How to Possess Our Share

'Afraid of being left behind in contemporary thought, (we) assent too readily to the conclusions of a humanist and materialist society... 

'The movement of the world slides over our preference for spiritual things, and we wake up to find that we have accepted earthly things at the world's valuation.  It is only the wisdom of the Spirit that can show up the more hidden errors contained in the world's propaganda, and to possess our share of this wisdom, we have to pray.  Prayer alone assures both the light to see and the strength to resist.'

Dom Hubert Van Zeller, the Yoke of Divine Love, Templegate, 1957, p. 36

The World For Which I Was Born

I was recently reminded of something a friend wrote to me some years ago. 'Sitting in a monastery of nuns,' this woman said in a letter, 'I knew I didn't belong in their life and yet I didn't belong out in the world either. The closer you get to His Heart, the farther you get from everything else, which is really as it should be... I felt that the problem with being in the world is that so often you are distracted from loving Him, which is all I want to do. When you are in the monastery, everything reminds you of Him no matter what chore you are presently doing. But His will is mine, so wherever He wants me is what I really want too. What I fear is taking Him for granted and becoming lukewarm.'

My friend's fear is one I know well. Taking Him for granted. Becoming lukewarm. How I wish I could say these things have never happened to me, but I cannot. Lukewarmness can seem normal, even cozy, and I sometimes find myself settling down in it and feeling right at home. Being distracted from things of God doesn't seem like such a problem then, when the world around feels eternal and entrancing and like it must be the forever-world-for-which-I-was-born.

But the truth is: the world around is not The-Forever-World-For-Which-I-Was-Born. 'God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in Heaven.' The Baltimore Catechism said it well.

'When you are in the monastery,' wrote my friend, 'everything reminds you of Him.' While monks or nuns enclosed inside walls are not yet in the Forever-World, they live twenty four hours a day inside a reflection of it. Their time is entirely spent on the pathway to Home. They wash dishes on that path. They do laundry on that path. They eat and sleep and garden and pray and laugh and sing on that path. They live in an entrance foyer to Heaven, and everything around reminds them of where they're headed and for Whom they were made.

As a laywoman in the world, I too am called to the pathway. But mine is not so clearly marked. I have no monastic schedules to keep me on the trail. I don't spend every moment of every day with a community of people all focusing in the same direction. If I listen to friends or co-workers or celebrities who don't know or accept why God made them, I can even lose sight of my own awareness of the truth.

Probably this is why some of us can feel more at home in a monastery than in the world.
Because really - we are.


(When I start to lose sight of my real pathway, I am helped by what several saints have had to say about this kind of thing.  A few of their exhortations can be found by clicking here.)


Painting: Jan van Helmont

Banish, Therefore, the Distractions

'He who enters into the secret place of his own soul passes beyond himself, and does in truth ascend to God. Banish, therefore, from thy heart the distractions of earth; and turn thine eyes to spiritual joys, that thou mayest learn at last to repose in the light of the contemplation of God.' St. Albert the Great

Kitaev Hermitage, click for attribution

The Center of My Longings

'The country in which I live is not my native country; THAT lies elsewhere, and it must always be the center of my longings.'

St. Therese of Lisieux

                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

In This World, There is a World

      'In the world there is an inner world, a second world which every Christian must 

      avoid, for it knows not God, and the devil is its ruler. 

      It was of this world that Jesus Christ said; 'I pray not for the world' (John 17:9). 

      In this world are found those who live solely for vanity and pleasure; 

      It is where the one aim is to please and flatter, 

      Where there is hardly anything that is innocent and good, 

      And where people glory in what ought to make us ashamed.'

St. Claude de la Colombiere

Painting: José García Ramos, Leaving a Masqued Ball

The Two Cities

'Two cities have been formed by two loves,' wrote St. Augustine. 'The earthly by love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to contempt of self.' 

If any particular thing inspired the idea of the cloistered heart, it may well have been St. Augustine's The City of God. I had forgotten how much influence this classic's key concepts had on me - until I began looking (recently) into the significance of the ever modern, ever changing, ever self-exalting City of Man. We do not have to search for the meaning of life, insists the City of Man, for we make meanings of our own. Life and death are in our hands. Our births and genders and lifespans are under our control. People buy, sell, market, advertise, build, play, entice, euthanize, lie, mock, cavort, satirize in that city. That city stands as an icon to the transient glory of Man.

'Though there are many nations all over the earth... there are no more than two kinds of human society, which we may justly call two cities.... One consisting of those who live according to man, the other of those who live according to God. ...To the City of Man belong the enemies of God... inflamed with hatred against the City of God.' (St. Augustine)

If we want to live for God, we won't find life easy in the City of Man. Yet we are in the midst of it. We have grown up in it. We're influenced by that city whether we want to be or not.

Thankfully, there's another alternative. There is an everlasting City of which God is the Center. He is its Author and Savior and Life.  God is the Chooser of times in This City. He is allowed to be, here, the Absolute Truth that He in fact IS. If we are living for God, our everlasting citizenship is Here.   

'As you well know, we have our citizenship in heaven.' (Philippians 3:20)

'The first city is that of the just, the second is that of the wicked. Although they are now, during the course of time, intermingled, they shall be divided at the last judgement... The earthly city, which shall not be everlasting... has its good in this world, and rejoices in it with such joy as such things can afford...  it desires earthly peace for the sake of enjoying earthly goods.' (St. Augustine)

Reading these words years ago, I began to think of the Church as an embassy. To step into a church building is to step into a space set aside, a space representing the City of God in the midst of the city of man. I live surrounded by the earthly city, but the City of God is where my allegiance lies.

'This heavenly city, then, while it sojourns on earth... avails itself of the peace of earth, and so far as it can without injuring faith and godliness, desires and maintains a common agreement among men regarding the acquisition of the necessaries of life.' (St. Augustine)

I can live within the city of man (I realized years ago) as a monastery might exist in the middle of a city. In it but not of it. A citizen of God's Kingdom in the midst of the city of man. 

'Here we have no lasting city; we are seeking one which is to come.' (Hebrews 13:14) 


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The City of God by St. Augustine is readily available online and in bookstores, and can be found by clicking here.


Text not in quotes © Nancy Shuman
thecloisteredheart.org 
Photos on this post from Pixabay