Monk?

On the face of it, the monastic life is a very ordinary life; it is a life of routine, simplicity, regularity. In fact, its very predictability is one of the great challenges for the monk, becoming the place where he encounters himself and the truth of it is revealed. Sometimes it’s not a pleasant discovery.

But the truth is we all live by routines. I have to get up at the same time on workdays and get to work on time and put in a full day’s effort, not leaving the office until it’s time. I take the same route to and from work. I work with the same people day in and day out, and perform the same tasks, more or less, each day. There’s some variety, but the overall schedule is there and needs to be followed. The routines at home are very much the same as well from day to day.

So what’s the big deal about the patterns of the monastic life; after all we all follow some kind of “program” in life? Well, there’s one fundamental difference that make the monk unique. There is no vacation from the sameness of the monk’s day. Just like the rest of us he gets up, goes to work, etc., but with a difference. He knows he won’t be going on to the web to check out the best deals on flights to the Bahamas for a week’s break. He’ll be getting up and going through his day as he has since entering the monastery, and will until one day they bury him. This fact is both a great weight and a key to liberation; one is not possible without the other.

Most of us, especially in the developed countries, spend a lot of our time looking for creative and stimulating ways to distract and entertain ourselves so that we don’t have to face the sameness of much of our existence. The monastic, by contrast, not only doesn’t have the multiplicity of opportunities to avoid the tediousness of much of life, he wilingly takes it on, embracing it, knowing it is a door through which he is let go of self-preoccupation and concern as someone who has a special “claim” on happiness at the expense of others.

The routine of the monk’s life is yet another tool designed by the great authors of the monastic life - Antony, Pacomius, Benedict, Basil - and written into their rules of life, to confront the demons of selfishness which prevent us all from encountering the depths of our need for love and to love. It’s here we’re all called to be, called by the great liberator, Jesus, to be friends of God. The monk hears the call and freely gives up all the “interesting” choices life has to offer, takes up his cross of ordinariness and discovers what real freedom is.

A swimmer plunges into the water stripped of his garments to find a pearl; a monk stripped of everything goes through his life to discover in himself the pearl - Jesus Christ; and when he finds Him, he seeks no longer for aught existing beside Him.
Isaac of Turin

“The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found in a field and covered up; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” (Matthew 13: 44-46)

What is this treasure that causes such radicalism? Ask a monk … better still, go to a monastery and spend a few days there in silence in the presence of the monks: watch, listen, and wait. You’ll get your answer … if you really desire it.

But see, there’s the rub. It always comes back to me, to you, to each of us personally. We have to desire to know before we can know. Like I said before, if you don’t feel the desire, pray for it, and you’re on your way. So, get to a monastery, like Gethsemani, in Kentucky, or Genesee, in New York, or New Clairvaux, in California, and unload it all in the presence of men who have found the treasure… and wait for the treasure to be revealed.

I wonder how many people are going through life unaware of their true vocation. The great Trappist monk and writer Thomas Merton reflected on this question as a failure to understand our true identity as children of God in the following quote:

The seeds of this sublime life are planted in every
Christian at Baptism. But seeds must grow and develop
before you reap the harvest. There are thousands of
Christians walking about the face of the earth bearing in
their bodies the infinite God of whom they know practically
nothing. They are themselves children of God, and are not
aware of their identity. Instead of seeking to know
themselves and their true dignity, they struggle miserably
to impersonate the alienated characters whose “greatness”
rests on violence, craftiness, lust and greed. … God does
not manifest Himself to these souls because they do not seek
Him with any real desire. … But desire is the most
important thing in the contemplative life. Without desire
we will never receive the great gifts of God.
Thomas Merton, Inner Experience, unpublished MS., Abbey of Gethsemani, p. 35. Also found in What is Contemplation?, p. 16 & 23.

If there are many who fail to see their true identity as resting in God’s love for them, then there surely are those who fail to understand how this love plays out in the particularity of their own life. The first step, as Merton points out, is desire; without it nothing happens, with it, anything is possible.

If you don’t have it then the first step is to pray for the desire to desire your true identity. If you can see the need for this then God’s already answered your prayer!

Catholic seminaries and the houses of religious orders are echoing with the sound of fewer and fewer footsteps, a process that has been going on for some time now; another one of the far reaching impacts of the culture of that short sighted decade we call the 60s. But not without the help of church men and women who took to the Vatican II call for aggiornamento with a progressive program to rid the Church of its old ways. This they have done, and the obedient sheep followed blahing all the way to and over the cliff. We only have ourselves to blame.

There is a good reflection on all this by Tom Howard in the October 2005 issue of Crisis magazine, titled Ashes to Ashes. I recommend it. He points out a salient fact, that being the seminaries of evangelical congregations are “packed with (young) zealots” who can’t wait to begin their ministry preaching their faith in Jesus Christ as savior of the world. Catholics too actually witnessed to this once. OK, perhaps I’m being pessimistic and overstating things a bit because, yes, there are many good Catholic witnesses to the faith that has been handed on down through the ages. Absolutely, no doubt. Still, facts are facts, and they are represented clearly in the empty pews, rectories, convents, seminaries, and religious orders throughout the United States and Europe. Why the contrast between evangelical youth and Catholic youth? The contrast, I posit, lies not with the youth but with their respective churches.

So, this in large part is why I’ve begun this blog. I want to speak to whomever will listen that the Catholic Church is in need of you, the young, the idealistic, the fiery believer in Jesus. Don’t be afraid to commit yourselves to the Church as she suffers through this time of scandal and confusion. I am writing to get the word out that the monastic life is an unbelievably heroic life of sacrifice in service to Jesus, the Lord of all. Don’t be afraid to give yourself completely, because such a gift will have unimaginable effects on others. You will be a witness with your life to the Truth that Jesus Christ is Lord. Be a monk. Be a mystic. Be a hidden jewel in the hands of God, a gift he will cherish for all eternity.

Don’t just think about it. Do something. Jesus needs you. The Church needs you. Imagine the unimaginable … Jesus waits with open arms …