Two realities embrace - nature and grace

A spiritual conference from our resident Benedictine mother superior

Wood statue of Santa Scholastica, Basilica of St. Benedict, Norcia. Photo by me, 2014. This statue, which was my favourite thing in the old basilica, was destroyed in the final October earthquake in 2016. As far as I know this snap I took after dark and in poor light, is the only photo of it that exists online.

Instead of our usual bifurcated Goodie Bag post, today I’m happy to present another very helpful and encouraging “conference” from our friend Mother Marie Billingsley, an American nun who is founding a small traditional Benedictine community here in Italy.

Mother Marie and me last year, enjoying a picnic with friends at the Sacro Speco, a place near Narni where St. Francis of Assisi liked to go on retreat, and where an angel visited and kept him company during one of his many illnesses.

In our book group on the Substack chat, we’re carefully looking at the Church’s almost-lost teaching on Mystical Theology, the science of sanctification, and working out ways we can “pursue holiness” in the context of normal daily lay life in our own time.

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Abbess Cecile Bruyere, 1st abbess of St. Cecilia's Abbey, Solesmes and a follower of Dom Prosper Guéranger

In the Benedictine Book Club, we’ve been going slowly through the spiritual classic “The Spiritual Life and Prayer According to Holy Scripture and Monastic Tradition,” by the great 19th century abbess, Cecile Bruyere. (You can buy it here and here.) I’ve been very encouraged and even edified by the discussions we’ve been having as Abbess Cecile lays out what the spiritual life actually is, according to nearly forgotten principles of Mystical Theology.

Chapter V: The Sacraments

A great many of us have heard all our lives from the Church about the “pursuit of holiness” being a “universal call”, but its incredibly rare that anyone is given concrete instruction about what that actually means. How do we get to “holiness” from where we are today? It’s a question we’re exploring in the group and in some posts for paid subscribers: The Desert and the Pursuit of Holiness, Part 2.

The “interior life” is usually dismissed or even simply entirely memory-holed in an ecclesiastical environment that has for hundreds of years become more and more concerned with the affairs of this world. By exploring what these terms actually mean, we are diving into a tradition that takes us back 1700 years to the origins of Christian mysticism in the Egyptian and Syrian deserts, and the original purpose of the Christian life itself. And why it is not only possible, but an absolute requirement for all who aspire to the final victory.

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The Sacred Images Project looks at art history and Christian culture through the lens of the first 1200 years of Christian sacred art.

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