Perhaps we can think of it as mortification in advance.
Our Sisters in a monastery, meanwhile, have a scheduled time when a priest comes to them. In our "monastic day," perhaps that time can be right now.
In thinking of this, I decided to re-post (with a bit of minor editing) something I wrote on this subject for the Breadbox Letters blog this past Lent...
“When you want to write on a blackboard," wrote Charles de Foucauld, "you must first wipe off what is written there.”
Several
things occur to me as I read this. First of all: chalk is not
permanent. Nor are my sins. Once the “board” has been erased, the
original mistakes can no longer be read.
Second: a blackboard cannot be erased unless something is done. Someone has to actually take action and clean the board.
Third: a chalkboard eraser is not a steel wool pad. It is soft. It’s made to clean the board, not harm it. If a blackboard could feel, I doubt it would cry “ouch.”
“God,” wrote St. Gregory the Great, “scourges our faults with strokes of love, to cleanse us from our iniquities.”
Strokes of love. Not lashes, but strokes of love.
To continue our second monastic day, click this line
