June Archives

• June 29, 2011

  “Suffer evil. Do good. Keep doing both until you die.” Today, the Solemnity of saints Peter and Paul, Fr. David preached and wrapped up his homily thus: the Christian vocation summed up in ten words. Simple words, but what a transaction is effected in this expression, the almighty ego crushed between the statements: “Suffer evil” and “Do good”. “Keep doing both until you die”, makes clear there is no provision here for the ego ever coming back. These words speak to the deepest desire of my heart. What do I desire? What do I finally long for and ache for more than anything or anyone on earth? To die and live again. That is what I want. I want to die and live again. No one who has tasted life wishes to be dead. But no one who has tasted life can overlook the truth that it is slipping away from us; passing away into seeming nothingness. If we lived forever, we would forget what life is; forget we were alive at all. There would be no measure of the desirability of life. It is life that ends that we savor. This life with it's black tail is what we embrace so tightly. So be it. But my heart's imagining will not be contained. What would it be to live, having died, and to know one would never die again. Don't give me life or death. I know what I want. I want the whole package: to live, to die, and then to live again. I'll settle for nothing less. God knows this about me and He does not leave me bereft. “You can have it.” He says to me today on the feast of saints Peter and Paul. “You can have it all. Here is how; suffer evil and do good. Do both of these unfailingly until the day you die.”

  Father Raphael

• June 26, 2011

  Walking under the trees near the chip barn, praying with a text from St. Bernard's sermons on the "Song of Songs", I hear footsteps behind me and turn to discover Brother Sebastian sauntering along the gravel road behind me smiling. Every evening at this time, he goes jogging out along the road past the machine shop and toward the vast open fields behind the chip barn and then enjoys a leisurely walk back. We have both set out from the monastery toward the wide open fields in order to be alone at the end of the day. By chance we meet. I greet him and ask if the gnats annoy him. (They are terrible this year!) He says no, and I believe him. He looks deeply content. On July 3rd, the Conventual Chapter of Solemnly Professed monks will cast votes to accept him to Solemn Vows. Maybe he's thinking about that day—I don't know. He looks happy, and I'm glad he's there. I take some care to communicate to him that it's o.k. to stop and talk to me. I know that a lull in the conversation could be taken by him to mean I wish to be alone. Such silences are a feature of the language Trappist monks speak to one another. A monk needn't say to another monk: "I want to be alone." (We already know that about each other). Maybe at home growing up, or at school, when we were teenagers, we had to explain or apologize for the strong inclination in us toward solitude. Here, in the cloister, between ourselves, we don't need to explain anything. Permitting a short span of silence to enter into a conversation is usually sufficient to communicate to another monk, the desire to be alone. I am sensing, Stanislaus would like to chat—or, at least, is feeling too mellow and relaxed to perform the delicate maneuver necessary to break this conversation off gracefully. He lets it flow, and I'm content to have him accompany me all the way back to the monastery, about two hundred yards up the road. At the basement door, I veer right and ask: "Are you going in?" He replies: "I usually make my way around the front of the building and enter by the kitchen." "Have a nice evening." I say, and we're finished.

  Father Raphael

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