Threshold - Winter 2005

Sent on a Journey: A Story About All of Us
by Thomasita Homan, OSB

Planning to go somewhere?

To browse through travel books, check travel sites on the internet, and plan a journey to a far distant land is one thing; to be sent on a journey is quite different. St. Benedict speaks in his rule to monks who are sent on a journey (RB 67). For this journey, Benedict says, the traveler is to ask for community prayers. Like the psalmist of old, monastics pray “God’s clear commands sharpen vision” (Ps. 32:9), and then turning attention to God, we/they/you sing:

Deep within me a voice says
“Look for the face of God!”
So I look for your face…(Ps. 27: 8)

All of us are sent on a journey, a journey looking for the face of God, a journey that lasts a lifetime. A journey to freedom, to home, to forever. A journey that causes us to yearn, to leap, to thrill, at times. A journey that startles us with outrageous demands or shadows that emerge from the past. A journey that causes us to stand in stillness — to gaze.

Community Blessings for our Journey

In our community, when someone makes what might be called a leap on the journey, she receives a special blessing from the entire community. One who enters the novitiate, professes her vows, celebrates her silver, golden, or diamond jubilee receives a blessing. Each August we receive a blessing from the prioress and one another as we begin a new year of ministry. One who goes on a long trip or needs surgery is blessed. A new prioress receives a blessing. The sisters and their college prayer partners are blessed, as are the community senate members. We bless one another at the beginning of Lent. At the end of the journey, before the vigil of a deceased sister, the community gathers in chapel to receive her body in prayer and blessing. “O God, hurry to my side!…do not delay” (Ps. 70:6).

Sometimes, the journey is hard. “Hear me Lord, and act…”(Ps. 86:2) we sing, or “I am worn out waiting for God” (Ps. 69:4). Immediately and always, we need God for the journey. Pathos and comedy catch us and keep us steady. Peripheral vision keeps us alert to the needs and presence of others on the way. We need our God for the journey! In faith, we remember God’s always-presence: “You have been our haven, Lord, from generation to generation” (Ps. 90: 1).

Day after day, we sing our psalms, we nudge one another on our journey with our prayers, which Benedict asks us to translate into action (RB Prol. 35). But first, our heart and mind need to sing words for the journey.

The sisters on the north side of our choir chapel chant:
Fill me with happy songs,
let my bruised bones dance (Ps. 51:10).

The sisters on the south side pick up the message of hope:
You crown the year with riches.
All you touch comes alive…
…hills are dressed in joy (Ps. 65: 12, 13).

The Heart of our Journey

Together on our journey, we try, as Henry James said, “To catch and keep something of life.” We/they/you try to catch the deeper life in our interaction, in our daily work, as well as in our prayer. Our prioress, Sister Anne Shepard, often introduces the Lord’s Prayer at vespers with the trusting words, “We pray to our God who knows what we need.” In profound faith, our hearts respond, “Your love is ever before me,/I walk boldly with your strength” (Ps. 26:3).

Year by year, day by day, after a litany of people, of prayers, of laughs and leaps, of sunrises and sunsets, we come to realize the heartbeat of the journey and to know the God of our journey, the God who sends us. We know God is present in the beauty of nature, the twist of a plan, the intensity or frivolity of discussions, the death of a loved one in family or community, the joy of a visitor. Our journey leads us to respond to God, “You tend me with love always loyal” (Ps. 23:6).

We turn to the God who knows us, then, echoing generations of those sent on the journey, we sing:

…whenever I walk or rest,
you know where I have been.
If I fly toward dawn,
Or settle across the sea,
Even there you take hold of me
Your right hand directs me.
Lead me along your ancient way. (Ps. 130: 2, 9, 10, 24)

Where Do We Go from Here?

Flannery O’Connor once said, “Knowing who you are is good for one generation only.” Like O’Connor, we who journey discover this truth. Each generation is entrusted with the precious and challenging task of wondering, dreaming, and planning—while on the move. At our community meetings, in facing our future, we face ourselves and our God directly. Listening, as Benedict would have us do, we try to bend the ear of our heart to the needs of church and society, to weave together the hopes and talents, the many gifts of community and individual. Like the Irish writer Lady Gregory, we may sometimes come to our meetings thinking, “All that I’m craving is the talk.” Other times, we may wonder, like T. S. Eliot, “Do I [we] dare.” But we know that, like every generation before us, we will find ways to make the journey. We know we are being sent.

We have had meetings to set our future directions, we have listened, and we have made our commitment to our Directional Statements 2005-2011. This is where we’re headed now:

Our eyes are fixed on our directives—we have been sent. “To him whose power now at work in us can do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine—to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations…”(Eph. 4:20-21).

Our Final Leap

Finally, our souls bow or kneel knowing: “I am the place in which something has occurred” (Nadine Gordimer). Now, “More than sentries for dawn/I watch for the Lord” (Ps. 130:6).

Then we make our final leap of the journey, our longest leap, the one into eternity. We see the face of God.

Then people will dance and sing,
“My home is here!” (Ps. 87:7)


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