The Joy of God by Bloomsbury Publishing

T H E J OY O F G O D

T H E J OY O F G O D Collected Writings

Sister Mary David Foreword by

Father Erik Varden

BLOOMSBURY CONTINUUM Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, wc1b 3dp, uk BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY CONTINUUM and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2019 Copyright ÂŠ The Estate of Sister Mary David Totah Foreword ÂŠ Erik Varden The Estate of Sister Mary David Totah has asserted its right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication data has been applied for isbn: tpb: 978-1-4729-7132-6; epdf: 978-1-4729-7130-2; epub: 978-1-4729-7133-3 Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters

To Sister Mary Davidâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s parents, Michael and Mary Totah, and her sister, Monelle Totah

C ontents Foreword: Sister Mary David Totah – Father Erik Varden OCSO

part one called to joy

part two journey to joy

Search Decision Growth Freedom Endurance Mercy Darkness Light

13 30 45 64 84 100 118 135

part three surrender to joy

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Acceptance-with-Joy: Her Last Lesson Interview Recorded a Few Weeks Before She Died

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Acknowledgements

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F oreword : S ister M ary David Totah In Wagner’s opera Die Meistersinger, close to five hours of irrepressible singing flow from an encounter that takes place outside Nuremberg’s Katharinenkirche, where the young Eva Pogner sets eyes on a visiting knight, Walther von Stolzing. She knows at once, with certainty, that he is the man she will marry, he and none other. Magdalena, her chaperone, protests that the knight is quite unknown to her. Eva assures her that, no, he is not: she knew von Stolzing before she ever met him. Their first encounter was marked by recognition, for he came to her, she says, just like David, whose image had long held her in thrall. ‘Ah!’, warbles Magdalena, ‘the king with the harp and long beard in the Masters’ guild sign?’ To which Eva replies, No! The one whose pebbles brought Goliath down — sword in belt, sling in hand, head haloed by blond locks, the way Master Dürer has painted him for us!

The scene provides an apt vignette with which to introduce the author of this book. After the manner of her Biblical patron, she embodied at once a venerable wisdom and a dash of charismatic pluckiness. No one who knew Sister

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Mary David Totah (who, like Israel’s king, was short of stature) will have any trouble imagining her stepping forth to confront some braggart Goliath in the name of goodness and truth, her heart firm in faith, her arsenal simply a handful of stones polished smooth by the waters of the brook from which God himself drank on taking our nature, thereby to lift up both his head and ours – for thus the Fathers of the Church would illumine one Biblical passage with another, conflating David’s campaign against the Philistine (1 Samuel 17) with the pathos of the Davidic Psalter’s most poignantly Messianic Psalm (Psalm 110). It was a kind of reading in which Sister Mary David delighted. Possessed of a sharp, analytical mind, she also had a keen sense of poetry: her doctorate focused on the English symbolists. She was always one to go deeper, to probe further, to extend the horizon, dissatisfied with anything that was less than whole – and mindful that the wholeness she sought will tend to exceed what words on their own can express; that it yields its secret most readily through images and signs; that it calls for a response that lets circumscribing reason soar ever higher towards the infinite expanse of love. * When at a crucial juncture in sacred history Israel’s elders decided to abandon the Mosaic institution of Judges and get a king for themselves, they ‘gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah’ (1 Samuel 7.4). David, Israel’s true founding king, later sought asylum in that town when the rages of his star-crossed predecessor Saul contrived his destruction (1 Samuel 19.18). Pundits disagree, as

foreword: sister mary david totah

pundits do, on the finer points of Biblical geography, but there is much to indicate that Biblical Ramah overlaps with modern Ramallah, the birthplace of Sister Mary David’s mother and father. Her love of Scripture, its history and sensibility, was not just devoutly acquired; it ran in her blood. She herself was born in Philadelphia, brought up in Louisiana. Still, her Palestinian origin defined her. It gave a peculiar warmth to her family life. It surrounded her, right into the cloister, with the fragrances and flavours of her father’s exquisite cookery. It gave her a visceral, enlightened understanding of people who found themselves, in one way or another, homeless. It bestowed on her, too, a sense of companionship and fun. Of her relations she wrote: Naturally talkative and hard-working, they radiate hospitality and warmth; they are a people at home in the world, and one of my family’s enduring gifts to me was the appreciation of created values, an awareness that God is glorified in our use and enjoyment of all he has given.There was nothing pinched, arid or abstract about home. I still remember the large family gatherings – the platters of stuffed zucchini and vine-leaves, the dancing of the dubka at weddings, the rattle of dice on backgammon boards, and the good-natured shouting and roar of laughter between adults. A cousin once asked his father why he always fought with his relatives. ‘Fight?’, he laughed. ‘That’s our way of talking.’

Sister Mary David read English Literature at Loyola University, New Orleans, then completed an MA at

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Virginia. She came to Oxford to do graduate work, among the first intake of women at Christ Church. While covering herself apparently effortlessly with academic glory, she was gregarious, hospitable, and dependable. A contemporary tells of arriving at the college in 1981, feeling overwhelmed, and asking the Head Porter how on earth she was supposed to get started. He simply told her: ‘You’d better go along and meet Miss Totah; that’ll be best.’ A lifelong friendship ensued. All the while, in Miss Totah’s heart of hearts, a deep longing was configuring. Rooted in the Christian faith and practice of her childhood, it revealed itself early as a personal call, a ‘jealous love’ in the language of Scripture, a love demanding all. Sister Mary David later described to her sisters in the monastery how, as a young woman, she had one day stood in the kitchen back home in Louisiana, among pines and sugar cane, ‘emptying the dishwasher and having this overwhelming and intense experience of the love of God, and a piercing joy. I felt I could have died at that moment and my life would have been complete. From then on God was like a prism through which everything passed, enriching and intensifying life and filling it with wonder.’ She first visited St Cecilia’s Abbey, a Benedictine monastery on the Isle of Wight, in 1984, by then securely launched in an academic career as associate professor of English Literature at the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia. What the monastery embodied perfectly matched her long-entertained, inward desire. Rather like Fräulein Pogner before von Stolzing, she took one look at the hitherto unknown and knew: here is my

foreword: sister mary david totah

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future. The impact of the encounter marked her visibly, to the extent that friends thought she had fallen in love. In May 1985 she entered the monastic enclosure, cheerily proclaiming her intention to remain within it ‘for ever’. That a woman so talented and lively, a woman so secure in herself that she could be, as a friend put it, ‘wonderfully at ease with the preposterous’, should choose a life of such regularity and confinement appeared to many not only bewildering, but scandalous. For is the enclosure of nuns not a living tomb? Does it not represent the oppressive containment of women by male hierarchs? Sister Mary David came to embody the antithesis of such facile stereotypes. She took issue with them as a scholar, too, notably in her fine history of monastic enclosure in the book Walled about with God. In it, she demonstrates that enclosure, far from being an imposition, has an intrinsic spiritual value that nuns, at times when their life has prospered best, have been proud to uphold, often in the face of opposition. She concludes that enclosure ‘is a condition of efficacy, not only for the prayer life of each individual, but also to safeguard and deepen the contribution of the contemplative life to the life of the whole Church’. In her case, the enclosure of St Cecilia’s enabled wonderful flourishing. Even as a skilled composer might take disparate musical themes and, by rules of nearmathematical precision, knit them together into a complex fugue that makes of each component part a necessity for the integrity of the whole, so Benedictine regularity equilibrated and harmonised Sister Mary David’s gifts of nature and grace in a new song of strikingly original

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polyphony. She brought much with her when she entered the monastery. At the same time she found, within it, magnificent treasures. She was struck at once by the beauty of it all: ‘not only the transcendent beauty of the chant, but also the beauty of community life, a living together with profound respect, courtesy, affection and joy; the beauty of a community dedicated to a way of life based on faith in all its details – but in a matter-of-fact and simple way’. She drank deeply from the sources of monastic life, and found happiness in sharing her discoveries with others. The main beneficiaries were the novices of St Cecilia’s, with whose care and instruction she was entrusted from 1996 until her death. Much of the material contained in this book was composed for them, as formal lectures and as personal notes of encouragement or, when required, correction. For Sister Mary David expected of those who embraced the pursuit of absolute Truth absolute commitment. Halfmeasures, she insisted, were unworthy of love. From 2008 she served as the monastery’s prioress, the abbess’s right-hand woman. What the community of St Cecilia’s meant to her is expressed in an instruction she gave on her deathbed: ‘I want each one in the community to be given this text when I am gone’, she said, holding up an extract from a poem by Isla Richardson: Grieve not, Nor speak of me with tears, But laugh and talk of me as if I were beside you there. ... I loved you so. ’Twas heaven here with you.

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She pointed to the last line: ‘That’s just what it’s been for me here, a little bit of heaven.’ When inoperable cancer was diagnosed in 2012, she embraced the diagnosis as a task, quite in the spirit of Benedictine obedience. She patiently submitted to appropriate care both medical and spiritual, but it was self-evident to her that her death, no less than her life, was part of the gift she had made of herself on her profession: she was not one to claim anything back. On the contrary, she steadily advanced into the insight that defined, and transfigured, her last years: ‘Acceptance, with joy’. That joy did not simply drop from heaven. It was the conquest of a lifetime’s fidelity. The battle could be costly. Shortly before the end, she admitted: ‘It’s a very difficult passage, in a way, to make, one that’s full of joy at going towards something you’ve longed for your whole life, but at the same time pain at leaving so many precious people, precious things.’ But she remained unflinching in her gift, her heart growing wider and wider, overflowing with comfort for others, even in the midst of gruelling pain – a Paschal paradox aglow with glory. On 28 August 2017 she entrusted herself definitively into the Father’s hands, sixty years old. * Longish periods could pass during which I had no direct contact with Sister Mary David. But it was always such a reassurance to know that she was there! Like many others, I loved her, loved her dearly. And how wonderful to have known a person so free, so utterly given, that she could let herself be loved without any risk of even a shadow of

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ambiguous attachment. The one great, consecrated love of her life was always at the heart of every encounter, irradiating human affection with a gladdening light that, in the bustle of the convent parlour, amid tea cups and cosies and Breton cake, shed palpable rays of eternity. Those rays still proceed undimmed. By means of this book they will come to shed light, I expect, in unexpected places. In her obituary of Sister Mary David, the abbess of St Ceciliaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, Mother Ninian Eaglesham, wrote the following: A great soul has passed on, but we trust that her spirit will remain among us, and not in any banal sense. Sister Mary David . . . leaves a legacy, not only of novices who made it to Profession or writings of notable calibre or anything else of that nature but of a spirit transformed by the love of God. This legacy will endure.

Fr Erik Varden Second Sunday of Lent 2019

Why joy? . . . Loving God is finding one’s happiness in the happiness, the joy of God; it is, therefore, possessing complete and total joy, for God is immutably happy. The normal, persevering attitude of a baptized person is the high noon of joy; those who belong to God, who live by God, are given over to joy. Since we are with the Lord, and he with us, how do you expect our life not to be a life of joy, of exultation? . . . Peace for the present, hope for the future, and as the fruit, joyfulness, happiness, perfect joy. Dom Delatte1

Dom Paul Delatte, Commentary on Psalm 1, cited in The Spirit of Solesmes: the Christian Life in the Works of Dom Prosper Guéranger, Abbess Cécile Bruyère, Dom Paul Delatte, ed. Sister Mary David Totah (Herefordshire: Gracewing, 2016), p. 144.

Pa rt o n e

C A L L E D TO J OY It is a duty for each one of us to be joyful. It is a remarkable religion in which joy is a precept, in which the command is to be happy, in which cheerfulness is a duty. Dom Delatte1

Dom Paul Delatte, Conference on John 15, 1902, cited in The Spirit of Solesmes, p. 146.

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Joy, said G.K. Chesterton in his book Orthodoxy, ‘is the gigantic secret of the Christian’,2 the distinguishing atmosphere of the Christian life. It lies at the very heart of the Christian’s vocation as a child of God. Joy is something established in our relationship with God, the expression of one who is loved by God and lives in God. ‘When the Holy Spirit descends and fills the soul with the plenitude of his presence, then we experience that joy which Christ described, the joy which the world cannot take away’.3 Christian joy springs from the fact that ‘we are so rich, so saturated with God’.4 In creating and reconciling the world through his Son, God has given us everything. The Christian has been given joy, as he has been given everything else. This joy, then, is both a gift and a responsibility. It is also an act of adoration, says Dom Delatte, ‘because it bears witness to the fact that God, who belongs to us, is everything to us’.5 Christians are called to live in joy and to communicate joy, the joy of communion in the one body of Christ, the joy of believing, joy in the midst of suffering, joy in spite of suffering. There is no virtue, no circumstance, that is not to be illuminated by joy. It is noteworthy how often in the New Testament joy and affliction go together. Christian joy seems to flourish and grow upon what might seem the least favourable soil. St James tells his reader to count it all joy when testing G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (London: Sheed and Ward, 1939), p. 277. Valentine Zander, St Seraphim of Sarov, tr. Sister Gabriel Anne SSC (London: SPCK, 1975), p. 91. 4 Abbess Cécile Bruyère, Letter, 6 March 1891, cited in The Spirit of Solesmes, p. 141. 5 Dom Delatte, Letter, 7 May 1913, cited in The Spirit of Solesmes, p. 145. 2 3

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comes;6 Jesus speaks of true joy as being like the joy of a woman whose travail has passed and whose child has come;7 in spite of persecution, the Christians in Antioch are filled with the Holy Spirit and with joy;8 the apostle Paul may be sorrowful but he is also rejoicing.9 There is no doubt that in the history of the Church this joy in tribulation has been one of the most striking things about our faith, and its beauty and wonder lie in the fact that it is embraced for love of Christ. As Newman writes, this is one of the chief graces of primitive Christianity: Joy in all its forms; not only a pure heart, not only a clean hand, but [also] a cheerful countenance . . . They had desired to sacrifice the kingdom of the world and all its pomps for the love of Christ . . . and when their wish was granted, they could but rejoice . . . Such was the joy of the first disciples of Christ, to whom it was granted to suffer shame and undergo toil for his Name’s sake; and such holy, gentle graces were the fruit of this joy, as every part of the gospels and epistles shows us.10

This joy in the midst of suffering is nothing other than the joy of love. It is not a question of loving suffering for itself, but of seeing the acceptance and overcoming of it, James 1.2. John 16.21. 8 Acts 13.52. 9 2 Cor. 6.10. 10 John Henry Newman, Selected Sermons, The Classics of Western Spirituality (NY: Paulist Press, 1994), pp. 373–4. 6 7

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and even the choice of it, as a proof of love. It is in this love that the Christian rejoices. As St John of the Cross said, ‘The soul of the perfect man rejoices in that which causes the imperfect soul affliction.’11 We often think of the Cross as an obstacle to joy, as something barring the way to happiness. The saints are far simpler: for them joy means loving someone. This means they can suffer anything and still be happy, if not on the surface, as least essentially. This kind of joy does involve renunciation; we have to lose ourselves in order to find ourselves and joy. St Benedict seems to understand this aspect of joy when, in his chapter on Lent, he envelops Lenten renunciation with a double mention of joy – the only place in the Rule where the word joy appears: ‘Let each one, over and above the measure prescribed for him, offer God something of his own will in the joy of the Holy Spirit. That is to say, let him stint himself of food, drink, sleep, talk and jesting, and look forward with the joy of spiritual longing to the holy feast of Easter.’12 Joy of the Holy Spirit, joy of spiritual longing – whatever you call it, joy penetrates the very heart of Christian sacrifice. This recalls too the ineffable sweetness of love arising out of the narrow way in the Prologue of his Rule. In both cases the joy of the Holy Spirit erupts in the midst of painful, hard effort. It is not surprising, then, to find this supernatural joy permeating the writings and stories of monks. St John The Complete Works of St John of the Cross, vol. 3, tr. E. Allison Peers (London: Burns & Oates, 1943), p. 247. 12 Rule of St Benedict, ch. 49, tr. Abbot Justin McCann (London: Burns & Oates, 1952). 11

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Chrysostom said of the early desert fathers that ‘there was no sadness in them; they made war on the devil as if they were dancing’.13 St Bernard called his monks those ‘who are hastening to joy’.14 Dom Jean Leclercq describes how one medieval monk had such a joyful face that his biographer would write: ‘He had, like the saints, a face shining with joy; he had the face of one going toward Jerusalem.’15 Why are monks so happy? What is their secret? St Bernard tells us that ‘the joyful of countenance have overcome all things. The Lord loves not only a cheerful giver but one who gives with simplicity. Simplicity also is radiance.’16 One reason for the monk’s joy is the simplicity of his life, his single-minded pursuit of God, the keeping of eye and thought fixed on a single goal, what Dom Guéranger calls ‘that deep and sweet peace which comes from an undivided love’.17 Then there is the joy of being called, and of being called together. Answering God’s call is liberating, it lifts the heart – we can never be the same again. We can think of the stars in Baruch who shine in their watches and are

cf. St John Chrysostom, Homily 68, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 10, St Chrysostom, Homilies on the gospel of St Matthew, first series, tr. Rev. Sir George Prevost, Baronet, MA (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1986), p. 424. 14 St Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘Sermons on Diverse Subjects’, 18.1, tr. Fr John Kelly OCSO in Tjurunga: An Australasian Benedictine Review, No. 85, Sept. 2014, p. 64. 15 Jean Leclercq, OSB, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, tr. Catharine Misrahi (NY: Fordham UP, 1961), p. 69. 16 St Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs, 71.3, tr. Irene Edmonds, Cistercian Fathers 40 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1980), p. 50. 17 Dom Guéranger, Letter, 28 May 1843, cited in The Spirit of Solesmes, p. 139. 13

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glad, who say ‘here we are’, and shine for gladness in the God who made them.18 There is the joy of surrendering to God’s will, of being and doing at every moment what he desires us to be and do. This liberation from slavery to self-will is a real source of supernatural joy. We find ourselves truly free to be the people God has called us to be, and in this lies perfect fulfilment, perfect joy. There is a joy in discipline. Monastic authors have much to say about this, and it is striking how often they connect their discipline and asceticism with freedom and joy. Gilbert of Hoyland sees the passage of the Song of Songs about the bride going to look for her beloved in the streets and squares as an image of the cloister: A discipline outwardly strict inwardly expands the soul. Whether you interpret the squares as freedom or as joyfulness, where will you find more spacious squares than in this Order of ours? . . . The greater the strictness, the straighter the way. Narrower streets make wider squares. So what does it mean – to seek Jesus through the streets and the squares – but to restrict and to expand oneself in this way to capture happiness in his light?19

There is also joy in the liturgy, in our life of praise and thanksgiving. In the joy of the Holy Spirit, the Church sings Baruch 3.34. Gilbert of Hoyland, Sermons on the Song of Songs I 5.7, tr. Lawrence C. Braceland SJ, Cistercian Fathers 14 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1978), p. 91. 18

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spiritual canticles.20 And the liturgy leads us to realise that it is through Christ that we enter into the joy of the Father. In Christ’s thanksgiving and joy, in the Eucharist, the fruit of his self-giving love, the monk discovers real communion with the joy of God. There’s the joy of the brethren, another way of entering into the joy of the Lord. St Seraphim had a way of greeting everyone he met with the salutation: ‘Good day, my joy!’21 Dante expressed the joy of the saints in heaven on the arrival of a newcomer: ‘“Lo! One who shall increase our loves!”/ And every shade approaching us appeared / Glad through and through, so luminously shone / Its flooding joy before it as it neared.’22 We should enjoy our sisters, find joy in them, take care to dedicate ourselves to the good of our neighbour, try to be a source of joy for others, the joy which the Holy Spirit gives. All this opens us up to the joy of Christ. Dom Guéranger said that the Lord experiences a great tenderness towards those who work to spread joy around them, and they advance with giant’s steps. This joy is, then, a powerful element in our sanctification. A word about overcoming sadness.‘Do not give yourself over to sorrow’, we read in the book of Sirach, ‘and do not afflict yourself deliberately. Gladness of heart is the life of man, and the rejoicing of a man is length of days. Delight your soul and comfort your heart, and remove sorrow from you, for sorrow has destroyed many, and there is no profit

cf. Eph. 5.19, Col. 3.16. Valentine Zander, St Seraphim of Sarov, pp. 12 and passim. 22 Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, III, Paradise, Canto V, 105, tr. Dorothy L. Sayers and Barbara Reynolds (London: Penguin Books, 1962), p. 93. 20 21

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in it.’23 This joy may require a victory over self. We must ‘make an effort to be cheerful,’ writes Dom Guéranger. ‘Cheerfulness takes courage, as does everything else; and it is for God that we must overcome ourselves in this way. “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say Rejoice . . .” We must pull the ground out from under the feet of that melancholy that is no good for either this world or the next.’24 It is important to remember here that neither consolation nor desolation is in itself a sign of virtue or lack of it. Consolation does not mean inner progress, nor does desolation mean unfaithfulness or guilt. Both states are simply landscapes through which every Christian life has to pass, alternating weathers which must be accepted and survived.The manner in which one responds to them is alone decisive. Consolation must not lead to complacency, arrogance, thoughtlessness, nor dryness to attacks of inferiority, discouragement, the giving up of effort, envy or despair. Consolation encourages and strengthens; dryness is there to test our fidelity, our love, the purity of our intentions. In both phases a great variety of natural causes and contributing factors can operate, but in both we are being guided, we are being led. From a Christian point of view, both are as essential to growth as changes in weather to the thriving of plants. So the joy in question here is not an emotion; it is a choosing to place one’s happiness where it properly belongs, holding on to what is true and real whether we 23 24

Sirach 30.21–3. Dom Guéranger, Letter, 29 May 1843, cited in The Spirit of Solesmes, p. 138.

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feel it or not. The sun is there even on a cloudy day; we may not see the light at a certain moment but we know we have seen it. We have known it once, and at times that will have to satisfy. We must simply love, act, pray and work in the light of this truth. In other words, joy is not something determined by our state of mind or situation; it lies far deeper than happiness or unhappiness, consolation or desolation, pleasure or pain. It is not something we feel but something we do. It is something to be chosen, a choice God calls us to. In calling us to himself, he calls us to joy, for he is our joy.This is why we can always ‘rejoice in the Lord’,25 even when we have a thousand reasons for being sad or upset. ‘Do you want to praise God perfectly, and to give him pleasing homage? Be resolutely joyful in the midst of everything. Repulse any element of sadness that might tend to insinuate itself into you. That atmosphere of joy should become the habit, the ordinary impetus of your soul. Rejoice, not because things are pleasant, but because it is God who sends them.’26 This kind of fidelity and courage opens us up to a more profound joy; it is rooted in the Spirit, in the certainty of the truth. Such joy cannot be shaken ‘because it lives in that part of us where God reigns and dwells’.27 It may be accompanied by felt joy, it may not. Either way it does not matter, for it is the Lord’s own joy that nothing can take from us.

Phil. 4.4. Abbess Cécile Bruyère, Letter, 1899, cited in The Spirit of Solesmes, p. 141. 27 Dom Guéranger, Letter, 30 August 1831, cited in The Spirit of Solesmes, p. 138. 25 26

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Such joy can also be a form of resistance to evil. By expanding the heart and pulling down our defences, joy opens us to vulnerability and exposure even to the point of suffering, but as St Paul teaches, it is precisely this vulnerability that overcomes the apparent power of evil. By suffering out of love, joy is a kind of living pledge of the goodness of God’s redemptive action, of the fact that good has an absolute priority over evil. Joy is not an evasion of evil but an answer to it. Joyful trust in God’s victory is not a form of quietism but a way of participating in that victory which God has already won in Christ, even as he leaves us room to complete what is lacking in the suffering of Christ.28 We must pray for this joy. If joy is ‘a duty’, even a command, we can apply to it the prayer of St Augustine: ‘Give what you command, and then command whatever you will.’29 The psalms, the monk’s prayer par excellence, are full of joy and prayers for joy: ‘Give joy to the soul of thy servant, for to thee, O Lord, have I lifted up my soul’;30 ‘Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation.’31 The Church, knowing the value, the demands, and the fruit of joy, prays for it often. In one of the prayers of Eastertide, when the faithful are called to meditate more especially on the Resurrection, we say: Receive O Lord, we beseech thee, the offering of this rejoicing Church; and since you have given her cause for such great gladness, grant to her likewise the fruit of never-ending joy. Col. 1.24. St Augustine, The Confessions, book 10.29, tr. Maria Boulding, OSB (NY: New City Press, 2001), p. 204. 30 Ps. 86(85).4. 31 Ps. 51(50).12. 28

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J OU RNE Y TO J OY Each soul is brought from far or near by its own way. Each vocation has a story, it is the story of a spiritual life; of a choice, an election, a consent; then adventures, vicissitudes, perils, risks sometimes; or a long waiting, acute crises and sudden turning points; then an accomplishment, and realisation of promises . . . It is an arduous journey, a great undertaking, not a little or an easy thing . . . Sing in every way you can . . . God gave song to give heart and courage and joy in life; if not with the voice, sing with the spirit and the understanding, sing by words of courage and hope, praise and thankfulness. Call out to one another by high thoughts and spiritual ambitions, these are the songs of our country . . . Mother Janet Stuart1

Mother Janet Stuart, cited in Maud Monahan, Life and Letters of Janet Erskine Stuart (London: Longmans, Green & Co, 1922), p. 84.

S EARC H I think [that a soul will not] cease to seek him, even when it has found him. It is not with the steps of the feet that God is sought but with the heart’s desire; and when the soul happily finds him its desire is not quenched but kindled. Does the consummation of joy bring about the consuming of desire? Rather it is oil poured upon the flames. So it is. Joy will be fulfilled, but there will be no end to desire, and therefore no end to the search. St Bernard1

You must ask: what does God want from me? It’s not just about ourselves. Vocation can’t leave him out. Many of us have been surprised by our call. And yet we knew that our calling was much bigger than such things, and that if God was truly calling us, he would provide all that we needed. It is good that the cloth of our vocation is cut a bit large, that it is something we have to grow into, that there are aspects of it that are challenging. If it is something that only fits our requirements, or where we are now, there is a danger we will grow out of it! In Sunday’s gospel we hear those parables of the treasure in the field and the pearl of great price.2 And note, to obtain 1 2

St Bernard, Commentary on the Song of Songs, 84.1, Cistercian Fathers 40, pp. 188–9. Matt. 13.44–6.

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the treasure the man has to buy the whole field. We can’t say: ‘I like this but not that.’ Or rather we can say it, but we don’t allow it to condition our response, because of the treasure, the greatness of what we have found. Our calling is a gift; it is a relationship with the Lord that transcends its institutional and human expressions. * When Jesus called the apostles and they began to follow him, they, like Abraham, did not know where they were going. They let themselves be led. On one occasion Jesus said to Peter: ‘When you were young you put on your own belt and walked where you liked; but when you grow old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will put a belt round you and take you where you would rather not go.’3 In a sense we cannot fulfil our calling as followers of Jesus without learning ‘to go where we would rather not go’. We cannot follow him unless we learn to leave all things behind and accept him as master and guide of our actions. And this requires that we be ready and willing to make any sacrifice and any renunciation, even of life itself. * Our call is not a vision or an apparition; it is not an extraordinary message we receive. It is much more an intimate encounter with Christ in the different circumstances and situations of life. There is often a persistent niggle, a feeling that won’t go away, as if someone were knocking 3

John 21.18.

on the door of our heart or mind, especially in moments of prayer, silence and adoration. At such moments we can perceive a voice, a voice without words, but very clear and penetrating. We may find that we get less satisfaction in our work or social life, not because they are wrong, but we somehow feel that they are not enough. * ‘Has the potter no right over the clay’?4 God’s love is behind every call. These calls on the part of God are completely independent of all that is natural in man. Two people may have the same natural characteristics – one may be chosen, one not. There are no psychological tests to determine who will hear and follow the divine point of view. Aaron by all accounts was more gifted than Moses, more suited to the mission entrusted to him, but God chose Moses. It is not by enquiring into a person’s aptitudes that we discover the mission God has decreed for him. Everything is determined by God’s holy call that he utters from his own freedom. Sometimes his call responds to the personal inclinations of the one who receives it, sometimes not – Moses and Jeremiah both felt a discrepancy between God’s call and their mission. * Have confidence and trust in the call of God. It’s not something that happened once and for all in the past, but continues to make itself felt throughout our life. Nor is 4

Rom. 9.21.

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our calling given all at once. We mustn’t think of our call as something programmed in advance by some Computerin-the-sky. It’s a dynamic thing, and it’s important to keep the attitude of one who is called anew each day, of one who tries to be led by God at each moment. * I would counsel: a bit more humility. Not having all the intelligence: that is not going to change! We are limited; we are not angels and so cannot see in a flash all the implications of a choice. It’s a bit like St Thomas’s dreaded curiositas, which he says is the unbridled appetite to know all, which undermines, defeats the attainment of truth. It’s an unreasonable appetite for reason! A refusal to accept our limited condition and its consequences. It is an enemy of the truth. And the remedy is not a sort of stoic fortitude, an affair of gritted teeth and clenched fists, but humility and temperance, a directing, a channelling of that appetite. I have been reading a little book on prayer by a Dominican, and he says that the reason why prayer is not easy or spontaneous to us is because prayer makes us conscious that we are limited. ‘It is painful to realise that there are whole areas in the life of the mind that will never be revealed . . . There is an impatience with one’s limitations, a natural temptation that urges us to flee before such limitations’ and take refuge in distractions, ‘a refusal of our real condition, an evasion of it in favour of illusion, dream, mirage.’5 Bernard Bro, OP, The Rediscovery of Prayer, tr. John Morriss (Canfield, OH: Alba Books, 1966), pp. 6–7.

While distractions draw us away from the road to real happiness, prayer brings us back; it is ‘the great pedagogy of God’ by teaching us our limitation and our need of God, to obtain from him what is lacking to us. And giving only what we know does leave out a lot of the gift – i.e. it leaves out what God may be asking us to give. That’s why, when we give ourselves, there’s always going to be an area which we can’t foresee, can’t know. ‘You see, Aslan didn’t tell Pole what would happen. He only told her what to do.’6 It’s not the Lord’s yoke that causes us to stumble, but only all the other yokes we don’t have the humility and daring to lay down. It doesn’t all depend on you. Yes, Jesus needs more of a look-in to allow him to be the Saviour. And just make sure that all this might not be a way of rationalising. * If God created us and called us for his glory, there can be no real conflict between our vocation and fulfilment, between God’s will, God’s programme for us, and our interests. We are sometimes tempted to think, especially in times of discouragement, that our happiness lies one way and God’s will another; or that God’s will sometimes demands the sacrifice of our happiness. But if we look deeply at our life, from the perspective of our call, we see that this conflict can never be more than an apparent one. The service which God requires of his true servant, the goal of the workman, the purpose of God’s soldier, is to fight for the glory of God. But the glory of God, St Irenaeus tells us, is the man who truly lives, the 6

C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair (London: Fontana Lions, 1980), p. 145.

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man who is fully alive.7 The saint is the man who is truly alive. ‘The saints are the living ones,’ says Origen, ‘and the living ones are the saints.’8 Holiness is life in its fullness. This means that God’s glory is going to be realised by the unfolding of all the potentialities he has put in our hearts. The glory of God and our fulfilment are quite inseparable. If we have a calling to live out our monastic life, to grow, in the measure in which we do this generously we shall be brought to a spiritual and human maturity which we could not have reached in any other way, and outside of which is only illusion and escape. * Isn’t it strange that people admire the great personal sacrifices involved in climbing Mount Everest or going to the North Pole, or painters like Gauguin who left his Paris banking career and his wife and died in misery for the sake of his art – and begrudge us for discovering God, and the love which gives meaning to all other loves? It has been said that the only field of research in which man may make no sacrifice under pain of being called a ‘fanatic’ is God! Ultimately they will be converted when they see you happy and fulfilled. *

St Irenaeus, Against the Heresies, IV.20.7; quoted in Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), 294, revised edition (London: Burns & Oates, 1999), p. 69. 8 Origen, Commentary on John’s gospel, 2.11 (GSC 4, 74), quoted in Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism, tr. Theodore Berkeley OCSO (London: New City, 1993), p. 265. 7

As we approach Easter, think of those women setting out for the tomb while it was still dark. They do not let themselves get discouraged by the fearful events that have taken place, or by the impossibility of what they plan to do: ‘Who will roll away the stone for us’?9 They follow their path despite all obstacles and objections. And God rewards their resolve and their sense of purpose and faith by removing the obstacles: they find the stone has been rolled away. He is leading, ruling and blessing you – let yourself be led and ruled and blessed and ‘you will see yourself that every kind of thing will be well’.10 * The parables of the treasure in the field and the pearl of great price11 shed light on the meaning of our calling. Indeed exegetes have noted that the word describing the decision of the person who finds the treasure or pearl echoes what Jesus tells the rich young man: ‘Go sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come follow me.’12 This is the context of a call. Whoever discovers the kingdom leaves everything in order to enter it; it fulfils all the longings of the heart. The fact that the man in each of the parables sells everything to buy the field and the pearl signifies that the kingdom is something valuable, something worth giving a great deal for. But the decision to sell everything, radical as it seems, Mark 16.3. Julian of Norwich, Showings, long text, ch. 32, tr. Edmund Colledge, OSA and James Walsh, SJ, The Classics of Western Spirituality (London: SPCK, 1978), p. 231. 11 Matt. 13.44–6. 12 Mark 10.21. 9

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matches his discovery, matches his finding and the joy of this finding. The unreserved surrender comes as a matter of course. The key words are ‘in his joy’.13 When that joy seizes a person, penetrates his being, no price is too high. The important thing about this parable is not what the man has given up but his reason for doing so – the overwhelming experience of the greatness of what he has found. That is what a monastic vocation is all about. And this joy is an important aspect of our vocation, the very sign of our vocation, of a life occupied with God, the source of all joy. The saints radiated an immense happiness in their vocation, a joy which despite suffering, failures and disappointments springs from communion with the Lord Jesus. Our vocation should always radiate something of this joy; it is part of the process of love, for in every situation of love, the lover desires to speak of the one he loves because his love has turned the world upside down. And the discovery of Christ and the discovery of his kingdom should make us want to demonstrate the joy of that possession. After all, the good zeal that St Benedict talks about and the joy which should be its expression is merely the product of a total giving without reservation, as in the parables. It is the kind of attitude that Mary Magdalene had at Bethany;14 it is the kind of attitude that the widow had when she gave everything.15 * Matt. 13.44. Jn 12.1–8, 15 Lk 21.1–4. 13

If we have a purpose in life and a consuming love, we can endure so much. Because they are head over heels in love, saints are invariably happy people. But saints are not born such. A life of prayer, life in a warm, affectionate community, living the gospel virtues, the sacraments, Scriptures – all this is profoundly healing. Reality heals. We begin to order our lives around the supreme Reality, the One who is pure love.16 When we stop pursuing little gods and seek the living God, our emptiness is filled.

 The origin of our desire for God that impels us to seek him is the fact that we have been created in the divine image. God is the ecstasy of love, overflowing outside himself, enabling creatures to share his life. Yearning or desire is in the first place God’s desire for us. Because God formed man with the capacity for himself, it follows that any human movement towards God is a direct result of this gift. The creature’s yearning for a God who has freely revealed himself is not a demand; it is a response. Before we sought him, he was already seeking us. ‘You would not be seeking me if I had not already found you’, to paraphrase the Lord’s words to Pascal.17 This divine Word who seeks and finds us so that we may make a response by seeking him in return, is the whole essence of the gospel. 1 John 4.16. Pascal, Pensées, tr. H.F. Stewart, DD (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1950), p. 369. 16 17

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So our desire for God is something that is inscribed in our very being. It is the movement of an incomplete being towards its divine completion. ‘The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for.’18 Our desire for God leads us to seek him. It is a call to embark on a journey. What exactly does this seeking involve? The first thing to note is that our Christian life is not merely about seeking but about finding. It’s important to get this straight because today it is seeking that is all the rage, a seeking which is prized more highly than finding, than the bliss of discovery. Compared with the ongoing adventure of seeking, finding is considered boring and bourgeois! This is a danger. One of ancient Gnosticism’s favourite doctrines was the glorification of the eternal quest, a desire to know all God’s mysteries by our own power. St Irenaeus, the great opponent of Gnosticism, vigorously and perceptively mocked this: ‘Progress’ is alleged to be finding another Father beyond the one proclaimed from the beginning, and then, beyond the one supposed to have been discovered in second place, a third, and beyond the third a fourth, and then another, and then another . . . The person who thinks himself ‘progressive’ in this sense will never rest in one God. Driven from Him Who Is, he turns backwards, and sets off on an eternal ‘quest’ for God. But he will 18

CCC 27, p. 14.

never find him. He will just swim for ever in an abyss of ‘incomprehensibility’ . . . All heretics are like this. They imagine that they have found something higher than the truth . . . They set off on all kinds of uncertain paths, holding now one opinion, now another, on the same subject! . . . They are always seeking, but they never find the truth.19

The two things – seeking and finding – go together in the Bible. Examples in the Old Testament abound: ‘You will seek the Lord your God. And you will find him, if you search for him with all your heart and with all your soul.’20 Jesus too links seeking with finding: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who on finding one pearl of great value went and sold all that he had and bought it.’21 St Paul in his discourse in the Acts of the Apostles sees in this seeking and finding of God the deepest meaning of human existence: ‘He made from one every nation of men to live on the face of the earth . . . that they should seek God in the hope that they might feel after him and find him. Yet he is not far from each one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being.’22 In one sense it could be said that we find him fully only after this life. But the Bible and St Benedict are not talking about eternity. For St Paul, as for the rest of the Bible, this feeling after God on 19 The Scandal of the Incarnation. Irenaeus Against the Heresies, selected and introduced by Hans Urs von Balthasar, tr. John Saward (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), pp. 36–7. 20 Deut. 4.29. 21 Matt. 13.44–6. 22 Acts 17.26–8.

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earth is itself a finding. Note the stages in Paul’s text: there is the basic disposition of seeking after God; then the next stage – feeling after him, ‘groping’ as another translation has it; and then finding him. Yet there remains a mystery: why is it necessary to seek someone in whom we live and move and have our being? Firstly because God is, of his very nature, a hidden God: ‘Truly you are a God who hide yourself, O God of Israel, the Saviour’.23 All true knowledge of God begins with a knowledge of his hiddenness. The people of Israel had to learn to live solely in faith by the word which the hidden God spoke to them. In the New Testament, too, the mark of the saving event is a deep hiddenness on God’s part. In Christ, God divested himself of power and glory, did his work among men veiled in weakness and shame. But beyond being a hidden God by his very nature, God also hides himself precisely in order to stimulate our search; for the finding of God, if it is to be the rich treasure it is meant to be, involves an effort, a search on our part. ‘The entire life of a good Christian is a holy desire,’ writes St Augustine: What you desire, however, you don’t yet see. But by desiring you are made large enough, so that, when there comes what you should see, you may be filled. For, if you wish to fill a purse, and you know how big what will be given you is, you stretch the purse . . . You know how much you are going to obtain, and you see your purse is small; by stretching it you make it 23

Isaiah 45.15.

that much larger. This is how God stretches our desire through delay, stretches our soul through desire, and makes it large enough by stretching it. Let us desire, then, brothers, because we have to be filled . . . Let us stretch out to him so that, when he comes, he may fill us.24

Secondly, although we live and move and have our being in God, we can fail to recognise him through seeking ourselves instead. In the gospels many seek the Lord,25 even his relatives, without finding him.26 They fail because often they are seeking something other than him, or even their own gain.27 The Lord is always asking us: ‘What do you seek?’28 St Thomas says that man without grace seeks his own good.29 One may seem to be seeking God while seeking something else in the depths of the heart. ‘Let [the novice master] examine whether the novice truly seeks God.’30 St Benedict’s use of the word ‘truly’ contains a strong emphasis. There are many souls who need to have something along with God, something more than God; God is not ALL for them. It may be pleasure or power or money or fame or being liked or a job or family. Some of St Augustine, Homilies on the First Epistle of John, 4.6, tr. Boniface Ramsey (NY: New City Press, 2008), pp. 69–70. 25 Mark 1.37. 26 John 7.34; 8.21. 27 John 6.26. 28 John 1.38. 29 St Thomas Aquinas, Summae Theologiae (ST), tr. Thomas Gilby OP et al., 69 vols (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1964–1980), I–II, q.109, a.3. 30 Rule of St Benedict, ch. 58. 24

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these things are closer to God than others, but none of them is the very essence of God, and none of them should be the very essence of our life. As long as we are attached to the things of this world, we cannot be said to seek God solely, and God will not give himself entirely to us. Jesus went so far as to say that ‘if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.’31 We are to love other people, especially our family, more than anything else, but not more than God. We cannot love people too much but we can love God too little. God first, not second, because he knows that if we put anyone else in his place it just won’t work. If we put a divine burden on the shoulders of any human being, those shoulders will break and we shall be disappointed. Putting God first does not make those we love less precious; it frees us to love them fully. Once our neighbour ceases to be our god, he can truly be our neighbour. And the same can be said of everything else in life, of every lesser good. What comes between us and God is not things or people (‘God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good’32). What comes between us and God is self-love which subordinates people and things to self. What we need to learn is to love not less, but more; less and less selfishly and more and more purely for God’s sake. It is in the measure that we are purified from self-seeking, 31 32

Luke 14.26. Gen. 1.31.

the self-centred pursuit of things in themselves, that we learn to seek God truly. It is the old paradox which Christ expresses again and again in the gospels: whoever loses his life will find it.33 Genuine finding is going to involve a loss, a divesting of self, a readiness to give oneself to something outside oneself. It is significant that St Benedict places the monkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s continuous search for God in the context of stability. For those who truly seek God, St Benedict proposed not a life of restless wandering but a stable life in community, under a rule and an abbot, a setting in which they would come to find God. Now this might seem paradoxical at first sight. On the one hand, St Benedictâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s monk, like every Christian, is a seeker, on a journey; on the other hand, he is fixed, rooted in a concrete situation. St Benedict suggests that stability protects our seeking lest it should degenerate into mere restless wandering and self-seeking; it protects us from evading the Cross. There is a kind of seeking that can be an escape from reality. When we really grasp that he has found us, that he really is where we are, then we have, in a sense, already found him; then we can recognise the grace of time and space, this time and this space. Finding implies that God will reveal himself to us in the very gift of our calling, whatever it may be. St Benedict suggests that unless there is abandonment to God in a concrete situation, in a particular environment, then God will not be found. One will end up in a gyrovague situation,34 going from 33 34

Matt. 16.25. cf. Rule of St Benedict, ch. 1.

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one thing to another, never really giving oneself, trying to shape oneself according to one’s own way rather than God’s. Our life of stability anchors us in our seeking, in a life of union with the will of God; it keeps us ceaselessly united to him in all things. This leads to two important points. Firstly, we need to realise that our finding of God, in whatever form it may take, is never going to be some kind of triumphant, onceand-for-all breakthrough. It is, rather, a process in which God gradually becomes less and less an abstraction, a concept, an idea, and more and more a person, a Thou. He comes to meet us in response to our small, seemingly trivial fidelities. All the elements in our life – prayer, work, love and service of others – are only different manifestations, modes of the inner dynamism of seeking and finding God. Indeed Jesus promises that those who love him in this persevering, realistic, homely and even humdrum way will already in this life be granted some kind of experience of him: ‘He who loves me will be loved by my Father and I will love him and manifest myself to him.’35 The God whom we seek truly in love does allow himself to be found in this life. Secondly, finding God is the fruit of persevering prayer and seeking in all spiritual weathers. It means seeking and finding him in sickness and health, in light and darkness, in strength and weakness. Like the bride in the Song of Songs, we have to be prepared to cope with a range of experiences in our search for God. Authentic desire for God is not exempt from the vicissitudes typical of all 35

John 14.21.

human endeavours. If all human life has this pattern of positive and negative, then seeking God must pass through this too. What matters is not the subjective experience which is paramount at any given time, but that the search continues. ‘Man should in all things become a God-seeking and a God-finding person’, says Meister Eckhart, ‘at all times and among all kinds of persons and in all ways. In this quest one can grow and increase without intermission, and never come to an end of the increasing.’36 The ultimate selflessness is to withstand the rigours of the ups and downs in seeking God, to believe that the grace of God and the work of the Spirit are active throughout, and that divine life and heavenly grace are really growing strong within us. This is a humbling process because it involves the constant experience of our own poverty and weakness. It takes great courage. Even Our Lady and St Joseph were not spared the pain of the search: ‘Behold, your father and I have been looking for you anxiously.’37 But it is only in an earnest, persevering seeking that a Christian can find Christ. It is a search that will begin first among our acquaintances and relatives, among what is known. In the end one will be directed towards the Father’s business; and one will find Jesus in the place where one has surrendered oneself.

Meister Eckhart, Talks of Instruction, 22, in Meister Eckhart, Selected Treatises and Sermons, tr. James M. Clark and John V. Skinner (London: Collins, 1958), p. 98. 37 Lk 2.48. 36

D E C I S I ON The odd thing was that before God closed in on me, I was in fact offered what now appears a moment of wholly free choice . . . I say ‘I chose’ yet it did not really seem possible to do the opposite. On the other hand, I was aware of no motives. You could argue that I was not a free agent, but I am more inclined to think that this came nearer to being a perfectly free act than most that I have ever done. Necessity may not be the opposite of freedom, and perhaps a man is most free when, instead of producing motives, he could only say, ‘I am what I do’. Then came the repercussion on the imaginative level. I felt as if I were a man of snow at long last beginning to melt. C.S. Lewis1

We need to trust providence; if you are moving in a particular direction, trust that God will lead you to know if it is not the right one.When one has done all that one can reasonably do, instead of continuing to wonder endlessly what one should do, one needs to say to the Lord: it seems to me that after all the praying, discussing and

C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (Glasgow: Collins, Fount paperbacks, 1977), p. 179.

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discerning you are calling me in this direction. That’s the direction I am going to take. * ‘Put out into the deep’.2 Peter starts to reason, weighing up pros and cons. After all, he might look foolish. He wants to be sure things will work out in a particular way before he will do something. But ultimately he has to step aside from his own view of reality and accept the Lord’s reality which expands, liberates. * As you know, life is full of separations and partings; all are to a greater or lesser extent painful. This is one of those separations which we must all suffer, one way or another, in different times, places, ways. Think of your own previous choices in choosing to live and work at a great distance from most of your family. Painful at first, but a source of enrichment too! In the end, such separations are our preparation for the moment when we must all leave behind everyone and everything. Not one of us can escape that. * What you say about making a decision and sticking by it in difficult times is the very heart of the matter. That is what it means to take a meaningful stance and to begin to see alternating weathers as normal, essential to life and growth, both in the natural world and the 2

Luke 5.4.

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supernatural one. I do think that some of your fears will be significantly reduced, and that you will advance with a lighter step, if you try (as you do) to make your choice something which engages your whole being, something which you make your very own. The question of identity we spoke of yesterday – knowing who you are, and whose you are and where you want to be – does mean you are able to relate to life and people freely and even fearlessly. And this involves building up a rich pattern of supernatural motivation which has to become your very own. For example, that chapter on loneliness you found so helpful will remain simply an interesting chapter on loneliness unless you make it part of your core of personal conviction from which you can live out your feelings of loneliness in a meaningful, positive way. This seems to me to be what the teaching in the novitiate is all about – to help you create this core of personal conviction around which your life is organised. The love of your family, friends or community can also form part of that core, if you choose to make it so. This means that you can go through life in the knowledge and certainty of that love, and live from it, even without their immediate presence. One does feel the support and love of others even when one may be working alone in one’s cell. Again, this has to become a personal conviction. Perhaps there is room here to thank God for the situation in which you find yourself, because it is helping you to internalise your initial choice more and more. *

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Openness to every ‘possibility’ is, as you recognise, truly perilous: to have an endless series of options is really to have no options, because you never embrace any one of them with your whole heart. You postpone really giving yourself – which is ultimately the source of all happiness. God invites us to put down roots so that we can truly flourish, to build a concrete life rather than to fantasise about innumerable possible lives. There is the danger of drifting through life without any firm sense of purpose. And ultimately it makes any ‘finding’ of what God desires to give you impossible or very difficult. There is a wonderful text from Meister Eckhart: Man must always do one thing at a time; he cannot do everything at once. It must always be one thing, and in this one thing we must apprehend all things. For if a man wanted to do everything, this and that, and desist from his way and adopt someone else’s way, which would please him much better, this would certainly cause great instability . . . Let someone adopt a good way and always remain in it and introduce into it all good ways, and let him take care that it is received from God. Let him not attempt one thing today and another tomorrow, and let him have no anxiety lest he should miss anything on this account. For with God one cannot miss anything; just as God cannot miss anything, nothing can be missed with God. Therefore accept one way from God and draw into it everything that is good.3 Meister Eckhart, Talks of Instruction, 22, in Meister Eckhart, Selected treatises and Sermons, pp. 96–7.

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And that ‘yes’ does create islands of certainty in our lives. This security comes not from mapping out the whole ground of the future, nor is it given by the rejection of all risk. It arises from an inner sense of purpose. It’s the security that springs from a greater love, the security of faith. The security of commitment – and it is a real one – is not to make us less a pilgrim but more so. It leaves life unpredictable so that God’s will may be done. By saying yes to God we relinquish a certain control over our lives, but then our life becomes ours in a new way. And is control such a good thing? Keeping options open, keeping things indeterminate, is inevitably to base everything on ourselves, our efforts, our success – and when these fail, we panic. This leads to constant flight, turning away from God, narrowing down, inflexibility, withdrawing into self. Basing our lives on God leads to greater selflessness, availability, fruitfulness, freedom, and surrender into the only hands that can truly lift us up to him. Yes, the end is a leap. We cannot have God cheaply – we must give our all. God will do the work if we let him, and whatever he does, because it is from him, it can be borne. * As you so well know, there will always be genuinely Really Good and Useful Things you could have done if you waited a bit longer. Then there is the funny way that the crucial time to follow God’s call so often seems to coincide with that once-in-a-lifetime job/research/travel opportunity. If there were an existing commitment, that would be different, but after a certain point there has to be a kind of

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moratorium on those Really Good and Useful Things that will always crop up. The Lord has rights too. * Often we allow our imagination to conjure up vague, mysterious torments that surely await us if we give ourselves fully. And it’s usually this purely imaginary suffering that holds us back. When we allow ourselves to project ahead – that’s when we lose heart. When we indulge our imagination in this way, it ceases to be his yoke and burden, which is always light, and becomes one of our own making. We must renew our decision, countless times a day, to trust him. This way we learn to see him in each moment. A good resolution is: ‘I promise not to worry about anything consciously, willingly, voluntarily. I promise to let you do it.’ * When people in marriage or religious life go through a difficult patch, there is a temptation to say: ‘It was a mistake, I should never have taken vows. I should never have committed myself.’ But if they have got a strong conviction, a strong faith in God’s providence – God’s providence that led them to make the choice, God’s providence that knows how to work even through mistakes and imprudence – they come into calmer waters; the marriage or religious life becomes a much deeper and happier thing. All this involves a strong conviction and faith in God’s handling of our case, even if our life seems not to be what we previously expected. If we believe in God’s action in

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our lives, acting through all our mistakes and failings, we will be more inclined to find him. Even if there was an element of imprudence, once we have made our definitive commitment, we can be sure that this is our road to God, and that here and now this is what God wants of us. We must not go on digging up the past – was I right? was I wrong? – all that is past history, and one can go on digging up things indefinitely. The crucial fact is that this is where I am here and now. This is God’s programme for me here and now. To remain faithful to this enduring obligation, to maintain deeper fidelities in spite of superficial infidelities – which is God’s programme for us and the cause of much suffering sometimes – is nevertheless our road of deepening character, love and happiness. * Just a ‘precision’: I don’t think you need be surprised or over-anxious if at certain times the appeal of a trip to Paris is strongly felt! I think at times like this that what we should do is turn that appeal, that fascination, into the best part of our living sacrifice. We should tell ourselves: ‘Fine, this is exactly what I have chosen to live, this is exactly what I have chosen to offer for the sake of the kingdom and the Lord.’ And of course, we can bring knowledge to that sacrifice, knowledge that the life (as you have so well noted) would be utterly different without our enclosure – at every level. As with so much in our life, we have to choose again and again. The choice we make this year will be a little bit different from the choice we made last year – because we are changing and our involvement in our way of life is

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changing. And each time we choose, we become more and more the person God is calling us to be. * In a sense there are in every vocation two ‘Follow Me’s: the initial one, which was marked by a certain urgency and generosity, and another, at the hour of discouragement, difficulty, trial. St Peter himself knew these two ‘Follow Me’s. And his life shows us that the hour when the following of Christ was even more difficult, the moment even of his denial, was not a moment of giving up. It was for him the moment of a new maturity, the moment when he determined to follow Jesus even to the end in love. We see this after the Passion in Galilee (the scene of the first call) when the Risen Lord asks him the ultimate question: Do you love me more than anything? More than your own feelings, your own happiness? And from the lips of Peter comes the most beautiful declaration of love, a cry of love welling up from a heart that has known suffering: ‘Lord, you know everything, you know that I love you.’4 And Jesus says to him a second time: ‘Follow Me.’ So too, in our lives, there’s always a second ‘Follow Me’ – and it comes at the hour of trial. Despite appearances, this hour never prevents us from loving or being faithful. It is, in truth, the hour of maturing in love and fidelity, the hour of the definitive ‘Follow Me’.

 4

John 21.17.

the joy of god

Why do we make vows? Because God does. God discloses himself throughout Scripture as one who promises. He promises Noah that he will never again flood the earth and sends a rainbow in pledge;5 to Abraham, he promises descendants as many as the stars of heaven;6 and through Moses, the people of Israel are promised deliverance from their bondage of servitude in Egypt and a land flowing in milk and honey.7 Making promises may seem like something God does, one activity he chooses among many, but more than that it reveals his very nature. He is the One who gives himself without reserve and who will never go back on his word. As St Paul says, ‘if we are faithless, he remains faithful – for he cannot deny himself’.8 It is the demonstration and proof of his all-surpassing love for his creatures. His fidelity is the measure of his love. The supreme expression of this divine self-vowing takes place in the Incarnation, in Jesus who loved ‘to the end’.9 God has given his Word in the strongest sense of the term: he has given himself in his Word. The covenant he has established by the gift of his Son is irrevocable, irreversible. God is bound to humanity, for his Word is given for all eternity. So we dare to take risks for God because we know that he will never let anyone down who is acting out of love for him. Our steadfastness rests on his and we can joyfully Gen. 9.11. Gen. 15.5. 7 Ex. 3.17. 8 2 Tim. 2.13. 9 John 13.1. 5 6

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venture all that we have, knowing that the total gift of ourselves will unite us to him. The ability to vow is something peculiarly human, and it is indicative of our dignity as beings made in the image of God. G.K. Chesterton expresses this well when he says that ‘the vow is to the man what the song is to the bird or the bark to the dog: his voice whereby he is known.’10 Animals may be very loyal, but they lack the ability to commit themselves in this way. That is why our vows, far from degrading us, ennoble us as never before.They mirror God’s act.Trusting in God’s fidelity, the monk binds himself with the same force with which God binds himself to his way of acting. God binds himself in fidelity to his word, and we dare to bind ourselves to that word in and through him. Is it possible for a person to commit himself to a particular way of life for a lifetime? The problem arises for a religious vocation as for marriage. Sometimes you hear it said: ‘Here and now I want to commit myself to God, and, as far as I can see, I shall probably want to do it next year as well; but I would not like to say as far ahead as ten years. Why can’t I give my life to God only as far as I can see?’ People appeal to the changing human person, fluctuating circumstances, new invitations from God. ‘I have changed so much since I made that initial commitment, no one could expect me to continue to be bound by it.’ Fr Abbot Sillem of Quarr11 once heard of a religious who maintained that vows should not be taken because G.K. Chesterton, The Barbarism of Berlin (London: Cassell, 1914), p. 8. Quarr Abbey is a Benedictine house of monks on the Isle of Wight belonging to the congregation of Solesmes and is closely linked with St Cecilia’s Abbey.

10 11

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‘one sincere commitment may succeed (and so annul) another’. I may be sincere in taking vows, but later, when the going gets tough, ‘my sincerity’ demands that I should go off and do something else. Is it insincere to take vows? Is it insincere to go to Mass when we do not feel like it? No, it’s faith. Sincerity does not consist in conforming our behaviour to our interior vacillations, but rather in maintaining our behaviour despite them. It means holding fast to our deeper fidelities, to our choices, in spite of our superficial fluctuations.To be sincere means to be faithful, to remain committed to that to which we have given our hearts in full freedom. That is what ought to exist in friendship, in marriage, in religious life – in spite of external vicissitudes. Fidelity raises the question of the changing human person. It is important to remember that development is not chaos, nor a process of random change. There is an underlying continuity of the person, there is a central core of identity, and growth is going to include the integration, the unification of one’s understanding, experience, ideals and ability around this central core. This process involves acceptance of oneself and the reality of the world in the light of one’s call and destiny. Indeed as a person grows he becomes more, not less, capable of honouring a promise. This is only possible, however, if one is faithful to one’s vocation along the way. The decision to commit oneself is not over and done with on the day we promise: we have pledged to live that promise and to conform ourselves to its associated demands by conversion. To wish that vows be made for a shorter time and renewed would be to take away from God the ability of

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disposing over the whole man, and also submits vows to the fluctuations of the human will rather than basing them on the much stronger and more stable divine will. We must protect our vocation – whatever it may be – from vicissitudes and feelings, because it is founded on something that lies beyond them. What is stable in our life is not our interior state but our commitment. It is the committed person who can transcend his own feelings. Fidelity is binding oneself to another without regard for future contingencies. It is what endures when romantic idealising dies, which tends to make gods out of creatures and which blinds us to human failings. Fidelity is the willingness to accept the true reality of a way of life, a choice of this one in preference to any other, even in preference to any false self which has to pass away. Indeed fidelity is the will to become the person one has to become if the union is to last and become perfect. Fidelity is the higher romance. But the problem raised by those modern questions goes deeper still: it involves an attitude towards God. A calling does not depend on an individual; it comes from God, who is not subject to human limitations. He is master of the future as well as of the present. The real question is, having called someone to full commitment in his service, would God then have that person change direction? In the gospel, a call follows from a deliberate choice by Christ, and he makes it clear that he demands the total gift of the person. This sense of totality is one of the most striking things about our vows. There is no part of the person which is not included. ‘I am my Beloved’s and my

the joy of god

Beloved is mine.’12 Jesus desires his disciples to abandon everything to follow him. Peter recognises this when he says: ‘Behold we have left everything; we have followed you’.13 And Jesus’ answer confirms the universality of the detachment he asks for, the abandonment of all that touches human existence and activity. Because Jesus is the Absolute, he has the right to demand such a gift of ourselves, with all the sacrifices that it entails. In the person of Jesus, the kingdom is inaugurated; it is present among men as a definitive value. Jesus doesn’t cancel values but he does make them relative. Social, sexual and cultural values can no longer pretend to be absolute, as the Absolute is among us. Christ is the absolute for our powers of loving and the ultimate meaning for giving our life.The love that renounces all belongs to the fundamental reality of Jesus Christ himself. He considers his own life as nothing and carries the Cross, emptying himself in obedience. This totality also means that both the past and future of a person is included in the gift. Love doesn’t want to give away just this moment, but every moment in this moment. On the one hand, one’s past experiences can now be properly understood as a gift for the Lord, taking on a new meaning. On the other hand, the words of consent speak of an engagement that necessarily embraces our whole future existence. Our blessings and trials will now unfold within the relationship of communion and love with Christ. In

12 13

Song of Songs 6.3. Matt. 19.27.

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the form of a vow a great love is able to include all that has happened and will happen. This call to total giving is permanent and irrevocable. If it is not definitive, it cannot be total. The irrevocable character of commitment is implied in its nature. It is not an additional obligation. To give yourself is to give yourself for ever. You cannot separate depth of commitment from its unfolding through time. You cannot separate response to the call from commitment to a definitive gift. The way in which Jesus speaks of this self-gift clearly shows his intention of asking it to be for ever. When he speaks of poverty – ‘Go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven’14 – the selling of goods signifies a definitive detachment where all hope of regaining is lost. When he praises voluntary celibacy for the kingdom he uses a very strong image, the image of a eunuch.15 To make oneself a eunuch is to deny the possibility of having a conjugal life. Then there is his saying about putting one’s hand to the plough and looking back.16 The radicality and irrevocability of the call are simultaneously affirmed. Jesus’ invitation to give ourselves totally, irrevocably, can only be understood in the broader context of the Paschal mystery – losing one’s life in order to find it. Life has a double meaning here: existence and self. There are two possibilities: self-realisation in which we try to create ourselves by possessing our being completely in ourselves, Matt. 19.21. Matt. 19.12. 16 Luke 9.62. 14 15

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clinging to life exclusively for ourselves and through ourselves; or the option of faith, hope, self-surrender, selfgift, abandonment, accepting our dependence on God and seeing that dependence as our true life and freedom.17 The more surrendered we are, the more we conform ourselves to Christ – and what greater act of surrender than to bind oneself in a definitive commitment? There can be no question of successive calls in a different direction on the part of Christ. He calls once and for all and does not go back on his calls. Fidelity means we’re deeply committed to following Christ, and that we measure the meaning of our life by that, and not in terms of what we happen to be receiving from it at any particular moment. Fidelity has its meaning and value in the fact that our call transcends human projects; it asks for confidence in the divine project. Fidelity is a beautiful thing – in friendship, in marriage, in the religious life. It is never something negative: it does not mean not doing this thing which is forbidden, or even only doing this thing which is allowed, counselled or even commanded. Fidelity is an attachment to what we have found and chosen; it is an attachment to Christ, an attachment which will be deepened throughout our lives. The love of Christ is the living chain binding a person to his or her calling.

Deut. 30.15–20.

A journey from where we are to achieving true happiness.

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