Living in the Monastery
Ordinary Sunday 21: 21st August, 2005
Dom Michael King, OSB, Abbot, Benedictine Monastery, Camperdown
Why do some men and women live in monasteries? What, or who, began the train
of events that led them to a monastery and how is this impetus continually
animated? Millions of people, down the centuries, have given themselves to
this way of life, and none of them would produce an identical answer to the
question I have posed. Yet some things have remained constant, and it is
these that both sustain the individuals and also draw them towards others
who are similarly drawn. There is the human being's thirst for God, the
unfulfilled longing to know and to be known in God, to find and be found in
God, to live within the contradictions of experiences in the assurance of
understanding. And there is the desire to serve and to be used.
The yearning for God, for truth, for goodness and beauty is by its very
nature insatiable; and taking it seriously involves living with a paradox.
God in his transcendence is always beyond the horizon, like the secret pale
light of the sun before dawn, or the brilliant, unpredictable colours of the
sky after sunset. God is beyond a person's most satisfying thought of him,
whether that be expressed in a line of a poem, in a long look or in the
silence of wonder. God is beyond what can be thought let alone what can be
expressed. Yet is is God who comes close enough to beckon and to whisper as
people search for him; and it is God's insistent invitation that impels some
men and women to set aside other occupations and ways of life in order to
seek him within a monastery.
Seek as you shall find (Mt 7.7.): but you cannot possess what you find, it
remains God's and there is always more to seek. So we continue the search,
through the years spent within the enclosure of the monastery; with an every
growing awareness of the value of what is given, with increasing courage
when the search is dark and unfulfilled for long years, with growing
gratitude for the glimpses of God's loveliness that we are occasionally
allowed to see and to hold and always to remember. Without this
contemplation, life in a monastery would be unsupportable.
If there is anguish in seeking the hiddenness of God, his very nearness
often brings agony as well as joy to those who love and long for him. As
with human relationships that suddenly burst into a dimension of living that
opens the heart to another's understanding, and in the humility of love that
makes fear of being known to fall away, so in their encounter with God in
the very life which they live, people may be liberated into a rich and
rewarding awareness of his beauty and of their potential likeness to him.
But what they must also see and accept are the many dark and ugly aspects of
themselves which spoil their relationship with God and with each other.
God's care and providence in the little life of each one, in the staggering
fact of creation which in our generation is being more wonderfully revealed
to us, in the ingenuity and the beauty of which the human mind is capable –
the miracle of humanness at its best – in the lovableness of people, in
books, in pictures, music, and in all that is a meeting place with others;
all of these gifts of God are the foci of his immediacy to which the
contemplative soul responds with love and with humility. The integral place
of love and humility within the life of the community arises out of the
spirit of contemplation which is the primary motive that each monk or nun
has for committing themselves to life in the monastery.
The way of contemplation embraces every aspect of monastic life, and every
part of that life has to be tested again and again in the light of this
primary vocation. If the single-minded search – the repeated three-fold
rhythm of seeking, finding, and adoring – is lost sight of, a religious and
even a whole community may be close to living a sterile existence. This
means that there must always be movement within the community. Growth and
change are the fruit of contemplation, for they express the humble
recognition of the not - yet - achieved end of the search itself. For
contemplation draws people into the dynamism of God and enables them to
share his power which he expressed in millions of different ways all the
time. We have to become very supple, if God is to use us a channels of his
immanence; we must have eyes, to see his slightest movement and ears to hear
his whispered word; we may hold nothing back if he is to use us for the
continued making of his world and the building up of his church in every
generation.
The impulse to contemplation lies very close to the second source of
monastic vocation; the desire to place oneself entirely at God's disposal
and to be of service to him in whatever way he wants. In biblical terms, to
seek God sometimes actually means to serve him faithfully. The first monks
were often known as 'servants of God', and it is significant that when
Athanasius wrote his life of the man who came to be called the father of
monasticism, he said that Antony gained renown not because of his writings,
nor for the worldly wisdom, nor for any art but solely for his service to
God. This desire to be of use, to be recognised as valuable, lies deep in
the human condition and is itself a good thing. It has its roots in
awareness of oneself and also in awareness of others, of the fact that they
have needs as one has, that they are worth helping. In other words, it is
closely related to people's capacity to love and also to their need to have
their love recognised. It implies, too, the willingness to be at the
disposal of another.
No one can be willing to serve God without knowing him, worshipping him,
loving him: to try to serve him without this disposition could achieve
nothing, for there could be no point of meeting. Experience of God,
recognition of his activity, response to him as one person to another; all
these things draw people out of themselves, out beyond awareness of others,
into a threefold relationship in which God, someone else, and I myself are
bound together. It involves more than knowing another; it means seeing,
worshipping, loving God's activity in the other and seeing the other through
God. A work of interpretation and intercession is constantly going on within
the life of a servant of God. Heart and head are given over to this labour
of service the Lord; flesh and blood, bone and muscle too. There is nothing
that he does not need to use in us, and nothing that we may hold back from
the service of others because of him. Yet we do hold back very often û
pride, anger, laziness, or sheer weak-will can make us unprofitable
servants. It takes heroism of a high order to be willing to give oneself
away all the time, and the church of the 4th century was quick to make the
discovery that this utter giving way of life demanded the same courage and
bravery as that which had made the martyrdoms of the years of persecutions
the supreme witness of fidelity to Christ. Indeed, monasticism was still in
its early days when its way of life was seen to be itself a way of
martyrdom.
Martyrdom was not simply a laying down of one's life; it was regarded as an
expression of sanctity; and because sanctity is always an attribute that is
given and never earned, it is supremely a witness to the grace of God at
work within humankind. The testimony of the Christian martyr, monk, nun, or
servant of God proclaims one thing: that God was in Christ, reconciling the
world to himself.
The present time is teaching us much more of what it means to be a
reconciler in personal relationships, between groups and between nations.
The cost is great and it is endless. The capacity to see both sides of an
argument is not something that comes easily to most of us, nor does the
ability to suspend judgement. To stand in the firing line between opposing
forces as a mediator demands great self-awareness and selflessness. It
demands a willingness to lose all, to be challenged as to our objectives and
our resources, to give ourselves away to the point of seeming emptiness; and
it can only be undertaken to the extent that we are dedicated to this work.
In the Prologue to his Rule St Benedict exhorts us: What can be sweeter to
us, dearest brethren, than this voice of the Lord inviting us? Behold in his
loving kindness the Lord shows us the way of life.
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Views is a
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