This summer, I’m pushing pause on posting here, so I can focus my energy on honoring my commitments to other writing adventures like my forthcoming book with Convivium Press and preparing my syllabi for the new courses I’ll get to teach next academic year at Seminary of the Southwest. If you’d like to receive updates about the book as its publication date nears and other updates, click here, scroll down past my photo of the railroad tracks and the paragraphs of introductory text to the Subscribe box, and enter your contact details there. While I could never be as prolific as Sor Juana (depicted above) was, her witness is a source of inspiration. If you’re curious to learn more about her life, take a look at the TedEd video about her my ACHTUS colleague Theresa Yugar co-created. ¡Hasta pronto!

From The Violence of Love by Óscar Romero
Compiled and translated by James Brockman, SJ
Full text at the Romero Trust

This is the Christian’s joy:
I know that I am a thought in God,
no matter how insignificant I may be –
the most abandoned of beings,
one no one thinks of.
Today, when we think of Christmas gifts,
how many outcasts no one thinks of!

Think to yourselves, you that are outcasts,
you that feel you are nothing in history:
“I know that I am a thought in God.”
Would that my voice might reach the imprisoned
like a ray of light, of Christmas hope –
might say also to you,
the sick,
the elderly in the home for the aged,
the hospital patients,
you that live in shacks and shantytowns,
you coffee harvesters trying to garner your only wage
for the whole year,
you that are tortured:
God’s eternal purpose has thought of all of you.
He loves you,
and, like Mary, he incarnates that thought in his womb.
DECEMBER 24, 1978

Lectio (read): We center ourselves. A member of the group reads the passage above, slowly, in part or in its entirety. Others in the group listen with our hearts, noting a word or phrase that might stand out to us.

Meditatio (reflect): As the reader reads the passage again, we spend time lingering over the word or phrase that stand out to us. Perhaps we name those words or phrases aloud.

Oratio (speak): The reader reads the passage once more, leaving space for the group to reflect on the words or phrases. Perhaps we share what about those words or phrases strike us, about how God might be speaking to us in those words or phrases.

Contemplatio (contemplate): The group takes time a few minutes—in silence or perhaps with instrumental music—to rest in what God is sharing with them, individually and as a community.