The Abbot’s Notebook for May 4, 2016

Blessings to you!  What a good week this has been!  One brother went through a crisis but manage to persevere in his vocation.  Another monk, who had left to reconsider his vocation, has decided to return.  When I see my brothers striving to do what is right, I rejoice.  Even if a monk leaves and it seems truly a good decision, I rejoice.  How much more I delight when they seem to make the right decision and continue in the daily struggle of our monastic life.

On the more difficult side of living, the father of our Brother Philip has been given only six months to live.  He is suffering from lung cancer that has metastasized and so Brother Philip has returned to India to be with his family.  I invite everyone to pray for a miracle through the intercession of Saint Alphonsa, the first canonized fully Indian Saint.

Back to the joyful side of life, yesterday, May 3rd, Brother Benedict Hall made his solemn vows as a monk of our community.  He is a big, tall man who is almost always joyful.  We can pray in thanksgiving for this profession.  Having another finally professed member of our community brings us joy and also keeps the community healthy and growing.

Life has happy and sad moments.  That is how it works for most of us.  We have to learn to enjoy the happy times and how to live through the sad times.  Saint Ignatius of Loyola talked about consolation and desolation.  The wisdom of the spiritual life is about how to live so that we die well, how to live so that we live in God:  Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Spiritual life is deeply about making the decisions that help us live in spirit and in truth.

Even though I have been a monk for 52 out of my almost 72 years, I still find myself very often living without seeking to live in God.  I just react to situations instead of looking deeply into them and seeking to make good decisions.  On the good side, I think that I am perhaps inclined to seek to make good decisions more now than I was when I was younger.  But on the less good side, I still react far too often.  I want to become someone who always responds to life rather than one who still reacts to life most of the time.

Gabriel Marcel, one of the great French philosophers, said that Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived.  Other thinkers have said similar things, but it is Gabriel Marcel with whom I always associate this quote.  It seems a bit humorous to me that we have to be told that life is for living!  On the other hand, I have met many people who could benefit from realizing the truth that life is about living.  For many, life is about trying to get as much as possible, life is about avoiding problems, life is about lots of things—and often not about living.

Always my own way of thinking brings me back:  if life is about living, then what does it mean to live?  My Mom would have told me:  you think too much!

For me, thinking was the way that I was able to begin to live my life.  Even though I entered the seminary at the age of 14, I still had to find my own life as distinct from the life of an institution or as distinct from what others told me to do.  That is part of the task of growing up and maturing for all of us.  We need to take on responsibility for our own lives and our own choices and for who we become.

For us Christians, there is a belief that God has a plan for each one of us.  That plan is no written out in a book and given to us.  On the other hand, neither is it something that is so difficult to find that we spend our lives frustrated trying to find the plan and blame God for not being clearer!  Some people spend their lives resenting God for not giving a clear road map.  Others choose to ignore any road map from God.  Some just don’t care about anything except themselves.

It is Jesus who shows us the way and who is the Himself the way.  If we want to understand Jesus and the way, then we have to read Scriptures.  Usually it is someone else who eventually points that out to us.  We are brought to faith by others but then we are set on the road of faith and must live that faith on our own, no matter what others do.  Living in faith, we often find ways of expressing what that faith means to us.

For me, personally, the road to faith and the road that I continue to walk in faith are always about trying to follow Jesus.  I would not have said that when I was 20 years old and probably not when I was 30 or even 40 years old.  In those years, I was living a life of faith sort of in a hope that I would have faith.  I was a priest and I was a superior of a community—but I was still pretty unsure about the path ahead.  Somewhere along the line, it came to me to start praying for clarity and to start reading the Scriptures more.  I even had my degree in Scriptural theology.

God does not always work in our lives in the way that others may imagine!  Our lives are in the living of them.  We all are seekers and each of us finds himself or herself in the process of the search.  Perhaps we imagined that our lives would be different from what they are but our lives are simply what they are.  We are responsible for choosing that which draws us closer to the Lord in our lives.  If you are like me, you often fail, but at least at this stage in my life, I recognize what failure is and get up and choose what is right once more and keep on the path.

When I was a young monk, Father Paschal Cheline told me:  Philip, you are a great leader.  The only problem is that you do not know where you are going.

Now, I know where I am going.  The path is Jesus.  He is the way, the truth and the life.  I fail miserably at times but I know where I am going.  And so I invite you and others:  go with the Lord.  Seek Him with all your heart.  When you fail, get up and start again.

As always I promise my prayers for you and for your needs and intentions.  And I ask your prayers for me and for the nuns and monks of our communities.  I will celebrate Holy Mass for you again this week.  I send you my love and prayers.

Your brother in the Lord,

Abbot Philip