Those who have been charged with the spiritual growth of others in houses of religion know that virtually every monastic will face seasons and even epochs of spiritual aridity and doubt.

Centuries of enclosure for the purpose of undiluted devotion have not been without result.  Monastics have learned from one another and from those who have gone before them.   Benedictines have taken tips from Cistercian practices and Franciscans from Carmelites.  Applicants are advised  concerning “the life” before entrance, but no counsel can replace the assurance that, if a calling is true, God Himself will sustain it.

The superior knows how to steer postulants and novices through the straits of loneliness and questioning and into the lives of devotion they seek to live. A rudder must be set early to help  newer “religious” navigate in choppy seas, and those who have been around awhile must keep a hand on the same tiller. The ages and sages can offer no better direction than this: a true monastic must not come and does not stay in order to experience a fountain of delights.  Those who catch the wind of the devoted life are those who are there to GIVE GLORY TO GOD, to delight in Him, and if it were possible, to refresh Him with their worship,  and to offer their steadfast prayers for others, taking part in His heavenly life of intercession.

When this matter is settled, the devoted soul, theirs and ours, can rest and abide in the shade that is found at the right hand of God (Psalm 121:5)

Have you made your extravagant list?  (See January 30th entry)  Sometimes it is important to us to worship with pen and paper, to put into writing the desires of our hearts, especially those places where we really do want more of God and a more devoted life of worship and prayer.  Too much can slip away when we try to keep big, full aspirations in our heads, and sometimes its easier to let things slip away … easier, but not better.  In desert places, habits of worship and prayer keep us from shriveling up and fainting.

Would you like to have two Quiet Times instead of one?  Would you like to pray for each member of your family separately, daily?  Would you like to sing to the Lord at least one song of worship every morning?  Write it all down!  Don’t skimp!  You don’t have to change it all tomorrow, but by the time we grow old(er), we can have so much, if we will make a start and not turn back.  Our latter years can and will be better than the former, but the garden in which we hope to dwell must be watered in these seasons.  Such tremendous results spring up from small steps in a right direction, when our compasses stay upon the Nearness of God.

Sahuaro Sunset, by permission

Sahuaro Pictures, Wikipedia

 Wise counselors often instruct applicants to the monastery in daily practices that will help them start toning their spiritual muscles before the day of their entrance.  No matter how strong the desire to pursue a monastic life, the reality of enclosure and the Divine Office is one of the most abrupt lifestyle alterations around.

 Just as young men and women do not enter West Point or Annapolis with no more than good intentions toward physical fitness, monastic applicants must go into training while they await the day of their admittance.  Once inside, the intransigence of a traditional Benedictine or Carmelite order might unravel the stamina of a young cadet!

Applicants will be given a copy of the rule of the house, of St. Benedict or St. Claire, for instance, to read and study, and they will be expected to keep one or two regular seasons of prayer at home before they enter, as well as regular, and probably daily, attendance at mass, if possible.

 All of this, three times all of this, could not compare with the rigors that await them.

 All of this, three times all of this, could not compare with the elation and the satisfaction that the vocational monk or nun experiences when even their small efforts begin to bear fruit in “recollection,” the constant realization of the Presence of God.

 In the traditional contemplative house, six or seven Offices are chanted daily.  Meals, we have noted, are taken in silence and the atmosphere is charged with spiritual exhortation.  There will be at least one period allowed for private meditation and one for private reading.  Central to all of this will be the Eucharist meal, the Lord’s Supper.

We do not have the aid of rule or superior or enclosure, but we may consider the wisdom of taking our own sacred survey of those things we would like to incorporate into our devotional lives.   If time and circumstance allowed, within the framework of marriage, children, handicap, or career, what elements would we like to make sure were not overlooked?  Thanksgiving?  Memorization?  Singing?  Daily personal confession and memorial of Jesus’ atonement? 

We ask ourselves this probing question: What part of a joyous, worshipful life of devotion and of waiting upon the Lord do we want to go without? 

 We might make a long list, as long as we wish.  Be extravagant!  We might include items that would appear to be impossible to achieve or maintain, such as a daily session or two of silent devotion, daily intercession beyond the scope of our families, fasting and for some, even a form of perennial fasting, and of course, a life of “conversatio,” of commitment to change for Jesus’ sake.  If there are things we cannot fit into each day, we could do as others have done and spend a “Half Day” with the Lord once a week or once a month for longer periods of worship or of taking stock in spiritual matters, or for studying topically for a few hours.  We can choose an annual fast such as “no eating between meals” or praying on our knees daily, and commit that little fast to special prayer.  We can read through the Bible making note of all the verses we find relative to healing or salvation or hope – that’s a great subject for a year’s worth of focus.

Be encouraged to take time, right away if you can, and make your list.  Write down all you want to do, the things you know you should do, and be sure to include the things you don’t see how you ever will be able to do!  If the things we list ring true and important in our hearts, let’s humble ourselves to start with one, even just one, item that can be incorporated into our at-home worship.  Over time, if “wishing” doesn’t make things happen, steady “conversatio” will.  

Here in Cor Unum Abbey, we can move all those extravagant dreams of “effectual, fervent prayer” and unceasing worship into the fabric of our lives, if we don’t turn back in the pursuit.   After all, we are going to be here awhile.

West Point Classroom, German Federal Archives, by permission

Aktuelle-Bilder-Centrale, Georg Pahl (Bild 102)

The new postulant, having knocked upon the abbey door and been admitted by the Mother Abbess and a number of her counselors, is taken through the corridors and directly into the life of the monastery.

Her arrival will often be scheduled to coincide with a period of recreation, when the Sisters are permitted to speak for an hour’s time, so that she can be made welcome by all, and because the superiors of the house must not be absent from the Divine Office, except in cases of emergency.

The new postulant will be led through seemingly endless corridors in some houses, and through the parlor and down the hall in others, trying to take in every detail that her eyes can cover.  She finds herself at last in the midst of the entire community and participates in the remainder of the hour, and then she is led to the cell that has been made ready for her.  There she will change into her postulant’s habit.  This used to be a blouse and skirt, a very long skirt until at least the middle of the last century, and a short veil, and when she reappears before the community, she is as “arrived” as ever she needs to be, if she will stay and take the rule of the house as her own, for love’s sake.

When recreation comes to a close, the Sisters file into the chapel to offer to God the praises and prayers of the next Office.  The newcomer is with them.  She will certainly be lost among the page turnings, the kneeling and rising, the bows, the proclamations and the chant, but THIS is that for which she came.  She can look around her and see that what is to be learned can be learned, and what is given can be received: the monastic vocation she seeks.  To the newest little sister, no matter her age, she believes she has chosen the better part, and it will not be taken from her.

For all of us in Cor Unum Abbey, nothing that we lavish on our Savior will ever be stripped from us.  The devotion of time for prayer or worship will enclose us in His Presence and His faith as days go by.  Our gifts  of daily thanksgiving on the way to work or a song of worship with the children  before they leave for school or quiet meditation on the Lord Himself before the computer turns on in the morning . . . as we learn to do what we can, we will take our designated places among those who have time for more, and it will be enough.

The robust love of God will become our practice, for we will advance by inches of unseen, unheralded conversion, rather than halting on the miles of good intentions.   What has worked wherever others would not turn back, will not fail to be for us, too, a “change of habit.”

by permission, Felipe Ribeiro, Wikipedia

Of all the words in all the world, only imagine which one the Benedictine nun will have to eradicate from her vocabulary?

“Gee whiz!” and “Golly!” had to be curtailed in the ’fifties, and there are some that 21st century postulants will have to forsake, to be sure, but the one that might surprise you is the word . . . “mine.”

She sleeps at night in “our cell” . . . hers and the Lord’s.  If it is askew, she has to straighten “our veil,” and, on the table beside her bed, even the little Bible, of which the Lord has slight personal use, being Himself so inexpressibly familiar with the text, is “ours.”

The Benedictine nun may own nothing, may call nothing “mine” whatsoever, except her sins.

I remember a man saying once that his wife had one little habit that discomposed him: she referred to everything they owned as “mine.”  “My kitchen,” “my “dining table,” and “my children.”  It was a small thing, just a trifle, but he had to overlook it in order to love her freely.  With Benedictine Sisters, they overcome possessiveness in order to love their Lord more freely.

Here is a practice we will not try to adopt in full.  Those with whom we live and work won’t hear us refer to “our briefcase” or “our lipstick” any time soon, but it is very entertaining, not to say eye-opening, to use this plural possessive pronoun in prayer.

What’s more, it is very  enlightening.   Imagine saying to the Lord “our family,” meaning His and yours!  “Our” bills and “our” vacation!  His and ours!

It is time to return to the weight and power of our small “conversatio” practices.   Perhaps we haven’t had that third cup of coffee for several weeks, or perhaps we have limited our television viewing and spent the savings on the Lord – and now, we consider and add another small transformation.  Remember . . . we add to the first, choosing something that we really will (or will not) do for the next twenty-one days.  We are learning to address “our” sins, meaning “mine” and “yours” alone, to vanquish them because they once were “His” on the cross of our shame, where He who knew no sin suffered and died.  We don’t need to carry them, and we don’t need to perform them anymore.

There are those sins that we know we must cut away completely and immediately by the grace of God, repenting if we stumble but turning our backs on them and calling them what they are, but “conversation” helps us with those little twining selfishnesses and lazinesses and failures to love God and others and helps us take proper care of ourselves.  If you didn’t give this a spin the first time, be encouraged prayerfully to consider one TINY tweak that you can apply to the not-so-beneficial habits in your life, the hurtful over-indulgences or one of the empty places where a little discipline or attentiveness belong, like the visits to a shut-in person that have been put off for too long.  Go monthly if you can’t quite go weekly as yet.  Be absolutely sure that you choose something you WILL DO, be it ever so small.  Stop biting just one fingernail, as we say here in the Abbey.  But stop biting it forever.  Next time around, stop biting another.  Fingernails, after all, aren’t “mine” or “yours,” they are “ours” with God.    We were bought with a price, we are not our own.  (1 Corinthians 6:19-20 )

Maybe some of us will even stop saying “Gee whiz!” at last!

2 Corinthians 5:21 … God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (NIV)

1 Corinthians 6:19, 20 …”Ye are not your own: for ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.”

Changing Habits

Cor Unum Abbey photo

For the true monastic, entrance in the cloister is not at all a departure, but an arrival.  The new postulant steps over the threshold of the monastery and into the life she has chosen. 

For some, the wait has been long and the testing has been severe.  The Mother Abbess and her council are quick to recognize  and reject those who would come into their midst in order to hide from the world outside. 

For the cloistered, monasticism is a calling, above all. A contemplative nun lives her life trading distractions for devotion and pleasures for the privilege of pleasing God in all love and obedience. 

Will that leave us out?  Most of us cannot, probably none of us ever will, cross that threshold, but is there not a door through which we may pass into a life of unbroken fellowship with the Lord we love?

We look to Him.  He told us that the gate of life was very small, and the way very narrow and constraining. He said, too, that the way that leads to destruction is broad.  When children say, “But she gets to go!” or “But he has one!”, they only amplify the grievances of our lives without discipline and devotion.

In the Abbey, our calling is not to escape death or deprivation.  We are called to life, and that life is eternal, and it has begun!  Jesus ever lived the narrow-ness of a life dedicated to the Father.  He said, “My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working . . . Truly, truly, I say to  you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing . . .”  (John 5:17 and 19)

There is no door so small or any way so narrow as is this one, but it is open to us.  We may learn to do as Jesus did, to enter life through faith and obedience . . . to watch and pray and wait upon our Father until we only do those things that originate in His life and love.  This is the small door through which life … Jesus’ life … comes into the world.