Candidates often ask our vocation director
if the monks ever get bored in the monastery. We suppose they want to be
assured that the rhythm of the monastic day is all a great river of unremitting
grace. This is true enough in general, but as one of our seniors admits,
"The most difficult part of the life is seeing clearly over and over again
the sad, boring truth of who I am. The truth is: I bore myself with
my sinfulness and stubbornness."
Surely the truest grace is having seen and
known this painful, neuralgic reality all too well over and over again, and
then and there to allow God in Christ to gaze on us with love and exquisite
tenderness. It may seem utter madness to allow ourselves to be the object of
Christ’s love and attention precisely in our sinfulness. But where else can we
go? Jesus desires to meet us in our reality.
Our senior monk continues, "Maybe it
is the great reversal, the sublime trick of a monastic vocation - I thought I
was coming to the monastery to gaze on Christ, but it is Christ Jesus himself
who wants to gaze on me in my lowliness and poverty."
Jesus is completely Other and
yet more intimate to us than our innermost being. It is he who says to us
over and over again, "I understand." Truly in our sinfulness, in
our joys and sorrows, in our achievements and greatest
disappointments, Jesus says, “I am with you always; I understand."
Photograph by Brother Brian.
Photograph by Brother Brian.
