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I have read this little book several times over some years: A Day with Jesus.

It is a masterful example of lectio divina. The anonymous monk of the Eastern Orthodox Church makes a one-day retreat. The method is to unite all actions and daily living with Jesus. The ingenious reflection, though, is not through the eyes of this monk looking at his day, but through the prism of the written text of the Gospels. So, it is lectio of life done for one day through the lectio of the Gospels.

The content of the book is excellent, but the method is even more beneficial. Again, I read many books a year and find rich insights and compelling inspiration. But this book has challenged me not to simply be edified with this monk’s meditation written with style and grace, but to pick up the same method and do it myself:

I would take my day here at Our Lady of Grace Monastery in Indiana and I’d take the themes that bring me to the fullness of living the Gospel from the inside. I hope this is not too confusing or even too challenging both for myself and for you as a reader.

So, I’m providing the first Chapter….so you can get the feel of his intent and text. Then, tomorrow I’ll write my own meditation as he did using my day and the themes that rise from my own lectio. Again, I’m using the text of the book, not for content, but for method.

Today I simply post his first Chapter. This little book is in most monastic libraries. The author seems to be a scholar with tools of language, especially exegetical skills for Bible Studies. But he also had great facility of connecting this life with its ordinary inter-actions with his deep faith and experience of the Presence of Jesus.

While the book is good in and of itself, I hope to try to replicate his method of lectio and write my little ordinary days. To do this with his depth would take years and years of these little one-day retreats, but worth starting where I am actually rather than where I would hope to be some day. This lectio is a life-long adventure.

Now, for the text of this great little book. (pp109)

A Day with Jesus
By a Monk of the Eastern Church
Desclee Company New York. Trans. From Second Edition French. Trans. A Monk of the Western Church 1964


Chapter 1

Your Presence Today (And they stayed with Him that day. John l, 39)

Lord Jesus, You gave Your disciples the permanent gift of Your Presence. You said to them: “And behold I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world” (Matt 28:20) Oh! If only I were capable of living with an abiding awareness of this Presence! Or even for lack of being aware of it, was my faith lively enough to keep me believing always and deeply that you are here with me and rendering all my attitudes conformable to such certitude!

But after so many years, Lord, I am scarcely beginning. I am so weak! I must purge myself, eliminate so many poisons! I should like to least to be born to Your Presence, to grow in it. With this desire I draw near to You today.

When Your first two disciples left the Precursor, they followed You in silence. Then You invited them to go along with You: “Come and see.” (Jn. 1:39) And so they went. They saw where You were dwelling. And the Gospels says that they stayed with You “that day.” They had not yet decided to remain in Your Presence, for we read further on that they resumed their customary work and that only later did they leave all in order to follow You. But “that day” they discovered Your Presence. They made a first exploration of it, if I may put it that way. They learned what it means to be with You. Lord, I should like today, at this very moment, to attempt something similar.

Lord, accept and bless my intention which is to spend a day with You. I should like to see if I can, and how I can, live with You for a whole day. What I should like to attempt is sort of “retreat” of which You Yourself would be the only guide, in the most intimae, personal conversation. A very short retreat, to be sure, but one in which I should perhaps succeed in extracting the broad lines of the road I should follow.

Lord, You have granted me a precious privilege: the time and the material possibility of isolating myself with You, of looking at You, and of listening to You without being too pressed by urgent, exterior duties. What a responsibility I take upon myself if I do not make the best use of this privilege! Others are called to seek You, to find You in other forms. They meet You (often with more depth and sacrifice than the “privileged” ones) in their married life, in their tender care for their children.

The experience, which I should like to have of Your Presence, or more exactly, the grace of Presence which I should like to obtain is different from theirs. Still, many aspects of these very diverse experiences are the same: and if some men and women who are caught up in their “normal” lives read these lines, I hope that many things said here will not seem strange to them.

As for me, Lord Jesus, since I am one of those whom You have placed outside of the ways followed by the majority of men, strengthen in me the conviction that You alone, Your Person, is my immediate and exclusive end and that I must approach it in a direct way.

But how shall I draw near You? I shall do it in the simplest way. I shall read in Your Gospel what You have said and done. I shall try very simply, I repeat to “penetrate I a biblical ay” the actions of this day.

I admire those who know more than I and are better behaved. But I know my limits. I shall not aspire here to the lofty summits of a reflection on doctrine. I shall not attempt here to deepen the great mysteries of our incorporation in Christ and their “ecclesial” and sacramental expressions. Far be it from me to ignore or underrate the so rich and vast “cascade” which is offered to us this way!

But what I should like to do today is to come to drink at the “source” in very much the same way as it first appeared to Your disciples. I should like to come, little, small and weak, only to follow, to service and to embrace humbly the humble Jesus, (humilis humilem.)

Yes, I should like, at least for one day, to embrace You, to catch hold of You, to “obtain” You. I should like “Your Presence today.” Master, make this day _which I shall tray to spend close to you You _become in my life that small measure of leaven which causes all the dough to rise.

Chapter themes:

• Your human acts: washing, getting ready for the day upon awakening

• Clothing: getting dressed

• Taking up a book and reading

• He wrote on the ground: forgiving and being a writer of God’s word

• Working with hands, manual labor

• Resting…Sabbath, sanctification of leisure

• Personal conversations –signs and wonders

• Outstretched hand to help another

• Going out to work –visitation, teaching on the streets, meeting strangers

• Eating bread and sleeping with the soul awake

• Rising like Easter Morning and Greeting: “Master”