ALL

The thing that draws me most about monasticism is its absolute totality.  The person entering such a life gives ALL.   

As I've written before, a potential postulant does not  stick her head inside the enclosure and leave her arms and legs dangling outside.  It just won't work.

Yet how often do I give God "only so much," holding little corners of my life in reserve for myself? 

I might happily obey some of His commandments while ignoring a few that are, well..  inconvenient.  I can easily trust Him to take care of this thing and that thing... but I'm more comfortable managing this other one myself.  After all, I'm not sure what He will do if I put THAT into His hands.

Absolute totality is a process.  It's a process even for those in the physical monastery, for while they've pulled their bodies inside, surely parts of their hearts linger for awhile outside the walls.

Continuing with our review of what it means to live with hearts cloistered for Christ, I'd like to spend a few days revisiting quotes from those who know monastic life from the inside.  These are men and women who know this totality, for they've truly lived it.    

Can I identify with what these people have written?  

Can these goals of monastic life apply, in any way, to me?  

"The Christian life is nothing else but Christ; the monastic life is nothing else but Christ.  The requirements for the Christian and for the monk are in substance the same; the difference lies only in the particular kind of stress that is given to them.  The Church exists so that souls should lead the life of Christ; the monastery exists for the same purpose.  Whether it is union with Him in the world or in the cloister, it is union that is the soul's purpose." (Dom Hubert Van Zeller, the Yoke of Divine Love, Templegate, 1957, p. 182)

"All who have put on Christ have heard the call to seek God.  The monk is one for whom this call has become so urgent that there can be no question of postponing his response to it; he must accept forthwith... in every Christian vocation lies the germ of a monastic vocation. (Louis Bouyer of the Oratory, The Meaning of the Monastic Life, PJ Kenedy and Sons, NY 1950, from preface)

"The monk is the man for whom God is a Person:  a Person whom he can meet, whom he longs to meet...."  (Bouyer, pp. 61-62) 

"One cannot give Christ a limited place in one's life."  (Bouyer,  p. x)

"Monastic life is nothing else, no more and no less, than a Christian life whose Christianity has penetrated every part of it.  (Bouyer, p. 13)

"The monk is precisely the Christian who has recognized in Christ 'the way, the truth, the life' and who intends to act logically over this discovery, a discovery of such a nature that it should not leave any of those who have made it tepid or indifferent."  (Bouyer p. 68)   



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Text not in quotes © 2013 Nancy Shuman.  All Rights Reserved.
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Painting:  Kovács, Stairs at Subiaco, 1844 

the road less travelled

“To walk in the presence of God is to walk in the paths of His good pleasure and not by the way of the flesh... not in self-esteem, our own will and judgment - but in the way of the divine will... " (St. Jane de Chantal)

“Let your eyes look straight ahead and your glance be directly forward.  Survey the path for your feet, and let all your ways be sure. Turn neither to the right nor to the left.  Keep your foot far from evil.” (Proverbs 4:25-27)

everything else is not enough

The life of a cloistered nun or a monk represents Totality.  Risking everything.  All one’s eggs in one basket.  No ifs, ands or buts.  Or, as Mother Mary Francis PCC so perfectly put it, “God is enough!  God is enough!  And everything else is not enough..”

It is the Totality that so draws me.  How I have wished I could just step over a threshold, dividing world from cloister, and be done with complacency and compromise forever.  I am not so naïve as to think it’s that simple, certainly.  But “out here,” where there are no bells to remind me to pray, where Mass is not offered daily in my own home, where the entire structure of life doesn’t revolve around God, I forget and slip and get distracted and grow very, very lazy. 

Is there help for me?  (yes, there is)  Am I the only person who has ever longed to live totally for God in the midst of the world  (no, I’m not)  Can I, in my busyness, find a way to look at life as God wishes me to – not as the world is constantly pushing me toward? (absolutely I can).  He Who calls also graces.  He does not ask of us what we cannot give. 

“Go and bless the Lord for the favorable inspiration He has given you to withdraw yourself from this great and wide road that those of your age and profession are accustomed to follow…”(St. Francis de Sales)

“You have, as it were, a poustinia (poustinia is a Russian word for hermitage) within you.  It is as if within you there was this little log cabin in which you and Christ were very close…within yourself you have made a room, a log cabin, a secluded place.  You have built it by prayer…. You live in the marketplace and carry the poustinia within you.  That is your vocation… The Lord is calling us to stand still before him while walking with men.” (Catherine de Hueck Doherty, Poustinia, Ave Maria Press, 1975)

In days just ahead, I hope to look more thoroughly into this cloister of the heart.  I hope to live more fully in each “room” of it than I ever have before.  “God is enough!  God is enough!  And everything else is not enough.” The words ring through me this night like a bell.  I know them to be true. 

Text not in quotes © 2011 Nancy Shuman.  All Rights Reserved.
thecloisteredheart.org     

...nothing else than...

“Monastic life is nothing else..than a Christian life whose Christianity has penetrated every part of it...  The monk is precisely the Christian who has recognized in Christ ‘the way, the truth, the life,’ and who intends to act logically over this discovery, a discovery of such a nature that it should not leave any of those who have made it tepid or indifferent.”  (Louis Bouyer of the Oratory, The Meaning of the Monastic Life, P.J. Kenedy and Sons, 1950) 

“Christ is literally to be the monk’s ‘all,’ his life and his food, the yearning of his soul, the joy of his heart....The monk sees all things in the light of God.”  (Wilfrid Tunink OSB, Vision of Peace, Farrar, Straus & Co., 1963) 

“The earliest monasticism was directed against the tendency in the church to compromise with the world, to water down the strong wine of the Gospels to suit the vulgar taste….”  (Walter Nigg, Warriors of God, Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 1959)

monastic life is...

For over twenty years I’ve delved into the subject of monasticism.  I have looked at some of the key aspects of monastic life, considering if and how these may apply to a “cloistered heart.”  What I’ve found is a wealth of truth… a virtual treasure chest of inspiration!

I would like to share just a few of these gems with you now, (saving more for later).  I suspect you will agree that these “goals” are not for monks and nuns alone….

“Monastic life is a concrete living out of one’s baptismal commitment.” (Daniel Rees, Consider Your Call,  Cistercian Publications, Kalamazoo, 1980, 149-150)

“A contemplative will often be able to work peacefully in a kind of general absorption in God which is not expressed by any special idea and demands no particular acts.  It is a kind of ‘atmosphere’ of love that follows him wherever he goes.” (Monks of the Strict Observance, Cistercian Contemplatives, published by Monks of the Strict Observance, 1947, p. 50)

“Our religious life is not someTHING; it is SOMEONE.  It is Jesus.” (A Religious of Holy Cross Abbey, La Trappe in England, Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd., London, 1937, p. 36)

“The contemplative life does not mean the contemplation of self, but contemplation of God.” (La Trappe in England, p. 188)

“While working at a desk or in a field, while on a journey or in a hospital, a man can make a choir and sanctuary within the cell of his own soul.” (Dom Hubert Van Zeller, The Yoke of Divine Love, Templegate, Springfield IL, 1957, p. 135)