The Abbot’s Notebook for December 21, 2016

Blessings to you!  This Notebook brings you my Christmas prayers and the promise of a Holy Mass for you and for your needs and intentions.  Christmas will be here so very soon and I won’t be writing again before Christmas.  Merry Christmas!!  May the love and mercy of God come on us all and give us a true spiritual delight in this great mystery of our faith.

So much of Christmas today is about money and gifts.  Even in the monastery there is a tendency to think of a party and a celebration and forget a bit the central mystery of Christmas:  the presence of Christ in our midst to save us and to save our world.  What we usually need saving from is ourselves.  We get so caught up in our own way of thinking and our own way of seeking the world and our own way of feeling that we can become isolated from others.

One of the tasks of spiritual life, it seems to me, is relating to others and learning from others.  Perhaps in the past I took it for granted that people actually seek knowledge and seek to do good.  Today I realize that lots of people don’t look for much at all.  I think back to some of my own relatives who lived in a way that seemed to go nowhere.  They were good people.  Often as I would look at their lives, I would judge that they worked in order to make money to drink and have fun—and there seemed little more.  Yet, even as I got to know them, I could find aspects of their lives that were looking for meaning in life, looking for that which would satisfy some inner direction within them.

The Catholic author that seems most to reflect this point of view for me is Flannery O’Connor.  Even though I don’t remember a single story point by point, whenever I read her stories, I found ordinary people with ordinary lives and sometimes sort of boring lives—and in the midst of that reality, Flannery O’Connor encountered the presence of the living God.

Pope Francis seems to have that gift also.  He is able to sense the presence of God in really difficult and devastating situations.  His faith may be seeing what is really there while those of us with less faith don’t see much at all.  Flanner O’Connor had that same gift:  in the most hopeless and even repugnant situation, she seemed to sense the presence of the divine, of the living God.

This is a wonderful gift to admire in others even as it challenges me or challenges us to begin to look more deeply.  Some people don’t want to look or they find looking for meaning too difficult.  Lots of people don’t have an intellectual formation that pushes them in the direction of looking for meaning and thus don’t have the sort of tools that help others look for meaning.  On the other hand, there is a sort of primitive instinct in lots of people that looks for meaning and understanding of life.

Somehow, even in the monastic life, it is the challenge to be in contact with this inner unsettledness that is looking for more:  more understanding, more meaning, more of whatever it is that makes life worth living.  There is something in lots of people that recognizes when such meaning is lacking even if it does not easily recognize how to start looking for that meaning.

My own family used to tell me, quite often:  you think too much!  And I remember one of my classmates telling me one time when I was totally sure that I had found some truth:  “Philip, you are always thinking.  You are convinced that you are right.  I don’t have the intellectual gifts to argue with you, but my instinct tells me you are wrong.”  So how can anyone argue with that.  Or, one of the monks of Mount Angel who told me once:  “Philip, you are a really good leader and people follow you easily.  The only problem is that you don’t know where you are going.”

None of those comments stopped me from continuing my search for meaning in my own life and in the lives of others.  There was something about the contemplative saints that also drew my attention when I was young.  Perhaps I wanted to escape suffering by escaping into God?  It was that drawing to contemplative life that eventually got me into a monastery, even though I did not live monastic life very well when I was young.  I stayed and kept on trying to encounter God.  Maybe I wanted something exotic and all I ended up with was something normal.

At times I am not sure that everyone has this drive to know, to encounter, to seek.  So far, it seems to me that most people have this drive in one way or another.  Some develop it to great capacity and others seem to block it because it can be a bit scary.

Spiritual life, it seems to me at this time in my life, is this inner looking for a deeper meaning.  For me personally, the spiritual life is looking for the meaning of Jesus in all that I do and say and live.  At some point, I came to believe.  It was not a sudden conversion, even though part of me would have preferred that.  Instead it was a sort of final realization that I do believe in Jesus, that He is God and that He is my Savior, and so on.  And so I have had to choose to follow Him, even though huge parts of me would like a totally free life just seeking pleasure.

As we come to Christmas, I can understand more deeply this mystery of the Incarnation because it is God who is hidden in all that is human and in all of creation.  Once my heart has seen Him, it continues to adore Him.  Once I see that glimmer of seeking in others, I want to fan it into fire.  For myself, I want to be consumed in His fire and do all for Him and finally be completely in Him.

As always I promise to celebrate a Holy Mass this week for you, as I promised at the beginning of this Notebook.  May the celebration of the Birth of Jesus bring deeper faith and even a contentment in believing, but also a strong force to struggle against evil and temptation in our world.  Christ is born for us.  May Christ become all for us.  I send you my love and prayers.

Your brother in the Lord,

Abbot Philip