To Desire Eternal Life: Hope Yesterday and Today Book

"Arriving at the end of my course, after more than fifty years of presence in the monastery, an instinct pushes me to share my great hope of eternal life, as I have shared recently my small experience of fasting. I shall do it in three stages. First, I shall say what hope has been for me, before I was a monk, and after I became one. Then I shall survey Holy Scripture, not as a competent Biblical scholar, but as a simple hearer of the Word, devoted to that lectio divina and daily "meditation" on the Bible which are the soul of every monastic life. Finally, I shall listen once more to some beloved phrases of the ancient monks, before and after Saint Benedict? "But how could one speak of hope without mentioning the singer of the ?Second Virtue,? the poet at the beginning of the century who charmed our youth? Both by contrast and by analogy, Peguy will bring us back, in the epilogue, to thoughts of the Biblical and monastic tradition, which will have nourished our reflection, as well as to the desire of eternal life which dwells within the soul of every monk" [extract from Foreward].Read More