Communio Calling
Communio Calling
My Word, Lectio Divina
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this episode, we hear Sister Antonia Curtis OSB share with us the journey behind her new book ‘I Give You My Word’. A practical guide in Lectio Divina. Written with educators, parishes and lay people in mind, I Give You My Word is a culmination of Antonia’s learnings and experience of sharing and teaching Lectio Divina. It is a remarkable gift to the world. You can purchase your copy at the link below: https://www.jamberooabbey.org.au/shop/
I love you for this wonderful conversation that she gives her own journey and her wonderful gift that she has given the world in her book. Well, welcome, Sister Antonio. It is still lovely to have you here with us as we break open this wonderful topic of Alexio Davina this morning. But before we get started into that, the name of our podcast, Caminio Calling, is born out of a desire for Caminio to deepen relationship through story, about being intentional about our connection and who we are. So story is very much the way we start our conversation. And I'd like to invite you into sharing part of your story with us, perhaps your influences, family, your background, and how you then first encountered the Benedictine way of living out your Christian values and life.
SPEAKER_01Okay, well, thank you very much, Gabriel. Thank you for inviting me to be part of this podcast, giving this opportunity. Just a little bit about myself. I was born in a small country town called Kuliman, which is 25 miles from Walga, about 38 K, I guess. And it was just a small country town of 1,000 people at that stage. And it was a normal Catholic family situation. I was one of five girls. My father was a Stockholm station agent and a grazier, but having no sons, it wasn't really difficult for him. He used to say he wouldn't swap any of us. So it was nice to know that we, you know, we were accepted even though we weren't going to be taking over the farm and the business from him. We were part of the parish. We went to the Catholic school. It was just a small Catholic school. The Sisters of St. Joseph ran it. The parish was actually the centre of our life. I mean, my parents weren't over religious or zealous or anything, but for everybody who went to the Catholic school, the parish was the centre. And so it was very social. There was a lot of connection with others, and there was always that sense of being quite at home and quite accepted. Everybody came to Mass on a Sunday, the fathers and the mothers. The fathers used to sit up in the back at the back while they sit up. They usually just stood at the back. But they were always there. And we had those old-fashioned missions where the priests would come round the divine word, I think, priests, do the fire and brimstone stuff. Nobody really got caught up in that. You didn't come away feeling petrified that you're beginning to go to hell or anything like that. But again, it was just some way of being part of community that everybody went. So what I'm saying in all of that, I guess, is that I was very blessed. I'm very grateful that I grew up in the country, in a small country town. Very grateful that I had lots of cousins, lots of friends, and education by the sisters. And always in those days, the nuns taught music. So we all had the opportunity to learn over the piano. I learned the violin. Oh, lovely. School finished in third year, which I think now would be something like year nine, I think. If we wanted to go on beyond what was called intermediate, it meant having to go to boarding school. Otherwise, you left school at age, you know, about 15. So our parents did choose to send us to boarding school to give us the opportunity to have as much education as we possibly could. So off we went to the Sisters of St. Joseph at North Galburn. And that was where I did my secondary training. There were always two of us from the family there at the same time. So my older sister and I started out, and then when one would leave, the next one in the family would come. And also a lot of the cousins were there, and also some of the other kids from the school. So again, there was no sense of strangeness or being alone. Boarding school was uh fairly strict and disciplined, and I'm grateful for that as well. So, all in all, I suppose I'm grateful for what I had, I'm grateful for what I was given. That kind and that style of parish and school doesn't fit anymore. It's finished, but as I look back, I can just say that I'm grateful I had it. Now when I finished believing, I went to teachers college back in Wagga, and that was a not a not a Catholic, it was a state teacher's college. And again, it was formal, but it was loose. I mean, formality and looseness seemed to go together and fit well in some way.
SPEAKER_00Did you just live in the town with other students when you were there in Wogga?
SPEAKER_01We lived in the college, 400 students altogether. So the men, their dormitories were right down as far as they could possibly be away from the girls' dormitories, all the um the lecture rooms in the middle, you know, so the twain could never meet except for lectures and the meals which the staff had with us. And when as I think about that too, it's amazing that when the staff joined us, we actually said grace, even though it was a state-run educational complex, we said grace before meals and grace after meals.
SPEAKER_00Even after meals as well. It was a dominant culture at that time, the Christian culture.
SPEAKER_01Right, yeah. After teachers college, I went off teaching in various country schools and had seven years since.
SPEAKER_00Did you teach secondary or primary?
SPEAKER_01Primary, or infants actually. And that was I loved that. Every day it was just pure entertainment. Yeah, it was wonderful. So in lots of country places, and then also in the city, I was seven years in Sydney, and then I also had three years in Queensland. So that's sort of it until I then came to the Abbey.
SPEAKER_00So, where was the connection with the Abbey prior to entering? Where had you come across the Benedictines in your travels beforehand?
SPEAKER_01Well, I'd never really heard of Benedictines. I did have a cousin who joined the Good Samaritan, Sisters of the Good Samaritan. So I knew about them, but I didn't really know that they followed the rule of St. Benedict, and I'd never heard of Benedictines. I knew in my heart that I wasn't called to an apostolic order. And strangely enough, I didn't really know what else existed. I don't understand why I didn't know about the Carmelites, but I didn't. I went to a couple of apostolic orders anyway, and it was just not where I was meant to be. And I was getting a bit downhearted about it all. A priest friend of mine said to me one day, I'm taking you to the Benedictines. And I said, What the Benedictines? It was I was in Sydney. And he said, Well, come on, we'll just we'll go. So we drove out to Pennant Hills, which is where the community was at that time. The minute I walked in, I knew I was where I had to be. It was quite extraordinary. The thing about it though was that they had just sold up at Pennant Hills, the community, and they were um starting to build the Abbey down here at Jambaroo. But in the meantime, they had to leave where they were because they'd sold it, but the Abbey building wasn't ready. So the community was sort of splitting up into smaller groups and going to um different religious orders who had lent us their houses or something. Yes, yeah. So I had to wait. Yeah. I had to wait until the Abbey was finished, and that was a two-year wait. So that was challenging.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And in the meantime, I got sidetracked to somewhere else, but I don't want to hold up too much of our interview time talking about all of that. So finally, when the Abbey was opened, which actually we celebrated 35 years since the opening yesterday.
SPEAKER_00Oh, how wonderful.
SPEAKER_01So I was the second person actually who entered here at Jambaru. And that's where I've been ever since.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, how wonderful. Can you remember a time, perhaps it was when you were at school or in your travels as a teacher, that you started to understand your faith as your own, like that it was no longer just part of your families or your the community aspect of your connection to faith, but it very much seeking to be in union with God yourself.
SPEAKER_01Yes, definitely. And when when that happened was after I'd been teaching in Sydney for seven years, I was just disheartened with the way of life. I mean, I loved it. I, you know, I enjoyed every minute of it and made the most of it, but it got to the point where it wasn't fulfilling for me at all. So I decided I'd go, I was attracted to the desert. But what I ended up doing was going to a city in the desert rather than the real desert. I mean, it was desert, it was Mount Isa in Queensland. There were no positions at the state school for me. So my only option was to go and teach in a Catholic school. I was very resistant to that. I think it was just that I wasn't used to the Catholic system, but anyway.
SPEAKER_00Oh, had you been teaching in the state system that whole time?
SPEAKER_01All the time, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Because I was trained as a state teacher. So this time I was at a Catholic school, and it was the 70s, and that it were they were Josopites. I was taught by the black Jesophites, and these were the brown Josephites. But it was the 70s, and the nuns' habits were starting to be simplified, and the principal of the school was quite a big school, just an infant school, but be. She was my age, and it's very hot in Mount Isa. And sometimes after school, she would come over to my place and have a beer to cool ourselves down. Indeed. That was staggering for me that enough to do that. But it was through her influence that I started really seriously looking at spirituality differently. And I stayed in my eyes of three years, and then I came back. I started, I did a BA at that stage, but while I was doing that, I was really delving deeply into Doctors of the Church, John of Across, Teresa of Avala, and I was doing some study from what was then the Catholic Correspondence Centre in Sydney. That's how it all unfolded for me. Just a long journey. I didn't know where I was going. I didn't know what God was doing with me or how he was leading me. So I just had to sort of go blindly and trust and do the next thing that I felt I was called to do. And that's how it unfolded.
SPEAKER_00I'm a firm believer in that all of the different windings of the journey have a purpose.
SPEAKER_01I agree, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00Well, thank you for sharing part of your story. And I guess as the interview continues, we'll unfold a little bit about what happened after you entered Jambaru because that's part of the story of what we've got to talk about today. This new wonderful book, I give you my word, is a newly published and very practical guide to Lexio Divina. And the title, honey, you were talking about the desert just then. It reminds me of the desert fathers. Often people would go and seeking their wisdom and ask for a word. So can you perhaps for our listeners that aren't particularly familiar with Lexio Divina, help unpack a bit of its background and how it comes to us today?
SPEAKER_01Yes, that title, it just came to me, but when it came to me, I I decided I'd better look up scripture and see where it was. I felt it was in this, and it was in John's Gospel. So it's about God giving us his word. There was never a problem with me finding the title for the book, but I understand what you're saying about the desert fathers, and that's very true. And the Benedictine rule is very centered in the desert fathers and that that beginning. The early desert fathers started around about the third century, 260, 270. But just a little bit prior to that, there was a theologian called Origen, and he was a scripture scholar. So he was in his head. But as he read the word of scripture, it dawned on him that if he stayed with the word rather than studying them, something happened to him. And it spoke to him at other levels of his being, which until then he hadn't really connected with. It had different levels of meaning in different ways. So that opened up something that has kept going in terms of Lexio, unfolded that in great depth, really. But in the same century's origin, but much later, we have Antony of Egypt, who was the first of the desert fathers almost. And he was just a young man, age 20, and he used to go to church. And one day he was at church and he heard that the gospel being read was the story of the rich young man, which he had heard many times, but he heard it differently this day. He heard the words go, sell everything you have, give the money to the poor, and come follow me. And he took it literally, and he did just that. He sold everything, gave it all away, and he went out to the desert. He was alone in the desert for something like 20 years and spent that time in prayer with the word of God, I guess finding himself something to eat and all of that kind of thing, and just letting the word of God touch his heart. And then others started to hear about this man, and so others who were getting tired of the culture of the time, they were getting sick of the you know the superficiality of it all, and they'd say to him, Give me a word, and what they meant by that was something from scripture that will touch my heart and speak to my life and give meaning to my life. So he came out of his inner mountain, he we was tried to run away from them first.
SPEAKER_00He did very amusing stories of trying to get away.
SPEAKER_01Finally, he came out and started being there for them. So that desert tradition eventually, over a number of years, started to form communities. And Guston had one of the earlier communities, and Basil and Vacomius. And then in the sixth century along came Benedict, and he gathered all the information from those earlier desert mothers and or mothers too that Benedict wrote his rule, but he based it on what had gone on in the past. So it wasn't original, but it was original in the sense that some of the rules that he used as a basis for his own were things he left out because he didn't want them in his rule. And so his rule is still used today. We're using it, the Good Samaritans use it because it's flexible, it's reasonable, but most of all, it's just full of wisdom.
SPEAKER_00And very much full and based on the word.
SPEAKER_01Definitely. So for us here at Jambaroo, we have the early morning office individuals and then straight up individuals at Lexio Divina. So we've got two hours that we can spend time in reading the Word of God in Lexio Divina. That's the most wonderful if it's so early in the morning, it's we start before sunrise, and there's this sense of just deepening and going further into God's Word. Some days there's nothing there, some days it feels like a drag, but to go every day and stay at it is life-changing. We do that every day, we never miss out. We don't do it together, we do it separately in our own cells or wherever we want to go. And that's very much part of Benedictine life, and it's gone from the 6th century all the way through all the centuries right up until the present time. But he stayed in the monasteries, and it wasn't really till Vatican II, when at Vatican II, the people who were there talking about how to respond to God in this day and age, they came up with the notion that it should be available for everybody. Catholics didn't read the Bible when I was growing up, we didn't go near it, but because it was thought that we weren't educated enough to understand, you know, how to interpret it. So Lexia Divina really came to the four people outside monasteries after Vatican II. But as far as I know, and and you might be able to have more of an idea about this than I do, as far as I know, it's only in more recent years that people have really started to take it up. Is that right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it wasn't something in my era growing up in through school in the 80s that it was particularly taught about at all. It was really much later, I think in the last 25 years perhaps, that it's really starting to be embedded in a way of teaching and engaging with scripture at an educational level, but also then beyond that in adult education and parish groups, probably where it's happening more now.
SPEAKER_01Yes, it's a treasure, it's a gift, and it ought to be available to everybody. And that's what I'm hoping that with this manual might make it more available to everybody.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. Well, before we start digging into the book itself a little bit more, thank you for sharing that background. It was a very concise history of the can you share a little bit about your own journey at Lexio Divina and outlining a little bit more about what it actually means. So Lectio Divina being divine reading. For those that are not familiar with it at all, perhaps you couldn't share how you came to it initially and your journey with it.
SPEAKER_01I had never heard of it until I came to the Benedictines. And when I entered and read into the Noviticiate, that's when I was first introduced to it. So I think because I loved that long space in the morning where we had that time for Lexio, I really took to it. We're lucky enough, the monastery here, the in our cell, which by the way, cell isn't a prison cell, it's uh what we see as our heavenly abode. So we had a loft in our cell, a prayer loft. So it was lovely to be able to go upstairs into the prayer loft after vitals and Just take a short passage and just be there with it. So I took to it straight away, but I hadn't heard of it until I came to the monastery. We have six years before we make a solemn profession. After I made my solemn profession, probably about a year later, the abbess asked me if I would be willing to give Lexia Divina in our cottages. We've got retreat cottages here at the Abbey, and people say and make their retreat. And every Wednesday we used to offer Lectio Divina down in the cottages and on a Friday Christian meditation. So one of the other nuns had been doing Lexio, but I was asked to do it. So that meant that I entered into another level of Lectio. But I loved those times. There'd be guests staying in the cottages, but local people used to come as well. And we'd just read the word of God together and listen in stillness and quiet and then share. And I I think it's wonderful to be able to do it in a group because when people share what they've heard, it's it's quite profound. And it touches your own heart, one's own heart. And it's not like you have to know it from a head level. It's got nothing to do with the head level at all. It's the heart level where God dwells in us, and that's where we really hear the word for our own life.
SPEAKER_00It's quite a different experience from the personal Lexio Divina experience to the group experience. I think sometimes, as you're saying, when people share, whether you share or not, yet it's sometimes you hear an echo of your own sharing or your own kind of experience in others' sharing as well. It has many levels of enriching the experience and enriching the word for that day.
SPEAKER_01I really agree with that. What's freeing about it, certainly with the groups we have, is that there's no pressure whatsoever to share. So some people don't, but exactly what you said, when people do share, it touches your heart and you hear experiences that you also have too in your own life at with God's word. So doing it in a group is really, I think, the way to go. It's not that people can't do it, it's individuals. You still can, and it's still important to do that. But it's wonderful to be able to do it in a group.
SPEAKER_00And I think the group experience, it takes you out of your head quickly. I think sometimes we get too stuck there, and I think that it kind of helps traverse that pathway from head to heart faster if it sometimes when we're alone and we're inexperienced, can't move away from the head.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Sometimes people can be threatened even by the words Lexia Divina, but to remember about it is that it heart space, as we've just said, it's not head space. So it's not Bible study, it's not theology, it's not doing a BA in theology or scripture study, it's none of those things. It's prayer, it's engagement, it's relationship with God. Don't have to know anything to do that.
SPEAKER_00That's the beauty of it. And I think for those that still carry the baggage of not knowing scripture well enough to enter into it, I think it is a perfect way to engage the beginners as well as those that have been doing it forever.
SPEAKER_01You don't need to know your way around the Bible to do it. The manual does help to put you on the path. Yeah. It's just prayer, it's just relationship. That's what it is.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Let's talk a bit more about the book. The book has such a practical structure to it, as you say, providing facilitators and participants alike with formation as they go. Can you tell us a bit about the inspiration for writing this book? Who was it initially aimed for?
SPEAKER_01In terms of inspiration, it came to me about a year ago. I was thinking about when during the pandemic, when people couldn't come to our cottages anymore, so there was no more lixio. At that stage, I didn't even think of Zoom or online, anything like that, but felt really strongly called to see how we can engage people, how can we still offer this? And at the same time, I was reading some of Pope Francis' social teaching, and you know, he was saying that we're not in an epoch of change, we're actually in a change of epoch. All the old ways of living and being no longer apply, and that we have to find new ways of living and being, and that the way back is through the human heart, it's conversion at the level of the human heart. That's what's going to save humanity. So I really see Lexio as the key to that, and I felt really strongly called to write it. It did feel like an assignment. I I have to say I found it, I won't say a drudgery, that wasn't it, but I have been writing online retreats, which I found very creative and very, you know, fulfilling. This was different from that, just different way of writing. But God was there the whole time. The Holy Spirit just provided everything I needed all the way through, finished it at the end of last year with the conviction that this is of the Holy Spirit. I don't say that often, but I can fairly confidently say that I think this is from the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00It's a different service in some ways. I certainly got an immediate sense of its worst when I started to engage with it. It was such a practical, but it's a light touch, but it's dense at the same time, if that makes sense. There is so much there. How do you imagine groups using this book? Or individuals for that matter?
SPEAKER_01Individuals and groups. So it's for anyone and everyone. I've even realized that you could actually do it in infant schools, being an infants teacher. I hadn't thought of that when I was writing it, but I thought, you know, little children would really take to this. So they couldn't read it, of course, early on when they don't know how to read, but you can read it to them, and children would really take to it. Well, you could use it for formation or people who are on boards, like educational institutions or boards of charities or groups of teachers who come to meetings. There are different ways that you could use it to begin those meetings so that you don't sit down straight to business, but people could actually do some Lexio together, even just for 15 minutes before the meeting starts.
SPEAKER_00Well, I tell you what, teachers are going to love this book because you've set them lesson plans and everything they could possibly desire in order to help them out.
SPEAKER_01Yes. And I must say the schools are really already taking it on board in a way that's quite extraordinary. And I haven't even really started advertising it very much yet.
SPEAKER_00Well, we'll be helping you because it's a treasure very worth having within our whole community, but I think absolutely beyond as well.
SPEAKER_01So in the parishes, too, Gabriel, pastoral workers and people who work in parishes and could start Alexia Divina group, you don't really have to know how to do it. The manual will teach you how to do it, and it's simple. In order to explain how to do it, I've had to set it out in steps. So it can look like it's complicated, but that's the only way I can explain it. But it's not complicated. It's actually a very simple process.
SPEAKER_00No, I think you set it out very clearly. Also, not just clear steps, but also ways of taking it in different directions and going deeper. In fact, one of the inputs within the book is talking about the four senses of scripture. Would you like to touch on that for a minute to explain that?
SPEAKER_01And that came from very early on, probably around about the Middle Ages, I think, from St. Bede. He realized that there were senses. Now, what we mean by senses is probably channels of formation. For instance, there's the literal sense of a text. So that's simply what the writer was talking about when, well, for as examples, which I use in the book, Jesus was born in Bethlehem. So that's the literal sense. There was a census, and Mary and Joseph had to go to Bethlehem and he was born there. And then there's an allegorical sense, and what that simply means is how does this story relate to my own life? Can I fit myself in this, for instance, with St. Anthony, when Jesus said to the rich young man, go sell everything you have. For Anthony, the allegorical sense was, yeah, he's saying that to me now in my life, all those years later, three centuries later. And if he can talk to us now in our life too, through the stories in scripture. So we can find ourselves in the story and then allow it to relate it to our life. That's the allegorical sense. And there's also the moral sense, which is well, what's it telling me to do? How am I to change? Is it telling me to change? What decision do I have to make in terms of my life? And then finally, there's what's called the mystical sense, which is when we put it all down and we just sit in quiet and stillness and peace and listening, and we let God take over. And what happens is what God decides. If nothing happens, that's okay. But sometimes there'll be quite a profound experience of God in that quiet time. So they're the four senses of scripture, they all form us in different ways.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. And then there's wonderful input from Michael Casey in the book as well, from his great work on Lexio Divina and the steps of Lexio Divina.
SPEAKER_01Seven principles of Lexio Divina.
SPEAKER_00Yes. There is a great deal of simplicity, but as I said, dense content within there to help people find their way through from the simple to taking it steps further in their own knowledge and experience. I imagine over the years, in your experience to the practice of Lexio Divina, there have been seasons and different ways of engaging at different times. Are there perhaps insights that you have gained through both the teaching and the practice that might help sustain those who are just starting out on the journey?
SPEAKER_01First thing I would say is, and people probably don't like this word, don't like using it, but I have to discipline.
SPEAKER_00I had a feeling that's what was coming.
SPEAKER_01We have to stay at it. Make a decision about how much time you're going to give to it in a week. It might be three times a week, it could be every day like we do, but make it possible. Don't put yourself into a situation where you can't do it. But something you can manage and then stick to it no matter what. Be disciplined because if we're not disciplined, it will slip away from us. And once that happens, we can probably be in a situation where we might never go back to it and we miss out on so much if we do that. In the early stages, often you hear a word that's a nice, encouraging, uplifting word. So God seems to do that with us for a while, and then come the challenging word. And when we use word, we're not just talking about one word, could just be one word, but sometimes it's a phrase, sometimes it's a whole sentence. But the challenging ones come, and that's the really critical stage to stay with it, to be patient and to be open and not be afraid, because God will never take us to some place that we're not able to cope with. So it's not threatening in any way whatsoever. There's no one we're safer with than God. There's nothing to be afraid of, there's nothing to be nervous about, there's a lot to be excited about. It is a work. Benedict actually has it in his rule, in the chapter on the daily manual labor. It's a work in the sense that we have we stay at it and we do it when we commit ourselves whatever time to stay with it. Not to be discouraged, go on believing in the nothingness, something is actually happening, God is doing something. There'll be times when there are lots of comforts and consolations, there'll be times when there's nothing like that. But to trust, to really trust and entrust oneself.
SPEAKER_00I think bringing it back to remembering that it's about entering into a relationship that helps us understand the seasons of it. Because you know, yeah, when you make a new friend, you have the kind of the honeymoon season, then sometimes it gets tougher, and you have to make the commitment to like, is this something I really want to be part of? Is this something I want to nurture? And so then you have to take the tough or the tricky bit there with the other.
SPEAKER_01It's a really good, a really good way of looking at it because that's exactly it's a it is a relationship and it's going to go through different stages. The other thing about relationship that we need to remember too is that that it's a dialogue. So not just God doing all the talking. You know, we've got an opportunity to say something to God too as the process goes on. So we need to know that we can say whatever we want to say to God and it's going to be okay.
SPEAKER_00I think perhaps when starting out to help with the discipline, is it to have a group that's going to help you keep accountable, set aside a time that that group's going to meet, and that'll actually help with the moving into a discipline space because you're keeping each other company and accountable.
SPEAKER_01Yes. And I've been thinking only in the last couple of days about maybe having something online as well, because there are people who can't physically get to a group. You know, if you've got young children or you've got elderly parents, you look, there could be all sorts of reasons why someone can't actually go out, even though a group being there physically is best. There might be some way whereby we can offer something online, but that's as far as I've got with that.
SPEAKER_00Well, that sounds like it's a seed being planted.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_00The online is a tricky one. I've led some Lexio as part of online larger brands. It does take a discipline of a different nature to be comfortable in that space, and it takes a little while, but um still worth absolutely pursuing.
SPEAKER_01So I'd just like to encourage people to the if you're familiar with it, then don't hesitate to try and start a group. If you're not familiar with it, when you become familiar with it yourself, then try. My dream is that we can start a revolution. So I'm inviting everybody now to be part of that and to don't hesitate to start a group. It could just be for your friends or whatever. But let's see if we can do what Pope Francis is hoping. We can change the heart of humanity. I think this is really a good way to do it.
SPEAKER_00Well, amen to that. Thank you so much for sharing about your book. And I think Tools of the Revolution book is definitely one of those tools, and we'll be making sure that people can get access to it. So if people were trying to buy the book at the moment, how would they find it?
SPEAKER_01Well, they can go to our website and go to our online shop and then the books section of the online shop, one way of doing it. We also sell it in a shop here at the Abbey, but that's only for people who can get to the Abbey. You can email the books department of our Abbey Books and Craft.
SPEAKER_00Before I let you go, one of the questions I always ask my guests on our podcast is do they have a favorite quote from the Rule of Benedict? Now it might be your favourite or the one that just comes to mind today, and it's the right one, or if there is something that you just keep coming back to, that's something that continues to nurture you in your days.
SPEAKER_01Yes, there is. And it's been with me since from when I first started learning the rule. It's a hard one, actually, but it's a carpeting one. There's a chapter on humility. Benedict has 12 steps of humility, which in some ways are similar to the 12 steps of AA. But the fourth step of humility is that in difficult, unjust even circumstances, difficult, hard circumstances, the phrase he uses, and I'm going to use the feminine, even though he used the masculine, he says her heart quietly embraces suffering. And over the years I've just found that so comforting. And instead of resisting suffering, to quietly embrace it, what does that mean? And I'm still pondering that. But I just like to say to people, don't be afraid to quietly embrace suffering. I don't mean we hang into suffering, we hold on to it. I don't mean that at all. But I mean to be able to allow God to bring us through it as we quietly embrace. That's part of humility.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Wow. Well, in these times, in this world at the moment, there is so much to take on and embrace, I guess, in all that is happening in the world and in the quiet ways of the space in between to try and find that space where we can embrace and endure in all the right ways. We let God be God and find our space in that place. Well, thank you, Antonio. It has been a delight to speak with you. And I can't wait to share your book with all in our community and all of the people are going to have this fabulous tool.
SPEAKER_01And remember, be part of the revolution.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Well, we're going to go out and revolutionise those hearts.
SPEAKER_01Okay, thank you very much.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much. It's been lovely to talk with you today. Listening to Antonia's beautiful, thoughtful, and deep reflections on her own life and on the practice of Lexio Davina gives you some insight into this wonderful resource she has gifted the world in her book, I Give You My Word. I encourage you to pick up a copy and become part of this revolution of the heart so that the table of hospitality continues to be wide, showing mercy and compassion to go and do likewise.
