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Jodi Blazek Gehr, Oblate of St. Benedict

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Discerning Hearts

Sobriety: The Nature of our Need

Fr. Mauritius Wilde, Prior of Sant’ Anselmo in Rome, has a new podcast series on the Benedictine understanding of sobriety.

Can you get caught up in the swirl and chaos of fear, violence, and anger assaulting our world today? Practicing soberness means being detached from emotions, both overly negative or positive feelings. It is not good to be “drunk” on either extreme.

Soberness is taking just what we need. What do I take with me? What do I take in? What do I consume? How much wine, money, noise, whatever? Is it too much? The journey of soberness is to become more aware of whether there was too much.

But soberness is more than an absence of something—there is its own positive quality. The absence of the noise of tv is more than just turning off the tv. We begin to discover how beautiful silence is. Once you taste it, you want to have more of it.

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Listen: HR-Soberness-1 An Introduction – “The Nature of Our Need” – The Holy Rule of St. Benedict with Fr. Mauritius Wilde OSB

 

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Spiritual Lessons from The Little Prince

If you haven’t started The Little Prince podcast series with Fr. Mauritius Wilde, you must. The third in the series was just released and it packs a punch.

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If you haven’t read The Little Prince, no worries. It’s helpful, but not at all necessary to benefit from the lessons of the Antoine de Saint-Exupéry classic. You can find the book and chapter summaries HERE.
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The author points to “sicknesses of our times.  Jesus said it was not the healthy that need a doctor, but the sick,” Fr. Mauritius points out. We do not always achieve the ideal in our lives, but we take comfort that Jesus still meets us where we are. It is Jesus that went to the margins–to the broken people, the lepers, the Pharisees. It is the Little Prince who invites us in a compassionate way to welcome our “oddness”, to accept that all people have limitations.

We all experience feelings of judgment, shame, fear, and expectations. “Everybody has spots in their life that they are ashamed of.  And that’s okay. This is the place where Jesus goes. He is so merciful, so tender. He never tried to shame people. Never. He knew they were struggling enough already with their shame,” Fr. Mauritius shares.

Fr. Mauritius’ message, through the story of The Little Prince, meets us right where we are with our inadequacies and imperfections, the expectations that we put on ourselves and others, and our heartfelt desire for authenticity.

The Little Prince, the movie, is also worth an evening on the couch with popcorn. More information about the 2015 animated movie HERE.

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© Jodi Blazek Gehr, Being Benedictine Blogger

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