From the beginning of John’s Gospel to the very end, a little word appears over and over again. In Greek it is meno. It must be one of John's favorites. Meno means to stay, dwell, abide, to stay where you are and not stir, to remain, even to linger – all with notes of quiet intimacy, at-homeness, and commitment. In the very first chapter of John’s Gospel, two disciples decide to follow Jesus and they ask him, “Where do you stay?" Jesus invites them, "Come and see." They remain with him that day, they meno with him, and their lives are transformed, all because they stay. It’s what we say to those we love – stay, please don’t go yet. By the end of John’s Gospel when pressed by Peter, Jesus intimates that he just might want his beloved disciple to remain and await his return. My brothers, we are that beloved disciple, individually, communally. And Christ Jesus our Master has invited us to remain, to abide with him here in this place waiting for him, ever attentive to him.
But how to do it, how to be faithful?
Benedict crafts a Rule to show us the way, a way of obedience and intention of
heart. And if we are faithful, the promise is that we will indeed find the
Christ with whom wish to remain. If we have
come here because we prefer Christ, desire Christ, Benedict assures us we will
see him playing in ten thousand places, lovely
in eyes and limbs not his, mirrored and refracted in a zillion faces and voices
all over the monastery. (See Gerard Manley Hopkins.) Where? Everywhere. In the Abbot who takes Christ’s
place, in any brother who has need of me sick or otherwise, certainly here in
this church where we gather to praise him, and surely in the guests who are
always at the door and even on the phone searching for a holiness they are sure
can be found here, though that can be baffling to one who sees only his sinfulness
and mediocrity. So we need to keep our eyes open, attentive with the ear of a
tender loving heart.
How accurately then Saint Benedict will
call the monastery a school of the Lord’s service or, as our Cistercian
forebears would rephrase it, a school of love, a school because we are here to
study love. And frankly, we’ve got work to do. We have to keep at it; there
will be constant practicing and a lot of repetition - kindness, forgiveness and
letting go of judgments, deferring to one another, putting the other first,
again and again. There are no shortcuts but lots of joy and rewards if we
stick with it. And so, Benedict reminds us we must wake up and get to it.
Some years ago, one senior put it like
this to me, “You know, you kneel in church, and maybe one day you look around;
you think to yourself, there are quite a few guys here I must admit I wouldn’t
want to go duck hunting around the world with, but you know, these are my
brothers, good men after all whose virtues I am often too blind to see.” Yes.
And then, one day not long after, I notice a brother, let’s just say our
relationship was not always cozy. This day I see him carrying his little plate
of food back to his place in the refectory; he’s slightly stooped and looking
so weary and tired. And then I sense somehow the Holy Spirit leaning in,
nudging me and whispering, “Excuse me, is this the guy you wanted to make into
a monster? Just checking.” Maybe then, just maybe, my heart gets cracked open a
quarter inch or so. But will I ever see clearly enough? Am I learning anything
here or not?
That’s why remaining is so essential, we stay in order to grow in love and learn confidence and familiarity with the mystery of who Christ Jesus is. We remain because we need to let his love really sink in; to get so saturated with it, so fascinated by Jesus’ fascination with us, so fascinated by Jesus’ fascination with us, that we want to go and do likewise, to love as God loves. Something can happen, and hopefully we begin to take on his beautiful mind, the mind and heart of Christ, and loving becomes second nature. We meno in Christ Jesus and He in us; we cling to him and he to us, wedded to Him by the Spirit we have received from Him with the Father.[1]
God in Christ has come down to take our flesh and seek our friendship. In John’s Gospel friendship is the ultimate description of what it means to be a disciple and the model he proposes for our relationships with each other.”[2] “I no longer call you slaves,” says Jesus. “I call you friends because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. Everything.” Ultimately this everything is unambiguously expressed in the self-offering of Jesus for us his dear friends, there on the cross in his bloody, disfigured humanity. Only true friendship can compel a person to lay down his life for his friend. The laying down of one’s life in this case is not a sacrifice for another but a sharing of life and love with someone who has become my “other self.”[3] As disciples, we have become Jesus’ other selves and ultimately other selves to one another. We like Jesus are meant to share everything we have heard and seen and understood of God’s love for us
True friendship with God is ours because, in the wounded Christ, God has opened his heart to us, longing for our friendship and begging us to become more and more a community of friends with one another. My brothers, amid all the chaos, division, and sorrow in the world right now, our striving, our promise to abide in love with one another after Christ’s example is not nothing. It matters tremendously, for it is truly, most truly, the healing remedy we can offer the world from our very small, forgotten, and hidden lives. We can show that love and harmony are really possible not pious nonsense but truly a word of hope and truth enfleshed.[4] To persevere in this work of love, we desperately need the Food that only he can give us.
An ancient statue of Saint Benedict brought from the monastery of Our Lady of the Valley in Rhode Island at the time of Spencer's founding Photograph by Brother Daniel. Meditation by one of the monks.