Fiddling One's Energy

It is high time to arise from sleep. (Prologue. 8.14)

When I was in college, one summer several of us juniors and seniors lived in a house in the city. A single mother with 3 teenage daughters lived across the street. The mother and the two older girls worked every day, but Teresa the youngest was left at home alone. Teresa thought it was great fun hanging out with us college girls. Most of us enjoyed having Teresa around; she was always happy and always working on some project, but one of our classmates could not tolerate Teresa. One day she told her to go home because she was always causing her to sin—in other words, Teresa was bugging her and she told her that if she didn’t come around, she would probably never have to go to confession. We were all pretty upset about the situation. But, Teresa did not stop her visits.

Our classmate was spending all her energy resenting and letting Teresa bug her.

Benedict tells us to wake up, to open our eyes and ears, to listen to the voice of the Lord speaking to us through every person and situation, to spend our energy n learning to live the monastic life. We fiddle our energy away by trying to solve all the problems in the community and trying to handle all the problem people in the community. It is so much easier to fiddle our energy on others rather than fight my own self so that I may love my sisters and my community just as it is.

Let us fiddle our energies to lectio and prayer time.

Sr. Veronica, OSB