Monk?

The real monk, the one who’s deepest desire (God) is in line with the way he lives, is a smasher of idols. And the biggest idol he smashes is the notion that being called a monk means he is somehow special or different from others. He doesn’t pretend he is a monk, because he knows he’s just trying, and always will be trying to be what a monk is supposed to be. He’s on the way to being a monk, a lover of God (meaning lover also of all His creation) and never will arrive fully at his destination until he moves on to the Holy City. He can laugh at the notion that appearing different because he lives in a special sort of place, living a lifestyle different from most others, means he is actually different from anyone.

There is a wonderful meditation on this idol smashing in the book Tools Matter for Practicing the Spiritual Life by Mary Margaret Funk, OSB, where she reflects on her own life as a Benedictine nun:

If I’m serious about searching for God, I must undress before myself, knowing that really I’m not a nun, yet. I’m just pretending until the nun-form takes shape. I know deep down that all images of myself must be smashed and destroyed. I dread the process of unmasking my hollowness and all my illusions. They protect me from myself. But now thoughts that protect my illusions have to go. (Continuum 2001, p. 71)

And that’s it! All illusions about ourselves, all the tags we use define ourselves with, must go, be utterly destroyed, if we are to become our real selves, children of God, lovers of life, of all, of God. And that’s what faithful monks do, hidden away in their monasteries; they smash the idol of differentness, of uniqueness, of specialness, they smash the idol of monk.

It is good that I have been out to the common work more often, even though I nearly set the whole forest on fire yesterday burning brush out by Saint Gertrude’s field on the slope nearest the lake.

Wind … flames springing up in the leaves across the creek like the spread of attachments in an unmortified soul!

So, confortetur cor tuum et viriliter age!* Here are the things to be done:
Many lights burning ought to be put out.
Kindle no new fires. Live in the warmth of the sun.

*(do manfully, and let your heart take courage. Ps 26:14)

Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas, March 10, 1951, The Saturday before Passion Sunday

What is this ‘conversion of life’, in latin conversatio morum, mentioned in the monk’s formula of profession (see June 18, below), which Br. Isaac just committed himself to for the rest of his life? The meaning of the phrase can be intuited from the words themselves, this is obvious. On it’s face it means what it says, to turn from one way of living to another way of living. But what does that mean?

‘Conversion of life’ is a twofold act of turning from sin and towards Christ. But isn’t this what every Christian does through his Baptism and the working out of its implications in his life? Yes, absolutely! There is no difference fundamentally between what the Christian takes on as his goal in life and what the monk does in his life.

Monastic life is a particularly radical response, you could say countercultural; it aims at the root of life, at its heart, its core. Br. Isaac and all the monks at Genesee and throughout the world who, responding to a personal call, vow this ‘conversion of life’, promise to follow Christ in this particular place, with these brothers, under obedience to this abbot and his successors, using all the means the monastic life provides for his journey.

Isaac and all his monastic brothers and sisters freely choose to live at the margins of society, bypassing its legitimate joys and pleasures for the sake of the Kingdom. the monk’s profession is a public act, a seal and a testimony, that for him there is nothing he prefers to the love of God and to the Kingdom He promises. On this he stakes his whole life.

There is so much more to say about ‘conversion of life’, but I’m going to let St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the great Cistercian saint, have the last word.

Our way of life is rejection by men. It is humility, voluntary poverty, obedience, peace, joy in the Holy Spirit. Our way of life is subjection to a teacher, to an abbot, to a rule, to discipline. Our way of life is to apply oneself to silence, to practice fasting, vigils, prayer, manual work, and above all to hold on to the more excellent way which is charity, advancing in all these observances from day to day persevering in them until the last day.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Letter 142.