic ideo-theologies (prosperity and retributive), placing our wholeness in jeopardy with increasingly higher intensity. It is always a struggle against the “devil” (διάβολος) that splits us apart and constantly lures us to “contemplate our own navels”: each one on their own. The personal and community prayer are God’s gifts so that we can face this fragmentation and return to the community to fulfill our calling to be ONE with courage and audacity (Luke 24:13–35).

I came from a non-religious blood family. I didn’t grow up in a religious community, and I learned about that through school and rational exercise. During adolescence (I was 13), I was introduced to religion, according to my family, to get “fixed” from my anti-sociability personality and behaviour and individualism character. Someone told my mother that the religious community helps and costs nothing. Obviously, I ended up getting pushed to a youth group and to activities within a universe that was still unknown to me. This experience was both scary, having to relate with so many people, speak in public, carry out missionary activities in the community, as well as transforming, making me find out something that was already inside of me and that I haven’t noticed yet. God had called me to be available for something that was greater than myself and, by doing that, converting my path, my mind and my words towards justice and solidarity. One of the first biblical studies that I had to coordinate was during the Lent period about the Isaiah 58, I thought it was fascinating how this time of silence, prayer, fasting and charity (I really enjoyed the Mt 6 text on Ash Wednesday too) was so closely related to a calling to transform the unfair structures of society, to seek reconciliation and build up peace. This realisation helped me to underpin better my activism work with social movements, especially Landless People Movement and Via Campesina International. This led me also to enter an ecumenical Benedictine monastery and this experience forged me on humility, collaboration, life in community (with the ups and downs) and service (Diaconia).

I also found that God has incarnated in Jesus so that EVERY person can get to know the truth and may be saved, healed (1Timothy 2:4). During this path of mine in the church, I was finding out how life in community (sacrament of Jesus, the resurrected), the reading and interpretation of the Bible, community and individual prayers moments, the singing of the psalms and the liturgy were fundamental tools for my own education as a Christian and also as a place where I could gain better understanding about the context where I lived and where I cultivated a holy outrage before the injustices practised on a daily basis.

God is the God of Unconditional Love and Justice

In the liturgy, in the Bible study and in the immersion in the spiritual life I realised that God reveals himself in the history of the world, and for the Christian religion this reached its highest point when he decided to incarnate, becoming a servant human being (Phil 2: 5–11). He did it so we can follow and imitate.

It is in this attitude, as believers, that we come across the stories of the people in our contexts and in the Bible. Stories marked by the experience of suffering, vulnerability, desire, lacking, but also great joy, love, fullness through the discovery of a God who loves and defends the lives of his sons and daughters. It is in the mission (in actions) for the care and transformative development, in humanitarian aid and public advocacy work (Jer. 9:22–24) that we find a fundamental “locus” to experience the God of Life who became incarnate in Jesus and who expresses himself through the churches gathered in his name. We pray for, in and with this God.

“According to the Biblical tradition, God is a mystery, which means, love that involves everything. Someone who reveals himself in history and at the same time makes himself present in the heart of each person. A mystery that must be communicated and not kept to oneself, that is not property of any given person or group. In Christ — Paul says — the ‘revelation of a mystery involved in silence ever since the eternal centuries, now, however, manifested and, through the prophetic Scriptures and out of the willingness of the eternal God, made known to every Gentile’ (Rom 16:25–26) took place.” (Gutierrez, 1990, p. 14)

Jesus, firstly an heir of the prophetic movement, is the paradigm in which we situate ourselves to continue theologising the mission and missionising theologies in the key of transformative development. For this, daily conversion is always necessary. Being available and being able to live within the ephemeral, on the path where everything can always change direction so that one can reach the target (not sinning) properly.

The God that finds us and gets involved with the story and with the people in the story is love. “God is love” (1John 4:8). He wanted to find us in the intimacy and in the deepest part of our existence: our ability to fall in love and our experiences of suffering and pain. This song/prayer of the first communities expresses well this desire from God of joining the created world:

“In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature[b] of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death — even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Phil 2:5–11)

When I read this anthem, I keep wondering how its score would look like. It could be a melody that descends, that starts with high notes and keeps decreasing all the way to a B. The same movement of the anthem lyrics. From top to bottom, on purpose. Only then, from bottom up, in an ascending. This climb is a result of the first movement of lowering or decreasing.

“The path is composed by two movements, one of lowering and another of ascending. First, Christ demotes himself. Then, when Jesus reaches the lowest point of the descend, the Father exalts him and makes him climb to the highest point. The descend starts from the highest level: Christ was at God’s level. In the end, he returns to this God level. But, in order to return to his level, he had to descend to the lowest level possible on this planet. In the movement of lowering, there are four steps: man, slave, dead, crucified. Christ has climbed down the four steps. Upon reaching bottom, he got really emptied. Nailed to the cross, damned according to men and apparently of God, Christ was really emptied of any dignity. He was emptied of everything that he had, emptied of all value and every substance, reduced to nothing. Once he was reduced to nothing, the total nullity of power, the Father lifted him and elevated him to the highest level.” (Comblin, 1992, p. 40)

God made an alliance of radical love and solidarity because, he said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So, I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:7–8). He incarnated and became human (John 1:1–18) and “surely, he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:4–5).

This is the God for which and in which we pray. In Him and through Him his work is executed in the world and within us.

Prayer as encounter and dialogue

It is here and now, in our personal and community reality (in the common house and in ‘God’s house’), where we find and are found, where we meet and be met. And every encounter is an epiphanic moment of discoveries and transformation.

Because it is an encounter, “the prayer is essentially a dialogue, a swap, an exchange. This is how the philosopher of the religion G. van der Leeuw defines prayer. Prayer is a dialogue between the person and God. This concept is certainly important and indispensable” (Grün A. , 2014, p. 21).

As I have already mentioned, encounter and dialogue are two profoundly challenging and transforming experiences. God has chosen, out of love, to find us in our contexts and in our bodies (personal and mother land). This encounter always surprises and transforms. The impressions and preconceptions about God and about people (ourselves) change as the encounter and dialogue progresses. We must be willing to insist, persist and resist to keep dialoguing through love and as an act of love. It is an encounter of real and moving bodies, wishful of becoming more than they are. Because

God made us bodies. God made himself body. He incarnated.

Body: God’s image.

Body: our destiny, God’s destiny.

This is good.

Eternal divine solidarity towards the human flesh.

Nothing is more dignified than that.

The body is not destined to be elevated into spirit.

It is the Spirit that chooses to become visible, in the body.

And God’s body, Jesus Christ, expands, inflates, taking over the entire universe: “present in all places, even within the smallest leaf, in each created thing, inside and out, around it and inside its nerves, below and above, behind and in front…” (Lutero).

This is exactly where, in the body, that God and man meet”

(Alves, 2006, pp. 51–52)

And, in order for a loving and healthy development of this encounter with God and with ourselves to exist, the attitude of hearing and contemplating is important. It is the founding and structuring attitude of our life in the Spirit. The Creed of Israel starts with this word/attitude: “Shemá Israel (Hear o Israel)” (Deut 6:4). The Revelation repeats several times “Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.” (Revelation 2:7;11;17;29; 3:6;13;20;22)

One of the oldest Rules of Community Life, the Rule of Saint Benedict, also begins with this request: “Hearken O my son, to the precepts of thy master, and incline the ear of thy heart; willingly receive and faithfully comply with the admonition of thy loving father…” (RB Prologue). “This is a dialogue, or an exhortation, in which the author addresses whoever wants to become a disciple, to really sharpen the hearing. To get started with the community path of the disciples of Jesus, the first thing to do is to hear” (Barros, Na Estrada do Evangelho: uma leitura comunitária e latino-americana da Regra de São Bento, 1993, p. 35)

And hearing, in the biblical and spiritual tradition, means to be attentive to oneself, to the reality in which we are inserted and to the world, being capable to read the “signs of times”. It means to cultivate the desire of exercising the ability to always dialogue, even during disagreements and times of tension. It is the contemplative attitude in first place, that slowly modifies our way of looking and our theories about what we observe and experience, and, therefore, modifies our ways of living as well. Prayer is the perfect moment and exercise to do this. The result of this contemplative attitude will always be of changing our opinion, our perspective and our relationship towards what we contemplate. Contemplating results in changes, internal transformation, what is a requirement for the conversion. This encounter and dialogic process in which we choose to trail as Christian people leads us to the ‘grace’ of a life of prayer, and lives as Jesus recommended: ‘To pray permanently’ (according to Luke 18:1ss). This is not only a matter of ‘exercise’, but of a fundamental and profound attitude of communion with the Lord. To feed this very existential prayer we consider the ‘praying reading of the Bible (Lectio Divina) is one of the oldest methods that Christian people have developed” (Mesters, 1989), and the frequent repetition of a mantra such as Jesus’s name, or a word from the Gospel (Anônimo, 1985). “The individual prayer prepares, extends and applies to each person the objective and sacred encounter with the Lord, which takes place in the liturgy and in the community life.” (Barros, Celebrar o Deus da Vida, tradição litúrgica e inculturação, 1992, p. 26).

The prayer is also a moment of self-consciousness and opening to the world. Both the individual and the community prayer helps to turn public the realities in which we live and other distant realities, although still connected. When we pray, for instance, for peace in South Sudan from a Guatemalan community, these two realities are connected and the Guatemalan community that, in its religious circles or prayer circles or individually, puts Sudan on its horizon gets transformed and a new reality integrates its own. The Guatemalan community becomes more aware of the South Sudan reality, gains new vocabulary, motif and interest on the subject and on the people involved. Because ‘as we are many, we break the same bread’. The prayer, as I have said before, produces encounters and transforms perspectives.

Pray and Work — Ora et Labora

For the Benedictine spirituality, prayer and work move side by side. One does not exist without the other. God finds us in all moments of life and all moments of life are for God’s glory (to make God present): “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34–35). The entire prologue of the RB talks about obedience as an act of “making it happen”. To obey is to let the Word (of God or someone) echoes inside you and automatically turns into action.

This is why “whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (Revelation 2:7) because “not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21). “And with our eyes open to the divine light, let us with astonished ears listen to the admonition of God’s voice daily crying out and saying: “Today if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts.” And again: “He who has the hearing ear, let him hear what the Spirit announces to the churches.” And what does the Spirit say? “Come, children, listen to me: I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Run while ye have the light of life, that the shades of death envelop you not.”

“And inquiring for His own labourer among the multitude of the people to whom He proclaims these things, the Lord says again: “Who is the man that wishes for life, and desires to see good days?” And if hearing this thou dost answer “I,” God then says to thee: “If thou dost wish for life true and eternal, refrain thy tongue from evil and let not thy lips speak guile. Turn aside from evil and do good; seek out peace and follow it. And when ye have done this, lo, my eyes are upon you and My ears open to your prayers. And before ye call, I will say, ‘Behold, I am here.’” RB Prologue 9–18 (Barros, Na Estrada do Evangelho: uma leitura comunitária e latino-americana da Regra de São Bento, 1993, p. 194)

The Gospels and many spiritual traditions of the first priests of the church are full of these alerts for us to stay attentive to the hearing that should lead to the practice of the Word of God. Mary treasured up all the things she heard and pondered them her heart (Luke 2:19), she prayed/sang and practiced the disturbing prophecy that the good news had been announced and, as a result, the transformation of the unfair structures of her society would take place (Luke 1:46–56), which means, she managed to express in her daily life and through her body, her perspective (her lens to look), her attitudes, the result of their life of prayer and meditation of the word of God. This woman, like many others in the Bible, became a role model of prayer practice, spirituality and discipleship. How many times are we capable of imitating her, follow her steps? How many times the hearing of God’s word (in the Bible and incarnated in Jesus) has disturbed our daily routine, our arrogant truths, our violent certainties or our comfortable individualisms?

The constant practice of prayer, core of the monastic tradition, educates for the integrity, compassion and justice, because that is how God wanted to be made known, and to strengthen the intimate connection between the human being, nature and God. It (the prayer) sews these three aspects of the existence and helps us become ONE as God is ONE (Shemá Israel, Adonai elohenu, Adonai ehad — cf Deut 6:4) and because God wants us ONE in order for the world to believe (John 17:21) and by believing, we shape our lives and establish relationships with the creation in the way God wants. This is the vocation of the monk, of the monastic spirituality, so current and urgent for today’s world.

According to the ancient monks, “the effort of the work constituted an essential part of one’s spiritual journey. Apollo, a patriarch, could speak about the work: ‘today I have worked with Christ for my soul’ (Apo 149). The exterior work, for him, is both a work for the soul as well as a work in the internal man. The effort of the work also prepares the soul to God” (Grün & Ruppert, 2005, p. 20). The work (whatever it may be) contributes with the sustenance of the body and the soul and must express the image of God that we carry within in order to continue lightening the world that has been very darkened by sin.

Work is called occupation/office. In our liturgies and pastoral/ministerial activities, they are a divine office or a sacrifice (a sacred office). The work should be an activity that ‘integrates’, that ‘socialises’ and that ‘redeems’: these principles lie in the social thought and forge a sociability. ‘The work, therefore, also becomes a powerful instrument of social integration’, an instrument of connection, of construction of the sense of belonging and community.

The work helps to build one’s identity as well as it is essential for one’s own support and of the collectiveness where one lives. Thus, in a world where the unemployment level is very high and where work is, in great part, an instrument of exploitation and dehumanization, it is necessary to make room to reclaim (pray for and struggle for) the place of the work in life. According to the monastic tradition, the relationship between “work and prayer” — the execution of work [manual] from the prayer — as Benedict describes in his Rule, is a message that is especially important for today’s people. Nowadays, many people are overloaded with work. Everywhere we hear complaints about the stress caused by work. Work has alienated people, drained their strengths and is being used to keep inequality as it is. The practice of prayer has helped many people, employed or not, to find their focus, to feed their resilience capacity and to face the perverse institutionalized inequality that rules this world.

The community, Jesus’ sacrament and the parable of the Kingdom.

The community is the place to learn, unlearn, transform and act to reveal the mercy of God and his kingdom. The path of the monastic life is a “school/service of the Lord” (RB, Prologue 45), where people enter and are taught, nourished and challenged to the radical following of Jesus. There we are called to become ONE (mono — monk), to be in communion.

“This schools’ goal really is the goal of the entire Christian life. According to the monastic tradition, most of the authors, such as Saint Basil, Saint John Chrysostom, Saint John Climacus, Saint Maximum and others, insists that one can’t split the monk apart from the common Christian and that the goal of the monastic life is charity, like it is for the whole Christian life” (Barros, Na Estrada do Evangelho: uma leitura comunitária e latino-americana da Regra de São Bento, 1993, p. 49)

“The prayer immerses the Christian person in the trinitary mistery, as it’s shown in the Lord’s Prayer. It lies its roots in the Lord who came, who comes and who will come, and, closes down in the contemplation of God’s gift, received from Christ in the Holy Spirit. Thus, it has a triple dimension: ecclesial, existential and eschatological (Hamman, Priére, I, p. 423–343)” (VVAA, 2002, p. 1031). Since the prayer is a personal and communal activity, of the encounter with the divine and its desires, it becomes clear that there is a need to get out of yourself to let yourself be found and to move towards the ‘other’. It becomes clear that there is a need for the silence and for the exercise of contemplation to listen with the ears of the heart what the Lord has to say and to let yourself transform by this word and encounter.

The community, as the first sacrament of Jesus resurrected among us because “for where two or three gathers in my name, there am I with them” (Matthew 18:20) is a privileged place in the search for conversion and stability (physical, spiritual and psychological). We are called by God to form a community, to become communion. The Rule of Saint Benedict was written to this type of person who lives in communion and experiences that in a community.

In the community, the prayer was named Divine Office (Opus Dei) and is intimately connected to God’s Mission (Misio Dei) which is executed by the humanity which is God’s image (Imago Dei). Praying is not an exercise that is primarily rational and logical, ritualistic and ordered. Our prayer can’t become only a list of wishes, complaints or acknowledgements. This is because our God doesn’t allow to be manipulated by any formula or rite. God is the one who takes the initiative of coming and we answer, not always in a pleasant manner.

In the community, we celebrate grace and God’s calling in the liturgy. The Christian tradition, like many other religions, is rich in its liturgies and prayers. It [the liturgy] with its rites and performance is the place where we experiment the erotic (primordial loving force) aspect of Easter (passage), as a primary force that created everything out of love and passion, of the encounter with the divine, the place to where we go, where we remain and from where we leave completely transformed by the immense merciful grace of God, who wishes to save the entire humanity. There we celebrate, along with Him and because He is the one who invites and welcomes us, the salvation and the Kingdom ministries that don’t have owners and neither can be controlled by our limited understandings of the revelation of God in Jesus, in the humanity’s history (Chauvet, 1995/3, p. 45). After all, the Gospel asks us for a faith that respects the contexts, but also that transforms them towards God’s Kingdom.

Prayer is one of the pillars of the Christian community, a mixture of different traditions and spiritual experiences across the millenniums. At the Hebrew Bible, part of the Christian tradition, we even have an entire book with 5 collections of prayers/songs: Psalms 1–41; Psalms 42–72; Psalms 73–89; Psalms 90–106; Psalms 107–150). Of course, we can find psalms/prayers/songs across the entire Bible. In the Second Testament, we are invited to “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil.” (1Thes 5:16–22).

According to the Acts of the Apostles, people who followed Jesus “were assiduous to the teachings of the apostles, to the fraternal communion, to the sharing of the bread and to the prayers”.

The liturgy and the practice of the prayer is inherent to Jesus’ life and of the people who followed him (Acts 2:42). Therefore, it must be a routine practice in our current lives too. In this sense, it is necessary to always be alert so that the liturgy, the prayer and the rites don’t become a path of alienation and imprisonment. Thus, in the capitalist system, given that alienation makes the work strange, the worker doesn’t possess what is produced. The individual doesn’t see him or herself in the work, he or she gets dehumanized, the work, far from being his or her accomplishment as individual, it is his or her slavery, and the same can happen with the liturgy, the prayer and the liturgical rites. They can be a self-centred exercise and a path to the alienation of the profound sense of union with the divine and its desire to be present, to free and to complete its creation.

Therefore, life and the monastic spirituality may help, today, many people that seek for spaces of integration, encounter and companions for the mission of transforming the world and free them from the injustices and from the death culture that stays in the air and trespass the daily life. Today it is very important to find safe communities, eager of offering support and sheltering for those in need, those in danger or broken. There are lots of people looking for a place to worship, to pray and to meet people who actually care about them. The community needs to be the place of party but also of forgiveness. The place where people can feel connected, where they are people and not only a body in the bench and some coins in the offerings.

For the Christian religion, the community is called to be the Kingdom parable, the place of hope, of the search and journey with the people who have sinned, of sheltering to those who seek for shelter and need support and unconditional tolerance (to forgive 70 x 7, to love and pray for your enemies, according to Matthew 5:43–44; 18:15–22). In the impatient, intolerant and violent society where we live, we are called to a different testimony. We are called to live the experience of daily conversion, where it is acknowledged that everyone needs helps (us included) and only walking side by side is that we can reveal and experience the Kingdom right here and right now. We are called to give a testimony of a place where there is safe space and joy for the fraternal and sororal coexistence, obviously always featured by the tension and need of daily adjustment. Thus, “no one let go of anyone’s hand, and no one can be left behind (Matthew 18).

Challenges for a community life

Life in community is always a challenge, but it is the fundamental calling for the human existence and for the accomplishment of God’s mission. It is the “school of the Lord’s service” (RB), where the shared work for the common house (politics) the liturgy and the personal and community prayer are structural elements so that, through the encounter with ourselves, with the neighbour and therefore with God, we are able to continue with its Divine Occupation of revealing the Mercy and the Justice of his Kingdom that already exists among us.

The prayer and the work (office and diaconal ministry) are indissoluble in the Christian spirituality that Saint Benedict has brightly assumed for the structure of the monastic life, which lasts until today. This path, method, became for the Christian communities and for the people, individually, a possible journey to be taken.

The prayer and the praying reading of the Bible educates us, through mental and body, intellectual and spiritual exercises, to appreciate the encounter with God through the relationships we establish 1) with ourselves, 2) with the people with whom we live and 3) with the nature, our common home (oikoumene). These three aspects together form the perfect recipe so that we can be transformed and transform our life and our contexts, through God’s eyes.

The religious life is called to seriously take into account the contemplative life so that our way of living becomes a constant praying and ministerial exercise (ora et labora) that makes us more like God’s image and butlers of His creation.

I end with this prayer, attributed to Saint Basil:

When someone steals another’s clothes, we call them a thief. Should we not give the same name to one who could clothe the naked and does not? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat unused in your closet belongs to the one who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the one who has no shoes; the money which you hoard up belongs to the poor. (Saint Basil)

Dr. Paulo Ueti, theologian and Biblical Scholar, working as Theological Advisor and Regional Director for Latin America for the Anglican Alliance/Anglican Communion Office, Advisor to the Theological Education Department of Anglican Communion Office and IASCUFO-Inter-Anglican Standing Committee for Unity, Faith and Order, advisor for the Ecumenical Centre for Biblical Studies-CEBI/Brazil, former professor of Spirituality and Biblical Hermeneutics at the Sao Boaventura Seminary in Brasilia, Brazil, former professor of History and Literature of Early Christianity at the University of Brasilia, member of the SBL-Society of Biblical Society and ABIB-Brazilian Association of Biblical Research. Contact: Email: paulo.ueti@anglicancommunion.org

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