The Laity and New Monasticism

One should never forget that the history of monasticism and its original rules calling for asceticism and a life of prayer were for the laity. Those men and women called to a consecrated life of the heart. A heart set apart for God to do God's work in the world. A life of ora et labora, lived simply and in community with one another. The tenets of the beauty of this life were adopted by the Christian Church at large after seeing how successful a life lived in Gospel truth could be; having a profound effect on the community at large that surrounded these men and women of prayer and stillness. When reflecting on the words below of consecrated life, let us not forget that this is a state of the heart, mind and soul oriented to God. It is a life for everyone. We are all called to be monks at heart. It will lead to harmony of the heart and peace in the world. It is a life for you and for me.

Vita Consecrata (Consecrated Life) Pope John Paul II, 1996.

[Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Vita Consecrata of the Holy Father John Paul II to the Bishops and Clergy Religious Orders and Congregations Societies of Apostolic Life Secular Institutes and All the Faithful on the Consecrated Life and its Mission in the Church and in the World. Rome, March 25, 1996]

"Monastic life in the East and the West

"6. The Synod Fathers from the Eastern Catholic Churches and the representatives of the other Churches of the East emphasized the evangelical values of monastic life, which appeared at the dawn of Christianity and which still flourishes in their territories, especially in the Orthodox Churches.

"From the first centuries of the Church, men and women have felt called to imitate the Incarnate Word who took on the condition of a servant. They have sought to follow him by living in a particularly radical way, through monastic profession, the demands flowing from baptismal participation in the Paschal Mystery of his Death and Resurrection.

"In this way, by becoming bearers of the Cross (staurophoroi), they have striven to become bearers of the Spirit (pneumatophoroi), authentically spiritual men and women, capable of endowing history with hidden fruitfulness by unceasing praise and intercession, by spiritual counsels and works of charity. In its desire to transfigure the world and life itself in expectation of the definitive vision of God's countenance, Eastern monasticism gives pride of place to conversion, self-renunciation and compunction of heart, the quest for hesychia or interior peace, ceaseless prayer, fasting and vigils, spiritual combat and silence, Paschal joy in the presence of the Lord and the expectation of his definitive coming, and the oblation of self and personal possessions, lived in the holy communion of the monastery or in the solitude of the hermitage.

"The West too from the first centuries of the Church has practiced the monastic life and has experienced a great variety of expressions of it, both cenobitic and eremetical. In its present form, inspired above all by Saint Benedict, Western monasticism is the heir of the great number of men and women who, leaving behind life in the world, sought God and dedicated themselves to him, "preferring nothing to the love of Christ".

"The monks of today likewise strive to create a harmonious balance between the interior life and work in the evangelical commitment to conversion of life, obedience and stability, and in persevering dedication to meditation on God's word (lectio divina), the celebration of the Liturgy and prayer.

"In the heart of the Church and the world, monasteries have been and continue to be eloquent signs of communion, welcoming abodes for those seeking God and the things of the spirit, schools of faith and true places of study, dialogue and culture for the building up of the life of the Church and of the earthly city itself, in expectation of the heavenly city."

---- Pope John Paul II, 1996
Vita Consecrata (Consecrated Life)

The Study of Liturgy

The study of liturgy is like an enormous umbrella that integrates every aspect of prayer and worship: a thorough grounding in the Scriptures along with familiarity of the Fathers, a sense of rite and ritual and esthetics and all that goes into the beauty of holiness. We are so fortunate as Benedictines that we have liturgical prayer throughout the day shaping and forming our lives. And to be actively engaged in liturgical prayer does require an intimate presence of the Holy One and the revealer of the Mysterium, Jesus the Lord, the Paschal Mystery. Knowing the Real Presence, it is a knowledge, a gnosis, that is almost ineffable. Still, we have to pursue the many ways that Christ is present in the liturgy, all liturgy, not just the Mass, and that is why ecumenical liturgies are so important. This is where we can communicate with one another, bonded by the Word, Incarnate, proclaimed, and lived, without being entrapped by a myopic understanding of Eucharist that divides and separates. Returning to the early Church Fathers, liturgy was the primary locus of theology. It was in liturgical, sacramental celebrations that the real theological UNDERSTANDING of God, Christ, Mary, the angels and saints took pace, as it still does in the Eastern rite liturgical traditions. In the West, it is the letter, the law, that has been allowed to dominate: the mystery has been pushed aside. The liturgy is also the primary locus for mystical prayer, the hot plate and spring board for personal mystical prayer and experience. In this regard, the word mysterical prayer should be substituted for liturgical prayer. Mystical emphasizes what is latent, hidden in light inaccessible; mysterical emphasizes what has been revealed and then, experienced in a truly salvific way.

Paraphrased from Fr. Gabriel Coless, OSB, PhD, St. Mary's Abbey

Prophet Priest and King We Praise

Entomb Him we must obey.
Take Him down from the cross,
on our hearts to gently lay.
Rest in us dear sweet King,
as your praises thus we sing!
How are we to be your fruit?
Unless the harvest of you gains,
the hearts of those we have not slain,
but loved in mercy by your grace.

Let us remember in each our days,
that Resurrected we must proclaim.
Only then, then are you gift to sing,
as we render you ready - forever King.
Forgive our failing, forgive our fear,
the world is harsh and ever plunges,
in us, as in your side, the piercing spear.
But we are ready, ready to die,
for you our King through the veil of tears.

Let us not forget that we are yours,
tasked and asked to be with all.
Open their ears and hearts to listen,
as we whisper your Word as sung,
knowing then our work, it has begun.
Teach us, ever merciful Lord,
that we should humbly pray and raise;
our voices to all, exhorting the tune-
of Prophet, Priest and King we praise.

You are what you eat!

For "the partaking of the body and blood of Christ does nothing other than make us be transformed into that which we consume". (55*) LG 26


The fruit of the Eucharist is personal presence. Christ present. Christ re-presented in this small wafer. Consecrated out of love, our ingestion takes place in one single time and place but transcends this moment to join all the other moments with every other host offered everywhere, every time, with everyone. And so with our acceptance and receipt of this gracious gift of Christ, we become Him and He draws us up to Him. Everyone who partakes of Christ in the Eucharist joins as one body to unite ourselves to Him and to each other. He looks down on our suffering and out of compassion and tenderness for our sinfulness, He transforms Himself into this small wafer of wheat to meet us in our pilgrimage of faith. And so, as we are drawn up to Him, we are transformed by the grace of His presence. Our sinfulness forgotten, He welcomes us into His loving presence, to fill us, and meet us and reunite us to each other, living and dead. A true communion of saints. Our transformation is that call to become saints. In consuming, we are consumed by Him, the Bread of Life.

Ecumenical Noise

Is it more important to focus on living the Gospel in our midst than the arguments of our creedal faith and its liturgical expression? Is it more important to remember the historical development of the Sermon on the Mount and its etiology in the Hebrew Scriptures' Levitical Holiness Code. Its expression also in the Qur'an? Isn't the fact that we believe in One God the only point that really matters? And why do we in our human perspectives with all its frailties, believe that we can know the mind of God who searches the heart of all? Is this place, this place of believing in One God, the place of unity between us, that supersedes all other experiences and expressions of religion? Creedal or Liturgical, Dogmatic or Doctrinal? Is this the place where we begin to live, "Love God and love thy neighbor as thyself?" Isn't this the goal of all religions?

So what does a monastic heart, purity of heart, or new monasticism have to say about this? It is precisely in cultivating this purity of heart within us, this stripping away of the vanities we feel comfortable with in order to feel safe within ourselves that we are asked by God to surrender. We are asked to let go of the things of the world, the feelings of the world that would take us anywhere or anyplace other than an expression of love. We are asked to strip away the hardness of our hearts, to smash (horeb) our human hearts to allow the seeds of faith and love to flourish within and around us. This love will thrive to tear away the disingenuous, distracted and detached person to purify and flower the authentic, attached and attuned person whose heart is oriented to God, the Divine, and thereby all divine and godly things in others. Only then can we recognize any other and all others as neighbor. It is the achievement of harmony of heart and therefore the achievement of peace. A way of practicing radical hospitality to others.

Until we welcome within this new purified heart, our neighbor, and love them as ourselves, while loving ourselves in the God we believe in, our religions and their expressions will continue to divide our hearts and us. We are each created unique and good, as different as the wild flowers in a field. Each flower follows the sun with its roots intermingled with the roots of the flower next to it, yet all depend on the same "living water" to exist. Why in the world would we choose to see that as something to be changed, to become standardized, and thereby eliminate the natural beauty that exists?

All in the Ecumenical dialogue will be "noise" until we recognize and accept that the way someone else loves God will always be different than us. We are all fed from the same spring and nourished from the same source. The way another expresses their love of God and neighbor may actually be better than my own. How wonderful this celebration of love should be exhorted and not maligned. Harmony of heart, harmony in our houses of either Church or domestic church or sacred place is the expression of new monasticism... a state of being... not a destination point. It is a place of balance, within us, between us and among us. God Bless.

Cliffs of Moher

Climbing ever farther into a cloudless sky,
Reaching out across a stone cathedral.
Blueness meets the music of waves as
Hearts crash into steep cliffs -
Aghast with wonder and awe!

Stone slopes for sure footing.
Winds glide souls together
As seabirds caw their delight.
Effortless in a quest for union -
Precipice breached by pods of nature.

Stillness

A small stone-like thing
waiting, waiting
to be touched.

The soul plummeting,
plumbing to depths
unreachable.

From the blue midnight
of eternal skies falling
to water.

Tearless slack-jawed
shock fills a quiet room
in screaming.

Time is a cruel tutor
of limitless emotion,
awed in silence.

Stillness, paralyzes
a lost self to awaken
to brutal reality.