The Monastic Vocation
by a Benedictine Monk
(This account of the monastic calling is the translation of
a lecture given by <Dom Gerard,> Prior of the Monastery of
Sainte-Madeleine a Bedoin, before an audience of nine
hundred in the hall of the Mutualite in Paris on November
24, 1977. With thanks to 'Oriens', magazine of the
Ecclessia Dei Society, Australia.)
Dear Friends,
I thank you for coming in such numbers this evening.
You are here because we have launched an appeal: our little
monastery in mid-foundation needs practical help. You will
read on your invitations that this lecture is entitled
<Facing the Crisis in the Church and a Foundering
Civilisation: A Benedictine Monk Bears Witness>. His very
modest witness seeks to identify the deep meaning of
monastic life in the modern world. I shall divide my
argument into three parts: first I shall show how monastic
life is contemplative, secondly I shall emphasise its
apostolic value, and, to finish, I shall say a few words
about the little monastery in which you are kind enough to
take an interest.
Recently an agnostic, faced with our foundering
civilisation in thrall to liberalism ("to every man his own
religion", and so "to every man his own morality":- you can
see just how far that can go!) and to materialism (a two-
dimensional universe without after-life or a beyond)
remarked: "You monks, you are the most useful members of
society". We retorted: "How can you say that if you believe
neither in God, prayer nor heaven?" He replied: "Because we
are witnessing a haemorrhage of values, a continuing
evolution where everything is questioned, a real collective
suicide. Now amidst the general rout you monks are
witnesses to the permanence of values. And make no mistake
the day you cease to be uncompromising you will interest us
no longer".
Dear friends, shall we search together this evening for the
secret of an institution which even agnostics regard as an
immovable rock in the midst of this rush to the abyss?
Monastic Life is Contemplative
Let us being with an anecdote. Some time ago a celebrated
guru from India was asked to visit Paris. They extolled to
him the benefits of technological civilisation, they showed
him Christianity in the light of its good works, social and
charitable. Then he asked the following question: "Works,
is that all? But the most excellent work is contemplation.
Where are your contemplatives"?
Was there not a stinging reproach in that question? The
story is not finished: our guru was introduced to a
literary circle in which he heard the spirituality of the
Hindu mystics extolled. Then he pulled himself up and
remarked dryly: "You in the West have mystics superior to
ours. They are called Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross,
Jean-Marie Vianey".
The first incident shows that for many, religion has become
a social phenomenon, where activity is what counts. The
Second shows that ignorance of our own mystical patrimony
extends to looking abroad for what we have at home. And
that raised the question of the place made for
contemplative life in the present-day Church and the
contemporary world. Well, let us say at once and boldly: <A
very great place must be made for contemplative life>.
Because it is not the very work of man. God is its
beginning and end. God by His very perfection gives rise to
the contemplative life. God infinitely merits that
creatures surrender themselves, consecrate themselves
entirely, forever and exclusively to contemplate, praise
and adore Him. That is the truth, that is order, that is
normality. Because God, as you know, is infinite in His
perfections. He is the Lord, the Absolute Good, sovereignly
desirable.
A religion which is not contemplative is unworthy of God.
So because he interests himself in God above all, the monk
not only points to God, not only testifies to Him, he bear
witness to the excellence of God. The God whom the majority
of men forget - it is He whom the monk makes the centre of
his life. The only thing that interests him, the only
interesting thing in the world for him, is God. A monk is
thus simply someone who has been ravished by the thought -
by more than the thought of God; the monk has been caught
up by the very sweetness of God, by the goodness of God, by
the beauty of God. So he reaches out to seize hold
immediately, in this present life, of what others lose
sight of and end by encountering, sometimes too late, at
the moment of death, on the threshold of eternity.
This journey of the monastic life, this radical attitude
before the All of God, is profoundly logical. I am certain
that every baptised person, even if a little dazed by life,
by work, by other activities, recognised, in the depths of
his being, that interior logic. And I shall suggest a
striking example: the story of the conversion of Charles de
Foucauld. While still an agnostic, he agreed, at the
repeated request of his aunt Mme. Moitessier, to meet the
Abbe Huvelin. Begged to make his confession: "But I don't
believe in God, Father"! "Kneel down". Touched by grace,
the freethinker became a penitent and confessed the faults
of a sinful life. Then he got up with an attraction to the
consecrated life, and was to declare later on: "As soon as
I believed that there was a God, I realized that I could do
no other than live for Him alone".
Such is the logic of the saints! Because all questions, in
the end, are contained in one: "Will God be adored, loved,
served as He deserves and as the first commandment of the
Decalogue requires"? On the reply to this question depend
the happiness of souls and the survival of civilisations.
Now monastic life is precisely the total consecration of
human existence to the solemn service of God. And in the
civilisation that may rightly be described as apostate,
which seeks to build a world without God, this solemn
service is a kind of shout, a shout like that of St.
Michael's "Quis ut Deus"? (Who is like to God?). A monk's
life is no more than a witness rendered to the
transcendence of God. God is all, and because He is all, He
deserves to be given all. The monk thus witnesses to the
relative character, the insufficiency of the goods of this
world. God alone is infinite Good. St. Teresa of Avila has
recorded a splendid saying which came to her mind. "God
alone is greater that the soul". And so He alone is capable
of satisfying it. Dear friend, to say that monastic life is
essentially contemplative is to define the monk as a <man
of prayer.>
One day, some ten years ago in our monastery in the High
Pyrenees, a group of pilgrims were being received. They
were shown the church. It was about five o'clock and
twilight on a winter afternoon. After a moment one of the
visitors approached the choir. He thought he saw there,
against a pillar, a statue that interested him. He went up
to the immobile form, leaned down, and, embarrassed,
immediately withdrew. The reason for his discomfiture was
that the "statue" was a monk praying - a still form in the
shadows unaware that there were people around. The story
became known, and we realised yet again the radiance, the
mysterious influence, which prayer exercises on men - on
all men. It is this which is immediately tangible in a
monastery.
Therefore a monk is orientated towards his principal
activity. At an hour when everything around him is
shifting, he remains immobile at his post of prayer. It was
St. Francis de Sales who said: "The world was created for
prayer". And the first impression of anyone making a
retreat with us is precisely the atmosphere created by the
hymns, psalms, silent prayer which bathe our existence.
Liturgical Prayer
Let us say a few words now about the famous liturgical
prayer which makes up the pattern of our days. Seven times
during the day, once at night. As you know, the figure
seven signifies perfection plenitude. Let us recall that
this prayer was settled in the earliest ages of the Church,
at a period in which there was a sense of the sacred. In
fact it was necessary for the earliest monks to practice,
as it were, for eternal life, to give to God that proof of
the love of uninterrupted prayer which makes their life a
beginning of heaven. Hence the figure seven.
Another characteristic: While modern man since the
sixteenth century seems to have shown a tendency to close
the shutters and withdraw to a distant room to pray, man of
old praised God through the whole of creation; and our
whole liturgical office, made up of what are called the
Canonical Hours, consists in adoring God and praising Him
<according to the place of the sun in the sky.>
It is this which gives our prayer that noble, spacious
character worthy of God. The sun is, after all, the most
beautiful image of God, of the god Who is called Sun of
Justice. Like the sun, God spreads His benefits and is
never poorer for sending out His radiance.
This is the order of our Offices, first, at 6.30 a.m. there
is Lauds, which is the dawn prayer singing of the victory
of light over darkness. Then, a short time afterwards
(about 7.30 a.m.), comes Prime, with its reference to the
first rays of the sun: <Jam lucis orto sidere>. Then,
before the Conventual Mass, Terce, followed by Sext, which
we sing when the sun is at its zenith: <Splendore mane
instruis et ignibus meridiem> - in the heat of the noonday
sun. In the afternoon there is None, which marks the
setting sun and the vanishing of earthly things in face of
the Immutable God: <Immotus in te permanens>. Then Vespers,
the prayer of evening, and finally Compline at sunset: <Te
lucis ante terminum.> We shall speak in a moment of the
night psalmody.
These liturgical Offices are made up mainly of the Psalms
of David which Jesus sang in the synagogue with Mary and
Joseph when he was a child. He gave them their true
meaning. The psalms speak of Christ, and it is Christ who
speaks through the psalms. We do no more than lend our
voices to Holy Church singing, in unison with her Divine
Bridegroom, the new canticle of the New covenant. Do you
know that these psalms are poems of wonderful beauty? They
correspond to all the sentiments of the soul, all the
aspirations, all the needs of the spiritual life:
adoration, thanksgiving, praise, awareness of our poverty,
penitence, supplication of divine aid and the outpourings
of a tender, filial piety. The tenderness is palpable in
certain psalms as is also love of the law, of the will of
God, and a rapt confidence in Providence. Such are our
psalms. And Christians have been singing-them since the
Church first came into existence.
The liturgical Offices also express something very
particular which I shall call the spirit of gratuitousness.
You have noticed how modern living is marked by the sign of
the useful, the profitable faced with a manufactured
object, the first question posed is "What is it for"? or
"How much does it cost"? But the most noble activities of
man are those which are, by contrast 'gratuitous'. The
Louvre is full of things which are not used for anything.
They are nevertheless guarded by alarm signals and a
powerful security network, which indicates that man values
them above all else. Their 'uselessness' is all their
glory.
Well, these thing are only a pale image on that libation of
love poured out for the honour of God. Contemplative life
is thus entirely 'gratuitous', in the sense that it is not
a means to anything beyond itself. I would even say that it
is perfectly useless, if I were not afraid of giving
scandal. So ask these young monks, these apprentices to
contemplative life in our monastery "Why do you pray"?, and
they will answer, with perhaps a touch of malice. "We don't
pray for anything"! Understand, we do not pray for
anything, we pray to someone. For this reason monastic
prayer consists primarily of adoration, admiration and
praise.
Dom Marmion said: "A monk's life is one endless <Gloria
Patri>", that conclusion to the psalms at which the monks
bow gravely while singing <Gloria Patri et Filio et
Spiritui Sancto>. A perpetual <Gloria Patri> that suffices,
because we are made for it. The creature is fulfilled in
acknowledgement of the infinite goodness of God. Dom
Gueranger defined the Church as the society of divine
praise. He wanted his monks to be "living alleluias". Why?
Because God in Himself is above all praise. So the
Benedictine spirit expresses itself in a free outpouring of
love, in thanksgiving enraptured by the splendour of God.
"We give Thee thanks for Thy great glory", as we sing in
the <Gloria.> Andre Charlier, a man to whom we owe much,
used to say: "It matters more than anything to preserve the
gratuitousness of love". I thing that this gratuitous
character of love is best expressed precisely in prayer
which is first of all praise; because in praise the soul
forgets itself and total forgetfulness of self is most
difficult and most rare. And already one glimpses the
apostolic role of contemplative life, of which we shall be
speaking in a moment, because, anticipating eternity,
monastic life is a proclamation of the Kingdom where
perfectly pure and disinterested love will finally triumph.
I would not wish to end this brief account of contemplative
prayer without telling you something about the night Office
which, with us, begins at two in the morning (or two
thirty, according to the feast day). Our Father Abbot
founder, Dom Romain Banquet, used to say: "Night with its
darkness, its silence, its pure and secret charm from on
high, invites the soul and draws it to interior, luminous
sanctifying ascents".
Do you know, dear friends, that the night rising is a very
ancient custom? It belongs to the beginnings of monastic
life. When the first monks, those whom we call the Fathers
of the Desert - Paul the Hermit, Anthony, Pacomius began
the great monastic adventure, they instituted the night
psalmody. Besides, we have a very exalted example: it is
Our Saviour, who gave us the first example of night prayer.
St. Luke reports that Our Saviour spent nights of prayer -
<erat permecians in onetione Dei,> "He spent the night in
prayer to God". In the Acts of the Apostles there is a
delightful scene. Paul and Silas are in prison loaded with
chains, and they rise in the middle of the night to sing
their psalms in front of their guards, who come to listen
to them with curiosity.
Holy Church thus instituted the Office known as Matins, and
that so that the night should not escape the universal
praise of creatures. It too must resound with our singing.
And then, you see, by praying night and day the monk sends
out a message to his contemporaries, a message to which
they are in general very responsive: this message tells
them of eternity, the heavenly country which we do not see
and towards which we go. Certainly, I shall not hide from
you that it is a difficult observance and consequently one
which is endowed with a penitential character - and hence a
work of reparation. Think, then, of the sins committed at
night: that black tide of lust which breaks on the world,
the crimes of every kind calling for punishment. The monk
must station himself as an intercessory and pray at that
time for his brothers. Think too of those dying in
hospital, of the sleepless for whom the night is never-
ending, of the misery, the nightly anguish of which we can
have no idea. Finally, let us think of Christians behind
the Iron Curtain who are imprisoned and tortured.
You all know the story, as charming now as ever, told by
Joinville. One night at sea a storm broke over the
returning Crusaders. Among the passengers there was panic,
but King St. Louis cried out: "Don't be afraid, they are
praying for us" And the tempest sub-sided.
At one time France, and indeed all Europe, were literally
covered with great abbeys, monasteries and monastic
"ranges. Archaeologists find remains of such foundations
below the soil every twenty-five kilometres. France was as
if held in a chaplet, a network of prayer. Think of those
thousands of hands raised to heaven, of those monks and
nuns who watched over the temporal cities, who pleased, who
called for the reign of God on earth (which is what we too
ask). What an immense grace what a lightning-conductor for
civilisation! It made the grandeur of the Middle Ages, it
makes possible those extraordinary works which are called
cathedrals, crusades, order of chivalry, monastic schools,
works of mercy, hospices and those monuments of
intellectual wisdom which are the writings of a St.
Bonaventure and a St. Thomas Aquinas. Think above all of
the yearnings for sanctity, of those princesses who went to
bury their beauty and youth in the cloisters, of those
knights who renounced the honours or the glory of arms to
embrace the cross of Jesus Christ, of men and women who set
out for heaven.
It reminded men that there is another world, the world of
God. The sacred penetrated human institutions. It shaped
the piety of Christians, because our West, however sick it
is, however decadent because unfaithful to its vocation,
has nevertheless received a seal, an impression that has
marked it forever: it was the first monks sent out by the
Benedictine Pope St. Gregory the Great who completed the
evangelisation of Europe. He sent them to England, to the
Friesians in Germany, to Spain and as far as Scandinavia.
St. Maurus, the first disciple of our Father St. Benedict,
had already planted the Benedictine monastic life among the
Gauls. These missionary monks were sent not at first to
preach, because at the beginning that was impossible, but
to live their monastic life among the pagans. They founded
monasteries, they lived the Rule of St. Benedict, they
taught men how to work. It is good when a man works well,
when he does a beautiful piece of work. They taught men to
read in a beautiful book which the pagans did not know, the
book of Holy Scripture. And, above all they taught them how
to pray, thanks to the liturgical river which flows
throughout the year and which is the best school of prayer.
In this way, Western Christianity was moulded by the first
Benedictine monks. And something of it remains, something
not always found on other continents where Anglo-Saxon
Protestantism has placed its mark, where temporal success
is considered a blessing from God, where luck evidently has
its place. With us, it is not the same pattern. In our
West, sick as it is (it is perhaps stricken to death),
despite our degradation, our surrenders, there is a sense
of God, a spiritual quest. Why? Because it is in our blood.
It was instilled into us in our cradle. Our civilisation
was signed by the Benedictines in the early centuries. They
laid stress on the gratuitousness of divine service on
disinterested love. And I believe it is this which will
save the world.
Apostolic Value of the Contemplative Life
To grasp what it is which makes fruitful the vocation whose
gratuitous character we have been emphasising, it will be
enough to state a universal principle. <The more a man is
at one with a cause, the more he shares in its efficiency>.
It is quite simple. If one explains to a child, he
understands at once. For example: the more the spirit of
the disciple is in tune with the master, the better he
propagates his doctrine. It is obvious.
This is what Christ Jesus expressed when He chose to begin
His human existence with thirty years of hidden life,
silent life, apart from the world, unknown to man, entirely
absorbed in a secret dialogue with God the Father. Thirty
years of <hidden life> for three years of <public life>!
That is the model set before us by Jesus Christ Who is the
apostle <par excellence>. He began His work of salvation
with thirty years of hidden life, in the apparent
inactivity of prayer and humility. What a lesson for us! It
shows in what high esteem we should hold the interior life,
silence, solitude - things so undervalued by the world: the
example of Jesus Christ is enough to save the honour of
contemplatives.
From all this we can already draw a certain conclusion: the
salvation of the world is dependent of the prayer of a few
souls in love with God. And now, to demonstrate the
apostolic character of the contemplative life, that life of
prayer and sacrifice hidden in God, we shall, with your
permission, invoke the exemplary character of the life of
St. Theresa of the Child Jesus. As you know, St. Theresa
died aged twenty four, without ever leaving her Carmel. Yet
at her beatification Pope St. Pius X called her "the
greatest saint of modern times", and Pius XI proclaimed her
patron of the missions of the universal church, by the same
title as St. Francis Xavier. So we now ask a question: how
can contemplative life be missionary?
Two anecdotes will make us understand St. Theresa at the
end of her brief life, continued heroically to observe the
Carmelite rule. Her sisters recount that shed was sometimes
so crushed by the illness which was to carry her away that,
returning from Matins, she would climb the stairs very
slowly, leaning her hand on the wall to catch her breath. A
sister noticed this. As it was then the hour of the Great
silence, she waited until the next day and then said to her
"Sister Theresa, why do you not ask for a dispensation from
Matins? Why do you go on walking like that? You are
exhausted". And she replied: "I am walking for the
missionaries"! That is the Communion of saints in all its
splendour.
That is why Pius XI, who has been called the Pope of the
Missions, declared one day that he would prefer to see a
monastery of contemplatives founded in a mission country
than to learn of the conversion of 30,000 pagans. And it
was the same Pius XI who wrote for the Carthusians, who are
pure contemplatives, the famous bull Umbratilem, from which
I shall quote for you the following passage:
<"Those whose assiduous zeal is vowed to prayer and to
penance, much more than the labourers engaged in
cultivating the Lord's field, contribute to the progress of
the Church and the salvation of human kind, because if they
did not cause abundant divine graces to descend to irrigate
the field, the evangelisers would draw very scanty fruits
from their labour.">
The second incident took place before Theresa's entry into
Carmel and decided her apostolic vocation in favour of the
salvation of souls. We read her account in the <History of
a Soul>. It is the well known Pranzini affair. There was at
the time a criminal called Pranzini, a man responsible for
several murders, who had been captured and sentenced to
death. He was to be guillotined on August 31, 1887. Now the
chaplain who visited him in prison had never succeeded in
making him regret his crimes. Pranzini received him with
arrogance and sent him away without showing a shadow of
repentance. The young Theresa heard talk about the
notorious criminal, she was moved by compassion (as she
herself said) and she asked God for a sign of his
conversion. The day after his execution, she, opened the
newspaper with, she admitted, unusual haste. And she read
the account of his last moments. Pranzini had mounted the
scaffold without confession, without absolution. The
chaplain behind him was holding a crucifix in his hand when
suddenly the condemned man turned and kissed three times
the crucifix which the priest offered him. St. Theresa of
the Child Jesus herself recounts the miracle in her
history. Let us hear her:
<"The lips of my first child went to press themselves on
the Divine wounds. What an ineffable reply! Ah, since that
unique grace, my desire to save souls has grown day by
day"!>
That was in 1887 when Theresa was fifteen years old. The
following year she entered Carmel.
St. Theresa of the Child Jesus had a very bold doctrine of
the apostolic role of prayer. She drew it from the theology
of the Mystical Body in St. Paul. She explains in <History
of a Soul> that out of love for the Church she would have
liked to take on every role - to be missionary, martyr,
doctor, priest, warrior, hospital worker - but she could
not, since one cannot do everything: <Non omnia omnes
passunt.> Because of the state of her health, she was not
even able to answer the appeal of the Saigon Carmel for a
reinforcement of French sisters. Nevertheless, in her
autobiography she left a testimony to the illuminating
grace which made her understand that if she could not take
on all vocations, she could embrace them all. Reading St.
Paul, she had grasped that in a body there are several
members, but the central organ which drives the blood
through the arteries, bring life to each member, is the
heart. St. Theresa exclaimed them, in a tone of triumph "I
have found my vocation in the heart of the Church, my
mother. I shall be love, and because I shall be love, I
shall be everything". From then on she practiced the
perfection of charity. She said: "One can' save the world
while picking up a pin which has fallen to the ground". She
was a worthy daughter of St. John of the Cross, that great
Doctor of the Church, who wrote in his spiritual Canticle:
"The smallest part of pure love IS more precious in the
eyes of God, and more profitable to the Church in its
apparent inactivity, than all other works taken together".
You see, dear friends, that the contemplative monk may also
become a soldier of the Church Militant and a saviour of
souls.
Our Monastery at Bedoin
And now, as I promised you, a few words on our little
monastery at Bedoin, for which I am asking your generous
support. It was founded in 1970 by a Father and a Brother.
The Father, who is speaking to you this evening, came from
an abbey in the High Pyrenees, where he had made his
profession some twenty years earlier. That abbey was then
in decline. He could not reconcile himself to having his
whole existence unfold in a sense contrary to the Rule
which he had embraced with solemn vows. The vows of
religion are chains of love which bind you in the depths of
the conscience. So he asked his Father Abbot's blessing and
resolved to leave, and to continue to live according to the
Holy Rule in the strict observance and customs of the
Order.
At the end of a year of solitary existence a very small
place of worship offered itself. It was an ancient
romanesque chapel. Five days after he had carried in his
few belongings, a young man came to him asking to be
initiated into the monastic life. He received the reply one
should always give a postulant: "It is not possible, it is
beyond your strength". Moreover I had an excellent excuse:
"By myself, how do you expect me to form you in the
Benedictine life? There must be a Father Abbot, a Master of
Novices, older monks". Then I sent him away - it is our way
of welcoming postulants. He came back three months later
saying: "If you don't accept me, I shall go and live my
monastic life alone in the woods". "No, don't do that, it
is dangerous"! And so he stayed. I tried to teach him what
I had been taught: the Holy Rule, the Holy Liturgy. He was
our first novice. Today he is a priest.
Then, some months later, another young man arrived: he was
the son of a working man. I said to him, "You want to be a
monk?" "Yes, but I have no education; I am self taught. My
father humped grain sacks. I do have the technical
certificate". "You don't know Latin"? "No", "What is it
that interests you in our life"? "Prayer". "But you don't
understand any of it since we sing the psalms in Latin". "I
don't understand, but it helps me to pray". He had put his
finger on that incantatory value of our splendid Catholic
liturgy with its sacred language and Gregorian chant. What
a magnificent instrument of prayer! We received the young
man. He was made to do half an hour of Latin a day. Now he
is able to translate the Psalter at sight.
Some time later a third came, then a fourth. But the whole
Office was already being sung, the great solemn office, all
the Hours were sung. Oh, it was no concert! It was not as
beautiful as at Solesmes. It was not beautiful. It was
grand. Because these young men felt themselves to be
repositories of a grand tradition and they wanted to be
worthy of it. One of them confided to me that without the
splendour of the liturgical life, he would not have
persevered.
Now they are fifteen, if one includes postulants. And I
will admit that what encourages me is their youth (they are
between twenty and twenty-five years of age) and their love
of the monastic tradition. The 'progressive' Benedictines
have chosen evolution. And so they empty their monasteries.
It is understandable. For our young men want the solid, the
traditional, they love demanding forms, true contemplative
life, and not "adaptations". You see, when I ask them - and
it is a question I always ask - "Why have you come? What is
the reason for your action"?, they reply: "I have come for
prayer, for union with God".
God, prayer, and let us add, the life of brethren. In the
end they come to know that marvellous Benedictine balance
where prayer, study, and manual labour alternate, making
possible a true harmony. It is a challenge to nature, you
know, to make men live together all their lives. It would
not be possible if there were not first the grace of the
good God and then the miracle which is the Rule of St.
Benedict.
Yet please, believe that their wish to imitate the monks of
old who for centuries - for fourteen centuries - embrace a
life of gravity and recollection does not take away from
them their simplicity and gaiety. You should see them on
their Monday morning walk as, after good talk and laughter,
they come down from Ventoux saying their rosary and singing
their <Gloria Patri> so that it resounds on the evening air
before they plunge again into the life of silence: "What
can be sweeter to us dearest brethren, than this voice of
our Lord inviting us? Behold in His loving mercy the Lord
showeth us the way of life" (Prologue to the Rule).
That is what will continue, thanks to you, if your are
generous if you allow us, by your gifts by your aims to
raise towards the sky of Provence stone walls like those of
the beautiful peasant houses, so humble, so noble in their
simplicity. Like those churches, those little romanesque
monasteries of Provence blend perfectly into the
countryside. We desire this for the glory of God and also
to help our brothers in the world, to enable them to stay
from time to time in the haven of peace which is a
Benedictine monastery.
Conversions
Sometimes a man may meet God there for the first time.
There are conversions. They are matters of which one should
not speak. But we are among Christians. We know it is grace
which does these things. It is not us. And I shall tell you
that these conversions are made by the radiance of
liturgical prayer. It is the choir of monks in unison day
and night which has led certain Protestants to become
Catholics, and certain souls who had left the Church or
abandoned sacramental practice to return to the good Lord.
And that shows to what point Tradition, our holy liturgical
Tradition, is a bearer of graces. How good to realise that
souls come to know themselves, are touched, come to the
truth at such moments. That too deserves to continue, don't
you agree?
For it is a whole little world that gravitates round the
monastery. It is sometimes even funny to see and officer
alongside a student, sometimes a vagabond, priest,
seminarian, boy scout. All go to make up that good
Christianity which comes to us, which makes with us a
single thing round the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. At the
same time it all evidently constitutes a bastion, a taking
root, a guiding mark in the raging sea in which Holy Church
finds herself battered by the tempest of revolutionary
modernism. Well, there will be islets which will continue
Tradition.
A great cardinal came to see us (he was not entirely in
agreement with us), and he told us: "Continue, your are
witnesses, you are guiding marks and later on it will be
known what exactly the great Catholic liturgy was". The
name of the cardinal was Charles Journet.
And so, my dear friends, nothing remains for me except to
ask for the support of your generosity. In this way you
will be taking up again the medieval tradition by which it
was once the whole Christian people which built the
monasteries. Every man brought his stone, and each
monastery built was a window pierced in the sky!
I shall conclude this talk, with your permission, by
expressing two wishes. The first concerns you. It is that
your generosity towards us may rebound first upon you in
graces of personal sanctification, so that we may all walk
shoulder to shoulder in the Communion of Saints; then that
it may rebound on your families, your sick and your dead.
The second concerns us: I ardently desire that the young
monks whose charge I have accepted may live a holy life
behind the walls that you will have helped raise towards
the sky; that they may live there to their last breath in
the daily labour of conversion, faithful to their vocation
of adoring God and saving souls.
This article was taken from the November 1995 issue of
"Christian Order". Published by Fr. Paul Crane, S.J. from
53, Penerley Road, Catford, London SE6 2LH. The annual
subscription to "Christian Order" is $20.00.
Copyright (c) 1996 EWTN
-----------------------------------------------------------
Provided courtesy of:
Eternal Word Television Network
PO Box 3610
Manassas, VA 22110
Voice: 703-791-2576
Fax: 703-791-4250
Data: 703-791-4336
Web:
http://www.ewtn.com
FTP: ewtn.com
Telnet: ewtn.com
Email address: sysop@ ewtn.com
EWTN provides a Catholic online
information and service system.
-----------------------------------------------------------
