Rougemont
Theme 1
Individual Growth Based on the Community
The first theme we shall study is the growth of the daughter of God, of the cloistered nun, within a monastic community. It is the first step of our programme: living in solitude.
For a cloistered nun, who has chosen seclusion from the world to dedicate herself to God, who desires to respond fully to the call of Jesus within a group of sisters given to her by Jesus himself,
. how is it possible to grow in the twofold love which will henceforth be her whole life?
. how is it possible to truly become what she is as a result of her consecration?
. how is it possible to develop her own spiritual giftedness?
. how is it possible to discern the paths leading to the whole truth?
To all these issues so interwoven in daily life, I would like to give some elements of response by comparing the spiritual growth of the consecrated person to a journey, the journey of a baptized Christian living the Covenant of God as part of a people, as part of a caring community.
We shall borrow the biblical schema of the Covenant., and as we follow it, step by step, we shall reflect on these topics:
What God gives in Jesus Christ:
. his Love
. his Word
. the desert
. freedom
What God demands through Jesus Christ:
. solidarity with his people
. wariness of idols
. worship in Truth and in Spirit
What God promises with Jesus Christ:
. his active Presence
. a Land of happiness (towards which we journey)
. his Glory.
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The God of the Covenant gives us...
... his Love
God's love for us manifests itself by an urgent invitation to love. God takes the initiative: God is always "initium", beginning, initiative in us and for us, and this invitation to love bears the seal of the Trinity.
. We are invited to enter into a filial relationship with the One who is the model for all types of paternity;
. we are chosen for nuptials with the Word Incarnate;
. we are introduced into a communion of love which the Spirit achieves, in God and among human beings.
Faced with this love, involved in this Trinitarian love, we must make an initial discernment if we want to see it grow within us.
. Does the certainty of being loved inspire our daily living?
. Do we come back to God our Father as to someone who wants us as "family", who can heal our childhood wounds and vanquish all destructive fatherly images?
. Do we come back to Jesus, Son of God, as to the One who can understand all things, who can take unto himself all our joys and fears, who can bring salvation to everything that inhabits or agitates our heart?
. Do we come to Jesus as to a friend who wants to share everything with us?
... to Jesus as to a confidante who can listen to everything, for he has already seen everything,
... to Jesus as to the true Shepherd who is not surprised by any weakness nor repelled by any defilement?
. Do we come to the Advocate, the Spirit, as to the effective power of God,
... as to the one who will create in our hearts the unity which evades us, just as the psalmist did: 'Let my heart's one aim be to fear your name" (Ps 86:11),
... as to the one who will reconcile us with insecurity, with the law of Exodus?
... his Word
The God of the Covenant gives us his Word to be our food and light: 'Listen, Israel... (Dt 27:9); 'Listen, my daughter, pay careful attention' (Ps 44:10); 'This is my beloved Son; listen to him' (Mc 9:7).
The Word is our most direct means of spiritual discernment; it reveals God's plan, God's design for us in daily life,
. if we reserve a place for it to be heard,
. if we take the time to listen with the heart, without contenting ourselves with satisfying our curiosity or our thirst for synthesis,
. if we have the courage, once the first years of enthusiasm have faded, to consecrate to the Word of God the best part of our mind, to reserve for him the greater part of our leisure time.
It is not in our power to make the Word come alive in us; that is the work of the Advocate: "... he will teach you...", said Jesus. And how does the Advocate teach us? By recalling the Word of Jesus for us, by giving it life in our believing heart. What Jesus is asking us is to let his Word burn like a flame once the Spirit has kindled it, to let it burn, and burn what it wills.
... the desert
The God of the Covenant gives us the desert, for it is there, in the desert, that he wishes 'to speak to the heart' (Ho 2:22), to speak to us "on" the heart, as the Bible says.
We like the desert, we strive to find both time and place to recreate the desert; this is one sign of a monastic calling when it is authentic, i.e., when we refuse to make our desert a peaceful and cosy corner, a flight from the total gift of self to God. To tell the truth, in monastic life we carry the desert around with us everywhere we go; it is the echo of our prayer; it is our meeting-place with God; it is the dwelling-place where we truly mature as partners in the Covenant.
But there is one desert from which we are tempted to flee, the desert of the heart,
. when our efforts at dialogue or dedication to the community produces no results,
. when again and again we must contribute a large share to graciousness and forgiveness,
. when, rightly or wrongly, we neither feel truly loved, nor respected; neither appreciated by others in general, or by such or such a person.
The temptation to backtrack then emerges in the form of rejection of others or cries for help; the temptation to maintain a stubborn silence in which the Word of Jesus is no longer heard, just sad ruminations; or else, more or less consciously, more or less painfully, we people the desert with things to do, to think, to dream of, while simultaneously deploring our wasted days and our shrinking heart. Or else we allow the past and its fantasies to breed parasites that devour the present time of salvation when Jesus awaits us, alone with God alone, alone with the one and only God.
... freedom
Finally, the God of the Covenant gives us the gift of freedom. For us, sons and daughters in the Son, it is a freedom of the sons and daughters of God,
. at ease in the home of the Father,
. happy in the home of the Father,
. pruned by the word Jesus has revealed to us, the Word which accomplishes its promise in us: "... the truth will set you free" (Jn 8:31).
Because it is a freedom the Father gives his daughter, it will not be experienced as a distrustful autonomy, but rather as a constant decentralization of personal interests, achieved in trusting humility. All we have is given us by the Father and it is he who enables us to give in return.
Consequently, we have no need to search outside ourselves to bolster our self-esteem. Scripture says of the princess approaching the king: 'the beauty of the king's daughter is within' (Ps 45:14) - 'Omnis decor ejus ab intus.' Consequently, the cloistered nun need not seek ways to boost her self-esteem, for it is only the love of her Spouse that gives her value.
Many negative feelings can impede our desire for interior freedom. For example, when we say: "I am not esteemed at my true worth..." - "My past surely gives me rights..."; - "A monastic nun, yes, but not this way! This is as far as you can go; beyond that limit I have rights and will defend them!" Retaining the right to have rights is always a step backward in our journey towards contemplation.
Basically, this freedom is a victory of Christ over our interior slavery, our selfcenteredness and our wretchedness.
Here I would like to insert a biblical reference. It concerns the episode found in Luke 13:11-17: this woman "who was bent double and unable to stand upright."
How old was she? The Gospel does not mention her age. It is certain that for the past eighteen years she had been walking bent in two: straightening up had become not only painful but also strictly impossible. She had become resigned to walking with eyes fixed on her feet, to being unable to see far ahead of her, to looking at people from a bent posture, and with a straining back. So resigned to her lot had she become that she had abandoned any thought of approaching Jesus, although she had come to the synagogue to hear him. It is Jesus who takes the initiative, who challenges her: "Woman, you are rid of your infirmity". And Jesus laid his hands on her.
Do not try to visualize this woman, do not put Galilean robes on her, for she has your dress on, she has your bent walk, she has your traits, and she has your life history. This crippled woman is you.
Thank God, you can walk upright, straight ahead of you. But do you not feel, as we all feel within our hearts, this secret curvature which ten years, eighteen years, thirty, thirty-five years of monastic life have not succeeded in straightening? This curvature, this doubling up of the human being on herself or himself, is just another edition of original sin; this curvature of a person on the immediate future or the past, on the weaknesses of today or the failings of yesterday; this curvature of the heart on impressions, on bitterness or gloom which simultaneously prevent us from loving others and from being amiable.
We perceive these inner deviations, these distortions of the intelligence, memory, and emotions more or less clearly, but often they have become such a habit, such a daily occurrence that we let them flourish as if they were inevitable and unchangeable miseries.
And now today we see Christ taking the initiative, and turning things upside down: "Woman, you are rid of your infirmity". It is Christ who says these words, it is he who heals, and a few words suffice to bring this about: "Woman", said Jesus (and on his lips this word is always a term of respect, whether referring to a sinner or to his own mother), "you are rid of your infirmity". Definitely rid of it !
And at the same moment, under the healing hands of Jesus, the woman accomplishes the movement she thought forever impossible: as her limbs become more supple, she unbends, she loosens, she straightens up, and suddenly she becomes open to God's grace in her. "Sabbath or no sabbath," explains Jesus, "was it not right to untie the bonds of this woman, a daughter of Abraham?"
We too have bonds that must fall if we wish to become free for thanksgiving, if we wish to imitate God as beloved children do, if in the midst of our sisters we truly want to follow the road of love as Jesus did, he who loved and gave himself up for us.
The way we can let ourselves be freed from bondage is to place ourselves humbly under the healing hands of Jesus, the Lord of the Covenant; and at the same time do all that is humanly possible to bring under his light the shadowy corners of our heart, these areas we have too quickly accepted in resignation. It is truly this liberation by light that Saint Paul pointed out to the Christian Ephesians as being both a gift of God, and a life programme: "You were darkness once, but now you are light in the Lord... Try to discover what the Lord wants of you" (Ep 5:8).
What the God of the Covenant wants for us, and wants to give us in Jesus Christ is an adult freedom. A freedom to be lived in spiritual maturity, with the emotional autonomy of an authentic spouse of Christ.
Ability to live as an adult is never to be taken for granted, and never an eternally established fact. Formerly, when living in the world, we sometimes could have had the impression of living as adults because we had important responsibilities, or much freedom in leisure activities, travel, encounters. And once the Exodus road is chosen, we see more or less clearly how hard it is to leave our childhood behind - or go back to childhood, a still more difficult task - we see how demanding it is to continue plodding on, step after step, once we become aware of our miseries and the failings of our community.
*
The God of the Covenant demands of us ...
... solidarity with his people
God demands that we live in solidarity with a people, with the Church, with the community; and the proof of this communion is our community commitment in everyday life.
As time goes on, refreshing the notion of fraternal contract in monastic life is a good idea, for on the day of our profession we did sign a communal contract with our brothers or sisters: we asked for God's mercy and we also asked - in one way or another, in some written form or another - to live in a community of sisters. We demand this communal life; we still demand it.
Our fidelity to this communal contract binds us to a specific community until death severs the bond. This fidelity will be a measure of our love for our Saviour Jesus, a concrete manifestation of our faith in the Church as means of salvation, and also proof of our openness to its universal mission.
This communal contract endures in spite of all disillusions and deceptions from our own selves or from the community. It is only normal that as time goes by we lose a reasonable number of illusions, for as the sage says: "Illusions, we need a host of them, for so many fall by the wayside !"
Day after day, Eucharist after Eucharist, this communal contract brings us back to daily reality, to the perpetual self-offering we made of ourselves "for the glory of God and the salvation of humankind". This communal contract between the community and each member remains the authentic road to happiness as well as the narrow doorway to true joy, for Jesus said: "There is more joy in giving than in receiving". And the community is exactly the place where one gives.
By entering into a Covenant with us Jesus seals an agreement with his community here and now. At the very same moment he sets us like a seal on his heart, the heart of God made Man, he also inscribes us indelibly as part of a community. There, we shall always find him, and he us; consequently, it is always there we must expect to meet him, and not elsewhere.
That is why our consecrated adult's life enables us to resist the temptation of living elsewhere, even though, and especially if, the "elsewhere" is a figment of our imagination. This temptation often walks hand in hand with that of living in isolation.
This communal contract, whose realism we can measure as time pass, can be characterized by seven statements:
1. I do not seek Christ without my sisters, walking parallel to them but not with them;
2. 1 want to live in solidarity with this community for life, until death, for Christ;
3. I do not permit the temptation of the 'elsewhere' to encroach upon me, neither much nor little;
4. I remain involved in community experiences, present and to come, notwithstanding my age, experience, values - eventually personal charisms - of which I may be the bearer;
5. I assume my share of the sinfulness of my community and with it I implore the Lord's forgiveness. (Here we are in harmony with a constant attitude found in the community liturgies);
6. I did not choose my sisters and I still do not choose them;
7. I do not calculate or compare what I give, what I bring, what I earn and what I invest.
... wariness of idols
"You shall not make images.." was the request made to Israel by the God of the Exodus, the God of the Covenant.
The first years of contemplative life soon reveal our personal idols, that is to say, anything that would divide our heart, our intelligence, seduce us, turn our heart away from the singleness of our attention on God or the singleness of God's attention to us. If we hunger for personal growth as partner of the Covenant, to a large extent our spiritual discernment, even after twenty or thirty years of monastic life, must consist in naming our idols. This does not mean only to flush them out of ambush, but also to lead them into the light of Christ our Saviour.
Idols of our intelligence.
. Our self-image, the one we built up, that we nourish and cherish, and furthermore is divorced from reality: the reality of our capacities, our past, our lived experience of community or contemplation.
. Our imagination, to the extent it hides from us the truth of our life and of our response to Jesus. Sometimes the imagination enable us to experience a very holy existence vicariously, "by proxy", but without paying the price of holiness. The imagination acts as a wedge between reality and fantasy. Because we perceive a path, we think we have already travelled its whole length; because we perceive the need for such or such an effort, we think we have already made it.
At this point, we are pointing out the difference between the true intelligence of faith matters and a cerebral approach to these same realities: in matters of faith a true understanding is one that is always guided by the Spirit of God, whereas in the cerebral approach it is our own spirit that leads and builds. And this is not a question of education, for one can have little education and be cerebral, that is to say, give free rein to imaginative scenarios, to the need of pinpointing and possessing the truth.
. The bulimia of learning is another idol of our intelligence, at least for some people. They have never read enough; they have never enough books to devour.
Idols of our heart:
. all the curvatures we spoke about, everything preventing our complete dedication and submission to the will of Christ, everything dividing our heart and making us reluctant or unfit to love and be loved (ordinarily both together).
The idols of the heart : it is clearly a question of idols and not only of wounds of the heart, for the latter can well be a door leading to the God of mercy and consolation, the God who is incapable of contempt (Ps 51:19; 2 Co 1:3).
When we speak about idols of the heart we mean, for example:
. instincts to possess: possession of objects, of our time; possession of persons (we would like to exist for someone, at least for someone!);
. periods of stagnation, more or less willed, and lived in bitterness, sadness and mediocrity;
. the refusal to assume the frustrations inherent in our life of "pilgrims" hastening towards the eternal City.
Even when we have lived a full life in the world as responsible and ardently dedicated persons; even when we have clashed with the life and hardships of the working world; even when we have already experienced in the world the solitude inherent in a total dedication to God, even then we sometimes discover that in spite of years of monastic life we are still reluctant to make efforts, to assume joyous asceticism, to cope with daily monotony. The words, the realities of sacrifice become unbearable because, to a small extent, we have lost sight of the Lord's cross; we hesitate to take up again the full range of means for an inner struggle. We find ourselves exasperated by the pettiness or the tactlessness of sisters, we miss the warmer, more open, more youthful atmosphere of friendly groups we knew while in the world; we permit aggressive feelings to rise in our hearts, or sometimes we see jealousy spontaneously rear its ugly head - all feelings that wrench the heart and chase away peace.
"The love of Christ urges us on", it keeps us on the narrow path because the cure for love is to love still more. Sometimes however, instead of transferring all our desires, all our capacity for love unto Christ we keep on clinging to bits and pieces of our idols, to this souvenir, that hour at the parlor, a bit like these women in the Bible who used to carry their family idols in the pack-sack of their camels.
... to worship in truth and in Spirit
Worshiping God in the Spirit and in truth, about which Jesus spoke in John, chapter IV, is not a worship without ritual, a worship that would be interior because it would be devoid of liturgy. It is a question of worshiping in truth, and we know the theological depth of meaning in the word 'truth' in John's Gospel: truth is the truth of God, the truth Jesus brought and revealed to us and especially the truth Jesus himself is: 'I am the truth'.
Worship in truth, with truth, is a worship given to God and nourished by the Word of Jesus; a worship where the resurrected Christ will be 'the Gay, the Truth, the Life' as Jesus said in John 14:6, for as long as we are pilgrims on our way to glory, Jesus is for us the truth and the life in the form of a road, in the form of a passover: "No one can come to the Father except through me". Therefore, if we have the impression of being lost, of backtracking in our search for God, finding our way back to Jesus again requires only that we open our hearts to his truth, to receive like a poor beggar the life he offers us. And this is true even though each time we return to Christ we come from further away, after encountering the same old dilemmas, even though we are tempted to lose heart because the way is not clear.
Worship in the Spirit, in the Holy Spirit who brings about an actualizing anamnesis of God's word. Jesus said: "The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all I have said to you" (Jn 14:26). The Advocate teaches us by jogging our memory, by recalling to mind the words of Jesus; he then infuses the spark of life in Christ's words of revelation.
Thus worship in Spirit and in Truth will be a Trinitarian worship:
. a worship referring to the person of Jesus, the Son who leads us to the Father,
. a worship referring to the word of Jesus, to the Truth he has heard from his Father,
. a worship borne by the Pneuma, by the Spirit who leads us towards the whole Truth, by recalling the words of Jesus.
It will be a worship opening unto glory, that is, to the inexpressible union of the Father and the Son.
The God of the Covenant promises us ...
... his active Presence
"I will adopt you as my own people, and I will be your God" (Ex 6:7). God is making us an offer: to exchange gifts, to share a friendship; "... I am with you, I shall be with you", or as Jesus said in John 14:21: "Anybody who loves me I shall love him and show myself to him".
But here we need to make a very fine discernment, one concerning the active presence of our God. We do not always have proof of his loving presence, neither during our daily activities, nor in moments of prayer, not even at the Eucharistic thanksgiving even though we would so like to make it a moment of intense prayer as well as humble prayer. The realities of faith and hope do not necessarily reverberate into the realm of the senses and we are always tempted to gauge our love according to the ease we feel while praying, whereas Jesus' criterion is not that at all. According to Jesus, "He who does my Father's will is the one who loves me" (I Jn 2:17).
Discerning the active presence of God is a delicate task indeed, for sometimes the feeling in our heart is one of betrayal, one that wrings a cry from the heart as it did from Job's: "You have grown cruel in your dealings with me" (30:21). Our deep-seated impression is that God is absent, that he is not there to act with his people. We feel our community is drifting uncontrollably, subject to inexorable ageing, and we say: "I do not want to grow old ! I do not want to age like that !" We more or less stop praying the Master of the harvest because as regards the future of the community we have already accepted defeat... And yet the Lord said: "I am with you always, to the end of time" (Mt 28:20). In reality, one of the saddest moments of a contemplative's life is having to admit at the very moment of God's answer to a prayer: "Lord, I had already given up hope".
Even when God makes his presence known we sometimes impede his action. We want to do things ourselves, we want to be aware of what we do, and see what is done. We then forget to give God freedom to follow his own rhythm, which is that of the Holy Spirit. We forget to make ourselves receptive, that is to let ourselves be re-created, re-modeled by the Creator. "So it is not a matter of what any person wants or what any person does, but only of God having mercy" (Rm 9:16). "It is not eating and drinking that make the kingdom of God, but the saving justice, the peace and joy brought by the Holy Spirit" (Rm 14:17).
... a land of happiness
The God of the Covenant promises us true happiness on earth: the happiness of experiencing the only love able to fill a life to overflowing. This is already the promised land, but it is a land towards which we must journey. It is a land of happiness towards which we are continually walking. However, we get tired of always being on the exodus trail. We would like to stop, take a second breath, and benefit at least a little from this God-given gift, even though the manna rots when hoarded and not shared. We would like to hold on to certain moments of happiness with Jesus, but we hear him tell us as he did to Mary Magdelena after his resurrection: "Do not cling to me" (Jn 20:17).
As Gospel witnesses our happiness consists in giving happiness to people God places on our path and in enabling them to meet this God who is all our joy. Happiness on earth will always be the joy of a people in exodus. It will always be the gladness of a conscience journeying towards a total gift of self and towards total openness to God's own gift of himself. The only true love is love always moving ahead.
But journeying is always a hardship. The life of the baptized, and still more so that of the consecrated, is conditioned by an everlasting dynamic law. God did not say to Abraham: "walk today and rest tomorrow"; he said, "Walk in my presence and bear yourself blameless" (Gen 17:1).
A dynamism hard on the heart ! Very often at the beginning of a personal or community retreat, we sing with the Church: "Send forth your Spirit, 0 Lord, and renew the face of the earth". And when the Holy Spirit, in response to our prayer, begins to renew the face of our community or the face of our personal life, we cry out: "Oh! Not so fast, Lord, really not so fast !" We are afraid of marching on, afraid of the exodus road, and would like to find a resting place even though true repose is not to be found until we reach the eternal rest of God.
As long as we are alive the hardships of the road must be submerged in the mystery of Jesus the wayfarer, in the mystery of his paschal passover. Every day our personal history must become holy history. That is exactly why the Holy Spirit desires to increase our lucidity concerning our past, our present, and our future orientations; he wants us to succeed this continual faith journey until the moment when "the whole truth" will be grasped.
Lucidity on the past
The more we advance in the light of Jesus, the more he enlightens our past: our sinful past of course, but also the happy past we sometimes would like to cling to, as if it were the green grass of Egypt - a somewhat idealized figment of our imagination.
In monastic life our first reflex is nothing but the conversion reflex, which consists in going beyond the sinful past, negating it, drowning it in God's mercy; and this is exactly what must be done each time it serges back to sadden or paralyze us.
But side by side with this sinful past exists another one we must take hold of in all simplicity. It is our miserable past, the past of our personal miseries, and also the misery we brushed against, the misery we endured in our body, in our heart. Misery is a finite reality; it is not guilt. In the face of our numerous great and small miseries, all part of our adult experien-ce, the Spirit guides us to look at the past and say, at least once in our lives, a heartfelt yes: "Yes, Lord, I was like that; my family was like that. Yes, Lord, here is where I am, and I am no further ! But I know that wherever I am you will come to help me, to save me."
To advance in our faith journey, sooner or later we must make a certain evaluation of the past. Not to feed our imagination, but to offer this past, little by little, piece by piece, to Jesus the Redeemer. It is only then that Christ will be free to transform our miseries into mercy. It is only then also that we small begin to give what we have not even received, there where God has placed us.
Lucidity on the present
Since we are moving ahead on the Exodus road, it is necessary to discern what lands we are crossing or what crosses our paths.
As we advance in monastic life we acquire a deeper understanding of our community and we know ourselves much better as members of this exodus group. From Eucharist to Eucharist the work of conversion continues in us and in the light of the Spirit we discover a multitude of feelings and impressions, moments of enthusiasm, exhaustion and surrender, spells of openness to others and spells of closing in on ourselves; we discover a multitude of holy desires and incapacities on which the Paraclete Spirit wishes to focus in order to bring in the saving light of the Gospel.
Confronted with the findings of this contrasting inner world three reactions are possible:
- either we go no further than discovering the naked truth, the momentary emotional reaction, the immediate experience (and this is often the case);
- or in the face of this jumble of feelings beyond our control we are sometimes tempted to remain bogged down in automatic guilt: "I cannot do this, I cannot do that; I'll never be able to do anything better than this";
- evidently, as we become aware that our present attitudes and reactions are contrary to the Gospel of Jesus, we have to beg the Lord's forgiveness; but once forgiveness bas been given - and it is often given by one glance - it is good to ask ourselves in his presence: what does this mean ? This feeling of fatigue, this closing in on myself, this abrupt surge of jealousy... Lord, what does it mean ? How am I to interpret this negative feeling, this crippling emotion ?
We must be ready to change our scale of values, as Saint Paul says: "When I was a child, I used to talk like a child, and think like a child" (1 Co 13:11). We should say, "when I was in the world, I used to think like the world, and react like the world, but now I am a contemplative nun, I must react according to the Gospel of Jesus".
Here, the irreplaceable role of spiritual dialogue with a witness of Christ becomes self-evident: a counsellor, man, woman, or priest... but a real dialogue! A whole part of the truth on our present cannot come to light except through dialogue. What liberates us is talking things over. We can well say, "But I know all that ! " Certainly, we do; but as long as it remains unsaid, liberation cannot fully take place, this liberation the Spirit of Jesus wants us to keep striving for.
Lucidity on future events and what is still locked up in God's secret designs. We are swept onward by the tide of time "like a reed canoe", as Job said (9:26). With Jesus we must cross the thick fog of time, this monastic life span; it is the test of spiritual maturity. Even when we die young we cannot skip any part of the exodus, for the Spirit then takes charge of the necessary accelerations.
One of the greatest blessings in spiritual discernment that God can grant us as we walk the Covenant road is reconciliation with insecurity, with forever marching on, with the need of exodus; for although we live with certainty in our faith-life, we also live as the whole Church does, in insecurity.
Reconciled with insecurity, with exodus, it becomes possible with the grace of Jesus, to live long periods of monastic patience worthy of God's own patience. There again the Spirit helps us discern the causes of our bursts of impatience with conventual life, with the holy greyness of everyday living. He especially enables us to pinpoint certain selfimages which like parasites grind away at the contours of the Beatitudes: an inflated image of ourselves, but as often as not, a deflated one too. And with the power and the gentleness of the Spirit it becomes possible to offer our helpless efforts without shrinking the height and breadth of our desires.
Because we are certain of being loved by the One who gave himself up for us, we learn to react with determination in the face of a future that evades us, without faltering when confronted by solitude or misunderstandings, without flirting ever so little with dejection, without succumbing to the fatigue of serving. For if we wish to dwell in love, we have to love to the extreme. "Jesus having loved his own who were in this world, now showed his love for them to the very end" (Jn 13;1). We too have to love fully, to the very end, and happiness will be found by losing ourselves. The remedy for love is still more love.
... the Glory
God's glory is the source and aim of all his work.
For Jesus glory was, and still is, the crowning point of the mystery of his life and death: "I have glorified you on earth and finished the work that you gave me to do. Now, Father, it is time for you to glorify me with that glory I had with you before ever the world was" (Jn 17:4)
For us, who have espoused Christ, his mystery and his work, everything will finish in glory. Everything, even at this very moment, takes its final meaning in the promised glory : this moment of work, this moment of community sharing, this moment of cooperation, this moment of communal support - from this very day all is directed towards glory. Only glory can make our love eternal.
Only glory can cast some light on the lifetime commitment of the poor we are. Glory is the ultimate goal, the only achievement on a level with God's love for us. Glory is the only certain value, it is the definitive fulfilment of life, of an abundance of life. The promised glory is the only true measure of the present life's value. In the last analysis, glory is the decisive criterion for all spiritual maturity, all spiritual growth, because when we contemplate things from the point of view of glory, we contemplate them from the point of view of their fulfilment.
In all circumstances, in all major decisions, for all the specific choices marking our life as contemplatives, our life as members of a community; in order to cleanse our hearts of hesitation, sadness, and pettiness, we can repeatedly ask ourselves: what am I seeking ? Whom am I seeking ? It is especially important to hear the Risen Christ ask us the same question he asked Mary of Magdala, the question which alone brings about the conclusive discernment and conversion of a whole life: "Woman, whom are you seeking?" (Jn 20:15) ... Where are you seeking me? Seek me where I am, and I will find you; I will join you where you are.
So far we have compared the growth of a person within a monastic community to a covenant journey with God, lived personally and in solidarity with a group of sisters. As we finish this phase, if we could search together for a test - not a test of our success in spiritual growth, but a test of authenticity in our journeying within a community -, then we could explore the concept of emotional autonomy.
Let us try to describe the emotional autonony of the cloistered nun consecrated to God within a community.
1. Emotional autonomy implies freedom from the bondage of my own self-image. It sometimes happens that we become dependent on the mirror called community, that is, we become vulnerable to the image the community reflects to us, or the image we think we see in the community, whence this temptation: either to stop being ourselves and merge with the image expected of us, or else to succumb to the reverse temptation of "smashing the mirror".
When the community sends back an image that is not sufficiently gratifying, we sometimes have the tendency to break the mirror, to become aggressive towards the community that perceives us in such manner.
I am not the image the community reflects to me. I am not even the image I make of my own self. With the unparalleled intuition that is his alone, the author of the Imitation of Jesus Christ says, "You are not better because you are praised; you are not verse because you are blamed. You are what you are Deo teste - before God as your witness". Behold my true identity! I am wbat I am before God as my witness; I am what I am in the eyes of God. Therefore, my life remains hidden in God, for God alone knows me. I do not know what God knows of me, but I do know that this God is love; he who knows me is love; I know he has no other plan for me but that of love: "When Christ is revealed", says St. Paul, "you too will be revealed" (Col 3:4). But only then, and not before ! Until that moment comes, I shall ignore the name inscribed on my 'white stone' (Rv 2:17). I shall discover myself completely only in the light of the parousia, in the light of Jesus' glory. But already I know myself sufficiently since I know I am loved by God in Jesus Christ and I am moved by the Spirit.
2. While I rejoice at the trust shown me, at the affection manifested to me, at the place reserved for me in the community, my first concern must be to give my own trust, to be indulgent, to offer forgiveness, interest, sympathy. When I am tempted to say to myself: "I am alone, I am truly all alone", it is then that I must move off towards the solitude my sisters bear. It is a question of changing through love all tendencies that deal mortal blows, of changing all false solitudes into openness to others.
3. If I wish to grow in emotional autonomy, I have to tell myself repeatedly that true love is the true worth and the true criterion of my life; that is as true now as it will be in the evening of my life.
4. I must learn to acknowledge my physical, intellectual, cultural, artistic needs and speak about them to the person or persons in authority, not toclaim a certain position, respect, or responsibility, but to live an enlightened obedience.
5. Autonomy can also be measured by the ability to bear much without the need to be borne by others. Solitude is the special lot of all superiors, whether they be community coordinators or formation directors. Real solitude, adult solitude. Such was the solitude of Jesus, he who bore alone the responsibility of human salvation without being able to receive any support. This is the solitude of the person who consents to live alone with God alone.
6. Our emotional autonomy will be authentic only if it gradually becomes the autonomy of the spouse whose heart bas been given forever. All the saints of our institutes were true spouses for Christ. They too experienced the ups and downs of spiritual life but they never bargained with the Lord concerning the love they gave him; it was for him, for him alone, - for Christ! Only for him and his work. Only for him and the service of the Kingdom.
7. Finally, emotional autonomy is that of the cloistered nun whose whole life is spent searching for the face of the Lord, "Yahweh, I seek your face; do not hide your face from me" (Ps 27:8-9).
Seeking the face of the Lord
The face of Jesus, the features of Jesus ... since almost two thousand years nobody bas seen the features of Jesus, nobody bas been able to visualize them, to paint them with any certainty, for the face of Jesus, true God and true man, can only be drawn by strokes of the spoken word.
The word of God, however, never shows only one image of the face of Jesus. It offers us three images which sometimes blend together and sometimes differ from one another: three faces, referring to one another as if to say: he is alive the one you seek; he is mystery the one you love, and you will only find him if you continue to journey.
The first image, the one that fascinated and still fascinates all the Lord's friends, is the suffering face of Jesus. As we contemplate the face of this condemned man, of this crucified and dying man, our eyes cannot remain fixed on it unless we love, unless we are journeying towards the autonomy of a spouse, because suffering is never a beautiful thing to see. In the throes of death Jesus had "no majesty, no beauty, no grace to attract consideration". Isaiah describes the suffering Messiah as "a man of sorrows, despised, rejected by men... before whom people screen their faces" (Is 53:3-4). And looking at him we cannot help but say inwardly: "I do not want to see this ! I do not want to see a man suffer to such extremes !"
In the passion of Jesus only Love is clothed in splendour, only Love speaks of God's heart; all the rest is violence, hatred and treachery. And if the suffering face of Jesus is finally so beautiful, so noble, so attractive to us who believe, especially in times of suffering and anguish, it is because this tormented face of Jesus tells us, cries to us, or murmurs to us a Love that has gone to the very end, a Love that was able to go beyond death for us.
The second image of Jesus, the second Holy Face we might say, is the one Peter, James and John glimpsed for a moment on the mountain: the transfigured face of Jesus. Jesus had climbed the mountain to pray, to commune with his Father intensely, in silence, in trustful and filial dialogue. For Jesus, the man, a meeting with the Father in prayer was the very breath of life.
"As he prayed, the aspect of his face changed and his clothing became brilliant as lightning" (Lk 9:29). The disciples saw this face of Jesus transfigured in prayer, transfigured by prayer. Nothing had prepared them for this revelation, for this unexpected unveiling of the mystery of Jesus. In fact, the disciples were heavy with sleep, but "'they still kept awake and saw his glory" (Lk 9:32).
Here we have a summary of the typical monastic vigil: "they kept awake and saw his glory." Nothing prepares us for those moments of pure grace when we too glimpse the glory of God touching for one fleeting instant the features of Jesus. More than Peter and the others, we are heavy with sleep when we reach the mountain. This sleep, how familiar it is to us after ten, twenty, thirty years of monastic life; the sleep of our faith too accustomed to the wonders of God; the drowsiness of our hope too quickly dulled, too quickly exhausted, too quickly resigned; the somnolence of our communal love, when we abruptly stop in the middle of a true dialogue, when we set conditions for our self-donation, or when we give ourselves the right to have rights.
Sleep lies in wait for us. It is the glory of Jesus which keeps us awake, "fully awake in our faith". The only antidote to the increasing dullness of our love while on the road of spiritual growth is to live our whole life as a series of surprises; it is to let ourselves be surprised, during a whole lifetime, by the glory of Jesus, and to enter into his transforming light with humility, poverty and happiness.
And this leads us to the contemplation of a third image of the most holy face of Jesus: the glorious face of the risen Lord. The transfiguration was no more than a transient event; it was a foreshadowing of the final glory of the Lord, and it is that glory, the glory of the new and eternal Covenant, that we look for "at the crack of dawn", on the face of Jesus. Since we have been brought back to true life with Christ, we must look for ... at the crack of dawn ... the things that are in heaven, where Christ is, sitting at God's right hand (Col 3:1). From where we stand, we look at where Jesus is standing and because our love as spouse of Jesus reaches him where he is, "the life we have is hidden with Christ in God" (Col 3:3).
Our life is hidden; it is out of sight, and that is why faith remains difficult for us. However, our life is in God with Christ, and it is there, in God with Christ, before the glorious face of Christ, that the work of the Father pursues its course in us, this work which is both illumination and metamorphosis.
God, who is light itself, becomes light for us: "... the God that said ' let there be light shining out of darkness ', is the God who has shone in our minds' (2 Co 4:6). And why this radiance in our heart ? Why this shining light in our heart ? It is "to radiate the light of the knowledge of God's glory, the glory on the face of Christ" (2 Co 4:6). Thus, it is the light of God himself which for us, in us, illuminates the face of Jesus.
Thus, by illuminating the face of the Risen Christ with his own glory, God the Father transfigures us, we who contemplate, we who sing in the Spirit this glory: "And we, with our unveiled faces reflecting like mirrors the brightness of the Lord, all grow brighter and brighter as we are turned into the image that we reflect '' (2 Co 3:18).
Face of Christ laden with our sorrows.
Face of the Chosen One transfigured on the mount.
Face of the Lord glorified in heaven.
Three icons of his only Son whom the Father gave to the world.
Three moments of the Paschal mystery that has saved us.
By this Face all is said, all Love is manifested.
For this Face, we, the spouses of the Saviour, consent to lose everything.
"It is your FACE, O Lord, that I seek,
do not hide your FACE from me"
(Ps 69:17, 102:2, 143:7).
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