Witness and communion, are
well described in St. Paul’s words to the Corinthians: In
Christ Jesus … you were enriched in every way [by the Father], with all discourse
and knowledge, as the testimony to Christ was confirmed among you, so that you
are not lacking in any spiritual gift.
This means that the fullness of charisms has been poured out upon us by
the Holy Spirit, and that there is nothing God could have done for us that he
has not done by giving us Christ and by rooting our lives in Christ’s own
life. Both the Father and the world
should look at the faithful monk and see nothing but Christ: this is what it
means to bear living witness. The
unimaginable fidelity and goodness of God have taken the form of his bringing
us into deepest communion with the beloved Son, truest koinonia, that is, intimate sharing of the divine life and mystery,
as if it were by nature our own! Such
intimacy in love may indeed be said to constitute, in a certain way, the vision
of God—seeing God in the experience of the living Christ. In Christ, we have seen God’s Face and we have
been saved! Such union with the Beloved
and vision of him is the end of all contemplation and the utmost fulfillment of
the monastic calling. Through word,
sacrament, and prayer God has rooted us in Christ as our very Ground of Being,
and the prayer typical of this state could be nothing other than thanksgiving
and praise.
Like calls out unto
like, and only if we become humble through conversion, watchful through keeping
vigil, loving through service, and witnesses of Christ’s splendor through our
whole lives, will we be able to embrace as we ought, at Christmas, God in his
form of humiliation as the Babe of Bethlehem.
Photographs of our first snow by Brother Casimir. Meditation by Father Simeon.
