Some of the articles on religious life are a bit pessimistic about the existence of religious life. Many of them suggest that we need to be more socially oriented. I was surprised when we went to Lisle to see the sisters committed to health care, making quite an expensive commitment to houses, assisted living and then eventually full care. Yet at the same time the community is left to be forty people, or a little bit more, and their average age is 60+. So where=s the fruitfulness of religious life there? Oddly enough as it may sound the congregation accepted Mt. Savior which was founded to be a protection in case the governments in Europe kicked them out of Europe they would be able to come to the United States and they stressed farming. Now sixty years later they have ten members and the average age is the 60's. So the issue is - is that the way to go to revitalize or deepen the monastic life?

        Seems to me the first question should be is what does it mean to be a monk and are we happy to be a monk? A monk is a calling to really show the world that it=s important to put God first in your life. The putting of God first in your life does not mean in any way that we are anti-social or afraid of the world but just as important with us to say that God is the center of things. This is the first and real issue. All of you have received formation for this. You received the opportunities to deepen your prayer life, to read scripture, do Lectio, have prayer routinely through the day, live in the presence of God, and so on. Then where is the obstacle to real fruition in the monastic life?

        Fr. Green, in his book Drink From The Well When It=s Dry, says, "the obstacle is precisely on the next step in religious life - people grow in the capacity to know Jesus, they have a pretty good idea of him, from their reading of scripture and study, they even have experience of Jesus, they have some sense of his compassion and his forgiveness, his presence. But the real call is to be conformed or better yet to be transformed into Jesus. That=s where the obstacle is. Because in order to be transformed it means I have to put myself aside and let Jesus take over. And take over fully!

        So this is where the levels of the aliveness in the Spirit are manifested or the lack of it. So the formation has to be focused on this question of being able to really become fruitful in the Spirit. It means for one thing we practice what we have in the Rule as a central virtue humility. In humility there is that interesting degree of humility, number 4, which can be summed up in the word patience. St. Theresa of Avalia tells us that patience gains all things. Patience is peaceful, persevering and insistent because it is aware that we not complete and we can walk with our incompleteness because we know that this is who we are and we can dedicate ourselves to our goals. It also means that we have to be able to sense what=s the shape of the blocks in my life? What=s the shape of maybe some mind sets, that I automatically throw into practice instead of really putting the word of God into practice? It also means that we know how to enter solitude.

        Solitude is not isolation. Solitude is the capacity to grow ever more deeply into who I am. When the Trinity of Persons are mostly who they are they=re in total relationship. When the Father is fully Father he is totally there for the Son. When the Son is totally Son he=s there for the Father. And the Spirit in the fullness between them. So solicitude is the capacity to be a nurturing ground to be fully who you are meant to be so that you are fully participative. Not the opposite. It=s not isolation. Finally the most important thing it=s not enough to imitate Jesus - we have to become Jesus. When Peter was asking the Lord about what St. John was going to do Jesus said, basically, it=s none of your business, you follow me.

Back to Abbot's page