Preparing for Holy Week with Mary Oliver presenter Jonathan Montaldo

Raising Our Eyes from the Dead, Realizing the Rapture of Being Alive!

Jonathan Montaldo will guide our reflections on poetry from Mary Oliver’s last collection, Devotions, as we prepare for the festival of the Lord’s Resurrection from the Dead.  This American, widely popular poet offers us “spiritual exercises” for our becoming “lenses of attention” to the beautified elements of our daily living made holy with and through the saving work of the Creator of All in Jesus Christ.

In his book Immortal Diamond: Toward a Contemplative Ecology, Douglas Christi points to Mary Oliver as a mentor who guides us to “attend to the simplest and mundane elements of our existence as filled with sacred significance.” We shall experience Oliver’s “quality of awareness” that ignites our contemplative living. In Oliver’s writing, “all is grace.” In the midst of our joys and suffering, the beauty of the world manifested in Christ excites “the rapture of being alive (Cf. Oliver’s The Loon).” Attending to what shines out from the “family of things,” we learn a more deeply human way to love everyone and the world.

Jonathan Montaldo is a lay writer, editor, and retreat presenter.  His renditions of Thomas Merton’s writing include A Year with Thomas Merton; Dialogues with Silence; and Choosing to Love the World. He was principal editor of The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals.

Jonathan served as Associate Director for the Merton Institute for Contemplative Living in Louisville, Kentucky, for which he created Bridges to Contemplative Living with Thomas Merton for small group dialogues and retreats.  He served, in tandem, as retreat director at Bethany Spring, one mile from Gethsemani and founded by SCN Mary Madeline Abdelnour. He has narrated five audiobooks of Merton’s work including New Seeds of Contemplation and Contemplative Prayer.

He writes a monthly reflection for the online English edition of the Vatican’s L’Osservatore Romano. He serves on the Nazareth Retreat Center Advisory Committee.  He is currently writing Contemplative Mentoring: Reading Thomas Merton and Mary Oliver to Enter the School of Your Life.