The Journey Continues

Dear Ones,

We are in the process of doing the necessary editing and preliminary work involved before uploading and publishing my second book, Broken Pieces, on the Amazon platform. It immensely pleases us that we are finally able to do this. I came across this journal entry this morning. The following is from my reflective journaling between June and December of 2007.

July 28, 2007

Father, because Jesus, your servant, became obedient even unto death, his sacrifice was greater than all holocausts of old. Accept the sacrifice of praise we offer you through him, and may we show the effects of it in our lives by striving to do your will until our whole life becomes adoration in spirit and truth.[1]

“Vatican II Council has made it clear that the laity should exercise a very active role in the Church’s mission to the world. Oblates of St. Benedict are in a favored position for carrying out this admonition. They are spiritually associated with a Benedictine community. They have pledged themselves to order their lives in accord with the spirit of the Rule of St. Benedict. They are therefore encouraged to be faithful witnesses of Christ by striving to bring the Gospel message and God’s way of holiness to the world around them. This is, in fact, the chief reason for their being Oblates of St. Benedict.”[2]

“They seek to be true lay apostles according to their abilities and the circumstances of their lives, with a spirit of mission, a spirit of vocation from God through the Holy Spirit working in them, eager to help in proclaiming and spreading the Word of God to the ends of the earth.”[3]

The life of an Oblate is not just about entering into personal union and communion with Christ, although this is certainly an important part of it. It is not only about discovering and developing a lifestyle of prayer, of contemplation. These do have a great and integral importance but do not represent the whole of Oblate life. They are, rather, the foundational building blocks, more often unseen in actual practice by others, that support and give life to the visible, touchable, and lived out reality of the life of an Oblate in the world, elements that are seen by all as we go about living our perceived reality, our vocation as lay-apostles accepted and invested by our Benedictine community, and then sent into the world to live the Benedictine charism in the spirit of the Rule of St. Benedict.

We then become, in a very practical sense, lay missionaries and evangelists united to Christ, the Church, and the Order of St. Benedict, and the actualization of our lay apostolate will be manifested through expressions of our own individual spiritual giftedness as the fruit of charity working in our lives.

“Oblates especially have understood the close relationship between monastic life as envisioned by St. Benedict and the ordinary Christian life in the world. Affiliating themselves with monastery and convent, they provide a vital link with the world as they reach out to bring hope and inspiration to those struggling to find Christ in the midst of a sinful world.”[4]

One of the things that I appreciate about Benedictine spirituality is that it makes room for all of us since it has no specific devotion or apostolic work that modifies and determines its type of spirituality. It is simply the leading of the Christian life to the fullest. This statement can aptly be applied to Oblates just as well as to monks.[5]

This broadness is both challenging and liberating in the same breath.

It challenges me to let go of a lot of my own preconceived preferences, and I have more than a few of these, and liberates me to walk in grace in a world filled with divided opinions. It calls me to live my vocation without imposing my vocation on another. It causes me to see the Spirit of God working in and through others in their own vocation, in their own circumstances in life, as they yield to him. It causes me to see the world as it is, broken and lost in sin. It causes me to see through eyes of compassion and respond to its need with the compassion of Christ.[6]

This, I think, is the intended objective to be discerned in all of our horizontal relationships. Our vertical relationship with God, if it can indeed be called that since the analogy really isn’t accurate, is incomplete unless it finds channels in our lives where the compassion of God toward us can naturally flow horizontally into the lives of others.

Hence our need for genuine, responsible community that creates personal accountability. But our compassion must extend beyond the sheep-pen where we are cared for. It must, in some way, carry us into the fields, woodlands, hollows, swamps, and deserts where lost sheep are being rustled by thieves, preyed upon by beasts, and injected with the poison of venomous serpents.

Excerpt from Broken Pieces

Copyright (c) David A. Kralik

[1] Psalm-Prayer, LOH, p. 1253 [2] Preamble, Guidelines for Oblates of St. Benedict [3] Guidelines for Oblates of St. Benedict, Sec. A. Para. 3, Vat. II, Missions, 11, p. 597 [4] Fr. Bede Classick, O.S.B., St. Paul’s Abbey, Newton, New Jersey [5] MBO, St. Vincent Archabbey, 1962, pp. 3-4 [6] Matthew 9:35-36

Note: My first book, The Less Worn Path, is now in print through Amazon. Search for it by title or by my name.