The Abbot’s Notebook for May 25, 2016

Blessings to you!  Although no dogs were lost this week, a visiting dog was bitten by a rattlesnake and had to be rushed to the Veterinary Clinic in Española.  The dog survived but I am left nervous now about the other dogs running freely in the mountains and hills around us.

The monastery in general has been a quiet place this past week.  Every year we receive a group of students from Baylor University’s Truett Seminary.  Professor Gloer comes with them.  While they are here, every morning we have a Scripture class with them, presented by Dr. Gloer.  This annual Scripture class has always been an incredible gift for us.  For many others, just to see seminary students from a Baptist university interacting with Catholic monks is a remarkable experience.  For both of our groups, this regular encounter has been a source of joy and understanding.

Daily spirituality in a monastery is more about how we relate to one another and to God than it is about how much time we spend in common prayer or even in private prayer.  We monks learn from the Rule of Saint Benedict that the way we relate to one another is the way to evaluate the effects of the praying that we do each day.  If we are praying regularly and treating our brothers badly, there is something that is not right in our spirituality.  If we are praying regularly and yet are not aware of the presence of God in our normal living every day, there is also something amiss.

Living in a community day in and day out for years does not mean that we monks have become saints.  It does mean, however, that we are challenged every day to find ways to live in peace and true Christian love with our brothers.  Monastic life insists on us living together as a community, not just living together as in an apartment house!  Sometimes it is an enormous challenge not to withdraw into oneself and ignore all of the brothers who are offensive to me.

Sometimes I find in the younger brothers a lack of a sense of the spiritual combat.  Rather than see our brokenness as something that is simply part of us and against which we must struggle, they see our brokenness almost as an affront to them and they get discouraged because the struggle must go one day after day for a whole life time.  Part of this, I think, comes from a modern sense that we can change everything and we can overcome every obstacle almost immediately.  Young people seem not prepared for a struggle, a spiritual fight that will go on until we die.

Of course, some older people also seem to think that we should be able to overcome the obstacles to a deep union with Christ without much difficulty.  It is not just the young!  But many older people have come to accept that a serious spiritual life is a reality that includes the daily struggle against sin and temptation, against our defects of character and our desires for that which does not lead us to God.

Sometimes it is helpful for me to think of myself as having enlisted for life as a soldier in a war, or having signed up to spend my whole life trying to give my life in service to others.  These are both good images of the spiritual life.  As a soldier because I must learn how to fight and to know that even if one battle is won, the war is not over.  The image of giving my life in service to others is also completely true.  And there is no time when I am able to withdraw from that service.  If I had a regular job, I would have working hours.  Instead, I am on call always.  If I had a regular job, I could retire at a certain age—but serving others for my whole life has no retirement at all.

You know that I can look forward to retirement as abbot at a certain time in my life—but being abbot is only the present service.  As soon as I am not abbot, I will have some other service to fulfill in serving others.

It is a mistake to look for the joys of the spiritual life.  For me, there have been many such joys, but if I look for them, they do not come.  The joys of the spiritual life come only incidentally to the spiritual struggle, to being a soldier of the Lord, to giving my life in service to others.

Part of being a soldier and part of serving others is always being faithful to my obligations of prayer and also to my personal commitment to prayer.  Without that faithfulness to prayer, I would not be able to go on year after year and day after day, seeking to engage in the spiritual combat and seeking to serve others.

Part of being a soldier and part of serving others is also being faithful to reading the Scriptures because the Lord whom I serve both as a soldier and in others is always Jesus Himself.  Reading the Scriptures and spending time with Him renews my commitment and also my energies.  If I do not know Him in His Word, then I begin to do the spiritual combat only with my own energy and to serve others as a humanitarian—and my own strength turns out never to be enough.  How often I have gone down that road and had to return to the Lord!

As always I beg your prayers for me and for our sisters and brothers in our monastic communities.  I promise to celebrate Holy Mass for you and for your needs and intentions.  I send you my love and prayers.

Your brother in the Lord,

Abbot Philip