Monk?

The monk lives by the Word. He breathes it in from his rising - Lord, open my lips and I shall proclaim your praise - until his resting - Now, Master, let your servant go in peace. Your Word has been fulfilled.

They gather together in Church seven times every day to recite, hear, chant, and meditate upon the Word of God in the Scripture they live by, and that tells their story as a believing community. In a very real sense the monk becomes the Word en-fleshed, so fully is he plunged into its mediating sign. As he walks the cloister the Word echoes all around him, so drenched in it has the very building become.

Every week at the Abbey of the Genesee in Western New York there is a band of brothers whom together chant the entire 150 psalms, and when it’s over begin again. Some brothers there have been doing this every day for over fifty years. This is an immersion that is difficult to comprehend, and one that transforms a psych, the intellect, one’s very being so completely that a new creation is born: the new man, the pilgrim following the sound of the Word wherever it leads. He is a man of God.

That is not to say one should expect angels at the Abbey of the Genesee or at any monastery. They are flesh and blood just like the rest of us, and have their own problems collectively and personally, some of which they’ll carry all the way to the end, as St. Paul reminds us we’ll all do(2 Cor 12:7). Still, there is a powerful presence felt at the Abbey, especially felt when the monks file in silently one by one in preparation for prayer. It is the Word which is felt, carried in the flesh and blood heart of each of the brothers as they enter the Church… carried in love.

What is a monk?
A monk is someone who everyday asks:
What is a monk?

Dom Andre Louf
Cistercian monk and abbot

There was a program on television last night and it got me thinking. It was about runaway kids living on the streets of Portland, Oregon, some of them living this way for a number of years. Portland has become a magnet for the kids because the city has taken a soft approach with them and also because a cheap heroin is available. Many of the kids spend their time panhandling for the ten dollars it takes to get a hit of the drug, but of course the cycle never ends, and once they satisfy their craving, they’re scrambling to get enough money for the next hit. Most of them are good kids, but terribly, terribly lost.

The thing that struck me was how destructive their response is to a need that is good and liberating, the need for authenticity. One of the girls, eighteen and pregnant, was criticizing society and all the so-called “normal” people who go off to work every day and raise families, pigenholing everyone living this way as phony. At the bottom of her criticism there is some truth to be sure; there are many such people living on a superficial level, chasing after money and possessions and avoiding the deeper realities of life. What is sad is the self-destructive reaction to the inauthenticity the kids see all too clearly around them. Sticking a needle in your arm only deadens the reality, and in the end makes them very much like the people they abhor.

It made me think of the monastic response throughout history to this very same question of authenticity. Men and women seeking to live honestly and genuinely, and pursuing the truth wherever it took them, have fled not to the mean streets, not to drugs, not to self-destructive isolation from others, but rather to the desert (garden!) of truth , of self-giving, of identification with all humanity in solitude and silence. The monastic life, when truly lived, has opened up to countless thousands throughout history the truth that I am not different than you, but that we all are engaged in the same search for the truth, brothers and sisters in the seeking. The tragedy of the kids on streets all over our country is that in many cases what compels them is good, but their choices are self-defeating.

I have a good friend, who one day way back now in the early 70s was found lying on the sidewalk somewhere in Manhattan, dying of a drug overdose. He was rushed to the hospital where they saved his life. Not long after, while recovering, he had a vision of God’s love for him, which changed him forever. Henceforth, he only wanted to seek God and knew a monastery was the best place to do his seeking. Well, he didn’t become a monk, formally, but he’s been living as a lay worker at a Trappist monastery for over twenty-five years now. He lives his own form of monastic life, supported by the prayers and witness of the monks.

There is no difference between what drove my friend first to drugs and ultimately to God’s love, and what drives the kids today on the streets of Portland. God rescued him because he sought the truth. May God have pity on these kids and may they find their way to the really Real, God’s love for each of them personally.

No one is born a saint. I think we often look at these folks we call saints and who have made such a profound impact upon society and somehow operate mentally as if they were born that way. But they were not, and when we use our critical mental capacities we know they were not.

That’s why its helpful to read good biographies of saints; they open our eyes to the real flesh and blood people who somehow became saints in spite of their status as sinners, just like the rest of us. I also like biographies because they tell me about the historical context the person lived within, for me one of the best ways to fill in the historical picture.

Some recent biographies of monastic figures of note would be: The life of St. Benedict–Gregory the Great, commentary by Adalbert de Vogue, Petersham, Mass : St. Bede’s Pub, c1993; Bernard of Clairvaux, an intellectual biography by G.R. Evans, New York : Oxford University Press, 2000, and A second look at Bernard of Clairvaux, another intellectual biography by Jean Leclercq ; translated by Marie-Bernard Said, Kalamazoo, Mich : Cistercian Publications, 1990; and finally, a broad overview of the most significant figures in monastic history is covered nicely in Seeking the absolute love : the founders of Christian monasticism, by Mayeul de Dreuille, New York : Crossroad Pub, 1999. Of course, the most significant writing of a monk in the twentieth century is Thomas Merton’s autobiography Seven Storey Mountain, a book that has had a profound impact on many people in our own time.

I knew a monk who, for me, was a saint, though no one will write a book about him. He lived in a small hut on a ridge out in the woods of the property of the Abbey of the Genesee, where he was a monk. He lived there many years without heat, but for some passive solar windows open to the south, which in winter took off the chill for a few hours on sunny days. Western New York gets its fair share of snow, and it’s cold in the winter. He was a hermit and a carpenter, of slight build, strong as flint (a former marine), with a full beard that could not conceal the brightest, biggest, most ever ready smile I have ever seen. His name was Br. Elias and he gave everything to the God he loved, until he died of bone cancer in the infirmary of the monastery, with his brothers praying by his side.

I visited his hut one rainy autumn day sometime after he died and just sat on the edge of his cot looking at the prie-dieu in front of a huge crucifix on the wall, the only other objects in the room, but for a burner that ran on bottled gas, to heat his tea and soup. He must have spent hours on his knees, alone, in front of that crucifix, which held fast the one he loved. Only God knows what took place there, but I’m certain Br. Elias, at times, felt no cold on the most bitter nights in deepest wintry January.

Br. Elias, pray for us.