Dear Gertrude,

You have been ‘running’, not running away but running towards.  ‘Running’, a striking symbol for the monastic journey and for the spiritual pilgrimage in general: running to learn…running to love…running to learn how to love.  There are four passages just in the Prologue of the Rule alone where St. Benedict uses the image of ‘running’, for St. Benedict knows that God delights in the one who ‘runs’, in the one who responds not with sluggishness of spirit, not with resistance, but with desire and longing, desire and longing to be God’s incarnate vessel of love and mercy.

“The eyes of the saint make all beauty holy and the hands of the saint consecrate everything they touch to the glory of God, and the saint is never offended by anything and judges no one’s sin” (New Seeds of Contemplation, p.24). These words of Thomas Merton are packed with meaning. First he says the ‘eyes of a saint make all beauty holy’….This vision or seeing is possible for everyone…the eyes that behold beauty connect the beauty with holiness…what is seen is beautiful and it is holy, imbued with Divine life….Then the ‘hands of the saint consecrate everything they touch,’ treating everyone and everything as holy, as gift of God