Iron & Altar

Everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for the sake of my name will receive a hundred times more and will inherit eternal life. - Matthew 19:29

Peter asks the question with the embarrassing directness that is his whole character: we have given up everything - what will there be for us? And Jesus gives him a real answer. Not: spiritual satisfaction. A hundred times more. The houses, the brothers, the sisters, the parents, the children, the lands - a hundred of each. The community of the Church is the hundredfold of the family given up.

The wisdom of Proverbs is similarly demanding and similarly concrete: seek her like silver, search for her as hidden treasures. The conditions are stacked ifs - if you apply the ear, the heart, the voice, if you dig - and then the then: the Lord gives wisdom. The giving is at the end of the real seeking.

On this feast of Saint Benedict, the Rule he wrote is ordered exactly to this: the daily rhythm of prayer and work and study and hospitality as the structure that produces wisdom over time. The wisdom that transforms a man is not found in a single encounter; it is found at the end of the sustained seeking.

Name what you have given up for the sake of the name - not in general, the specific giving up. Then name what you have received in return - the hundredfold that is in progress in this present age. The counting of what has been received is not pride; it is the gratitude that sustains the next giving up. And carry [name]: Lord, show him the hundredfold that is in progress for him. Let him see what has been received, not only what has been given up.

Lord, I have given up: [name it]. I receive the hundredfold: [name what you have received]. And I seek wisdom like silver - the sustained seeking that leads to your mouth, where knowledge and understanding are kept. Precious Blood of Jesus, save us. Amen.