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Articles tagged with unity

Monastic Life As an Essential Service

February 18, 2021

[The following is a slight edited version of a newsletter article from last summer. I am republishing it because of the positive response it generated at the time.]

I had just returned from a Provincial Council meeting a year ago on March 13 when alarms began pulsing through the media about the looming pandemic. We had Solemn Vespers scheduled for Saturday evening the 14th, but as I spoke to the pastor of the local parish and to the brothers, it became clear that we would need to close our doors for the time being and cancel public services. As local and state governments got up to speed with executive orders meant to regulate the quarantine, churches, mosques, and synagogues received the somewhat dismissive label of “non-essential services.”

Monastic life revels in essential tasks like cooking and clean-up–and prayer.

What this label obscured about our cloistered life is that, in fact, little changed in our day-to-day schedule, especially in that which is most essential about monastic life: our dedication to prayer, devout celebration of the Church’s liturgy, and the intensive search for God. If anything, these activities received greater prominence during this time when our guesthouse and Bed and Breakfast were closed, and we didn’t have to attend to the demands of hospitality [N.B. we’re back open!].

As I wrote on our website at the very beginning of the pandemic: “we are all members of the One Body of Christ by baptism, and the reception of Holy Communion by priests at their private Masses nourishes all the members of the Body by virtue of our unity. I have encouraged all of our monks to be aware of this, that our reception of Holy Communion during this time be done devoutly and worthily for the sake of the whole Church and the world.”

So while many Catholics were separated from Holy Communion, we monks had an especially essential service, to celebrate the Mass and be fed by Christ’s Body and Blood on behalf of the whole.

To outsiders then, it may have appeared that the monastery was just another one of the non-essential services shuttered to the public. But in fact, the monastery was the institution within the Church where business went on as usual, precisely because the monastic vocation is essential.

Shortly after entering the monastery, I read a classic book of pre-Vatican II spirituality, The Right to Be Merry, by Poor Clare author Mother Mary Frances. One idea that I found there that truly gripped me was that the powerful of this world often understand the Church better than we do. Proof of this is that hostile regimes typically go after the contemplative monasteries first. In recent times, we have seen examples of this in the Soviet Union and communist China.  The contemplative life is the foothold of the Church militant in our true homeland of heaven. When the contemplative vocation is stamped out, there’s a sense in which the Church can be properly subdued and channeled toward secular ends. As long as monasteries exist, they serve as a reminder that the state is never all-powerful, that we are all answerable to God, the Just Judge.

As we gradually reopen, it is a great blessing once again to be with our friends. I hope that the lockdown experience, though, will be a spiritual goad for us monks to tenaciously hold to the core of our calling, that persistent and uncompromising search for God, the radical desire to empty ourselves entirely that grace may illuminate the Church. Let us together pray for the whole Church, that our sufferings may strengthen the life of Christ in each of us, that we may be voices of consolation, peace, and mercy for all those laboring under the uncertainty of the present.

An Opportunity?

March 19, 2020

At the monastery, over the past four or five years, we have received increasingly frequent requests to pray for peace and unity in our country. There’s been a sense that we had, politically, passed a point of no return, and that the very fabric of our republic is now at stake. As followers of Christ, Who broke down all separating walls, we monks are dedicated to a peaceful political order, rooted in true justice and respect for the dignity of all human beings.

One hesitates to see in an epidemic an answer to one’s prayers, but I have been quite impressed by how Americans have managed, in many cases, to set aside political and ideological differences in order to work together for our common benefit to mitigate the damage of the novel coronavirus. Americans, as a whole, have been remarkably cooperative with the difficult decisions made by politicians at different levels. People are eagerly sharing information, discussing how to deal with children studying at home, offering suggestions for reading and cooking during our “social distancing,” and so on. Perhaps we will look back at this time as an unexpected opportunity to reimagine the humanity in all our brothers and sisters, especially those most vulnerable. If we seek this humbly from God, undoubtedly, He will offer His grace in this potential healing.

I’ve been around long enough to recognize that politicians are, and need to be, opportunists, and so we should be wary of assuming that words will be followed by commensurate action. But any words that indicate solidarity across the aisle open a path for the rest of us to seek our own stance of unity, mutual edification, and reconciliation. As Saint John Paul II demonstrated in his battle against the Communist Party in Poland in the 1970’s, even words spoken cynically by politicians, can, and should, be used by the electorate to seek the goods of justice, good order, and, ultimately, peace.

   
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