Conversatio Morum

Reading today a sermon by Dom Michael King OSB, Abbot of the Benedictine Monastery at Camperdown, I was struck by two things he wrote about. They have helped me think about one of Catherine’s two questions – the first one, on prayer.

Here’s some of what Dom Michael said (I’d encourage you to read the whole sermon, though):

Eminent theologian Karl Rahner produced volumes and volumes of commentary on God, redemption, the life of grace. Scattered throughout the tomes of long and often convoluted sentences are short and clear statements recognized as seminal insights which continue to be much quoted. One of those statements bears a relationship to what the Christian must be today. “The Christian of the future will be a mystic or will not exist at all” (Theol. Invent. XX, 149). By mysticism, Rahner explains, he does not mean some esoteric phenomenon but “a genuine experience of God emerging from the very heart of our existence.” He goes on to comment that the source of spiritual conviction comes not from theology but from the personal experience of God. This statement, made late in Rahner’s career, is similar to the comment reported of Thomas Aquinas at the end of his life about his volumes of theology being so much straw.

If monasticism is to mean anything and be of any value in the coming age, it will be within this context of the living experience of God. I think we could paraphrase Rahner to say “Monastics will be rooted in contemplative prayer or they will not exist at all.” A deep experience of God, constantly renewed, will be necessary to offset the threats to faith from a defiantly secular and even atheistic culture. What is already true today will continue to be the norm in the future: only monastics committed to an intense personal prayer life beyond the communal structures will find the joy and transformation that this life offers.

Monasticism sinks its roots into the real world of God by seeking an ever deeper union with God in prayer; this vocation is a ministry of prayer by which a community makes itself available to God as a channel of grace for Christ’s saving mission in this world.

I have been profoundly affected by a statement of Archbishop Desmond Tutu in a sermon preached in Washington National Cathedral in 1984. He thanked Christians around the world for the help that had come to South Africa through their prayer. But he was not making the usual connection about prayers for a particular intention: he was not thanking us for including his suffering people in our prayer intentions. He was making a deeper connection: “Sometimes you may not feel like praying because your prayers are insipid. There is a dryness, and God seems miles and miles away. But because you are faithful, you say to God, `I want to pray, and I offer you these thirty minutes, God, even if its means fighting these awkward distractions,’ and because you are so faithful, someone in South Africa suddenly receives an excess of grace; inexplicably it appears.”

Archbishop Tutu was not thanking us for remembering his people in prayer, but just for praying; for God in unseen ways uses the availability of our hearts to heal other hearts and other situations around the world.

This is an insight from the ancient Christian tradition of prayer which understands the deeper connections beyond request and response. Though not all prayer is petitionary, because of the mystery of the Incarnation all prayer is intercessory; the divine pattern is for human beings to be channels of grace to one another.

Monasticism focuses and concretizes this insight for the Church. Our call is to become channels of blessing for the world by making ourselves more and more available for God’s action in and through us. Through the humility of deep prayer we are able to penetrate beyond the false self to our true centre, where God is always waiting. We prostrate ourselves interiorly, offering ourselves to God for the world. And God distributes gifts in our name, without our ever knowing where or how. Thomas Merton wrote: “In the economy of God’s grace you may be sharing his gifts with someone you will never know until you get to heaven.”

Even when my prayer and meditation seems hopeless and pointless, I am where God wants me to be, and beginning to be who God has made me to be.

Golly. Such a long time since my last post. A function, I’m afraid, of the busyness of life.

Yesterday I met with Catherine (my parish priest) and had a discussion. I described how I feel like, at present, I’m in the desert. Far away from feeling the consolations of God. We also talked about the life of prayer as originating and flowing from God. We don’t need to ‘create’ it, but participate in it. We spoke a little about community, and I described what I understood as the ‘mission’ of the church – to make disciples of Jesus (that is, to be a place of spiritual formation, offering a real training in being disciples, not just ’sin-management’ – see especially Dallas Willard’s work). At the end of the conversation she posed two questions (I hope I remember them well, Catherine):

• What does it mean, then, to participate in the prayer of Jesus, but also to be in the desert (which I likened to being scrubbed with a brillo pad)?
• Where is your community? In what community are you called to be, and how is that worked out?

I’m not very far along in my reflection on either question. However, to the first I can offer a little thought.

As I was saying the morning office, the hymn, which is based on John 15:1-8 spoke to me. However, the whole of John 15:1-17 is relevant in this context:

“I am the Real Vine and my Father is the Farmer. He cuts off every branch of me that doesn’t bear grapes. And every branch that is grape-bearing he prunes back so it will bear even more. You are already pruned back by the message I have spoken.
“Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch can’t bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine, you can’t bear fruit unless you are joined with me.
“I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you’re joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can’t produce a thing. Anyone who separates from me is deadwood, gathered up and thrown on the bonfire. But if you make yourselves at home with me and my words are at home in you, you can be sure that whatever you ask will be listened to and acted upon. This is how my Father shows who he is–when you produce grapes, when you mature as my disciples.
“I’ve loved you the way my Father has loved me. Make yourselves at home in my love. If you keep my commands, you’ll remain intimately at home in my love. That’s what I’ve done–kept my Father’s commands and made myself at home in his love.
“I’ve told you these things for a purpose: that my joy might be your joy, and your joy wholly mature. This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love. Put your life on the line for your friends. You are my friends when you do the things I command you. I’m no longer calling you servants because servants don’t understand what their master is thinking and planning. No, I’ve named you friends because I’ve let you in on everything I’ve heard from the Father.
“You didn’t choose me, remember; I chose you, and put you in the world to bear fruit, fruit that won’t spoil. As fruit bearers, whatever you ask the Father in relation to me, he gives you.
“But remember the root command: Love one another.” John 15:1-17, The Message

More thinking to be done…