A Meditation for our Second Week of Lent in 2026

While Jesus was speaking to the Pharisee Nicodemus, He said, “We speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen” (John 3). For the past few centuries, the Christian experience has been caught in tidal currents of thought. Much of the life of faith has been reduced to what we think about faith, theology, ecclesiology, and God. Yet, the ministry of Jesus continually returned to tangible experiences of God. Jesus Himself is the incarnate physical presence of God with us. “What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.” Jesus was born of flesh and spirit. Each of us is born of flesh and becomes born of the Spirit.

The rhythms of a monastic life invite and help us to live a life in our flesh with the Spirit. We are not our thoughts. We are the fullness of the Spirit of God with us in our bodies and lives each and every moment. To follow our Way of Life is not to turn our backs on our minds but to reconnect our minds into our body and spirit. Jesus shows us the way forward. He experienced his body from birth through death, in joy and sorrow, and through satisfaction and hunger. There is no life in Christ that will spare us from the fullness of human experience.

Our embodied hope is that, in all things, God is present with us. Jesus has been there and is here. John the Baptist called out in the wilderness to make a way for Jesus, and Jesus has made a way for you and me. Each of us has a path before us as individual and unique as we are. Together in community we are invited to welcome, encourage, and support one another. The way is long, my beloved; it will take every day and breath our God will give you.

Each faithful moment, prayer, kind action, and gentle presence meets the spirit of God. Embodied moments of the will and kingdom of God coming to earth. Our life is not an idea or a series of thoughts, but an embodied life we get to live together with our God. For Jesus continued with Nicodemus that “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him.” As we journey with Jesus within us, let us be artisans of peace and hope. Let the fruit of our lives reveal that the world is being saved through Him.

Let us walk this way together.