Advent Week Four: What Are We Willing to Risk?

What are we willing to risk in our encounter with God? When we read the Gospel for this Sunday, Matthew’s account of the birth of Jesus, we already know how the story ends. Like little children with a bedtime story we know by heart we’re eager to chime in with “and they lived happily ever after.” But to read the story this way is to take away both its power and its subversive application to our lives.

We forget that Joseph didn’t know how the story would turn out. He hadn’t seen the end of this movie when he had a strange dream. What Joseph had was a fiancé who was pregnant before they had been together. Here is where we tend to be oblivious or squeamish. Joseph faced a fiancé pregnant by someone other than himself. He would have assumed that he had been cuckolded. Whether today or two thousand years ago Joseph’s position would have been one of pain, shame and confusion. As a just and righteous man he didn’t want to cause any more pain than had already been afflicted so a quiet divorce would have been the only way to salvage some shred of dignity enabling both he and Mary to go on with their lives. The alternative would have been to allow Mary to be stoned for adultery.

But then, in the midst of the turmoil Joseph has a dream. This is where we like to skip ahead. Of course he will understand that the dream is of God, of course he will take Mary as his wife, of course the child born will be the Son of God. But was anything certain in those first sleep addled moments when Joseph awoke and wondered what on earth he had just dreamed?

There would have been very little risk for Joseph if he had done as most of us would have, shake his head and think “what a strange dream” and sink back into the pain of his knowledge of Mary’s pregnancy. God had sent an invitation, an invitation that entailed enormous risk for Joseph. Today or two thousand years ago the sudden, strange, incomprehensible messages of God call us to give up our well planned future. Joseph’s future would have entailed a painful divorce and sense of betrayal if he had ignored the dream. But to listen to the dream would have entailed entry into an unknown land.

If we listen to the strange, whispered invitations of God we will risk the unknown, the incomprehensible. No one would have blamed Joseph for thinking his dream was a chimera, a reassuring hope obscuring the difficult reality. Indeed how would most of us react when a friend comes to us, ready to take a huge risk based on a dream that they insist is from God?

But to listen to God is to walk blindfolded on an unknown road. For Joseph it meant facing shame and derision from those who had not heard the news, the dreams or the angels that only we know come from God. For those of us who are Benedictine it means taking the risk of committing ourselves to a way of life that makes little sense in world. Inside or outside the monastery we risk saying that there is nothing more important than to seek God. We commit ourselves to a way of life, a set of values at odds with our predominant culture. If we listen, truly listen and respond to the odd dreams, stirrings and angels that whisper, we will walk down an unknown road.

For Benedictines this risk is echoed in Benedict’s chapter on incorporation of new monastics into the community. In chapter 58 of the Rule of Benedict he describes the process whereby the new, idealist seeker comes to the monastery. Full of hope, the newcomer has probably already given up a tremendous amount to arrive at the door of this house of God. And there, instead of a warm welcome acknowledging the call and the risk to show up on the doorstep of a monastery, Benedict says the newcomer should be left for several days knocking on the door.

Benedict is saying: do you know the risk of responding to this invitation from God? Do you know the risk of entering monastic life where your life will no longer be your own but will belong to God? Benedict says: listen, are you going into this journey with full awareness, with your eyes open? The Rule requires a long period of transition, of formation in this new monastic way. When the probation is finally over and the new monastic is to be received into the community there is a final symbolic process to remind the new member of the risk of listening to God.

The new monastic writes out lifetime promises of stability, obedience and fidelity to the monastic way of life and places the document on the altar. In this action the risk is both symbolized and made real. The monastic profession of one individual is united on the altar of Christ’s sacrifice. The action says are you willing to follow Christ in obedience and sacrifice? Are you willing to take the risk? Can you give up your comfortable, complacent life and walk the unknown road of transformation, taking on Christ in this journey that requires the cross before the resurrection?

But now it is Advent, the time of coming, the time of new birth. With birth everything will change but we stand at a crossroads, will this birth happen in our lives? Will we take the risk of the entry of God in our lives? We make the choice every day. Listen: in strange dreams, in the whispers of angels, in odd and unexpected corners of our lives God is inviting us to risk, to travel an unknown road. Are you listening?

Receive Me O Lord

Last week our newest member, Sr. Wendy made her first monastic profession. It was a wonderful ceremony and celebration with her family and friends attending and with most members of the monastic community here for the event. This is such a significant event in the life of the community I always think it is worth reflecting on what it means for all of us.

In chapter 59 of the Rule Benedict gives both the criteria for admission to the monastery as well as the elements of the ceremony. First of all he makes the potential member wait. He wants to “test the spirits to see whether they are of God.” This is a process all communities still follow in some way or another. All of us are motivated by so many different things quite often we aren’t even conscious of what we want and why. For this reason all of us who have made a commitment have had to spend a lot of time waiting, discerning, sometimes struggling and wondering before we made our commitment.

Benedict says the new comer must be “eager for obedience, Opus Dei (common prayer) and oppobria (the challenges of daily life in community.) This means that the woman entering the monastery has to look at her motivation, why she wants to be part of a monastery. Does she seek an ideal world of prayer and spirituality without the challenges of messy daily life? Does she seek a community that will fill a deep-seated loneliness? Benedict is wary of motivations like that. He says the deep hearts longing needs to be about desiring the transformation that comes from obedience, from the hard work of dismantling our egocentricity and becoming open to God and others. We have to desire the Divine Office, coming and being attentive to common prayer multiple times a day and being present even when we are tired, distracted and irritated by the people around us. Do we truly desire the struggles of daily life with a group of people we didn’t choose? Are we willing to find God in the midst of the mundane and difficult and not just in moments of prayer and stillness?

These are the questions that we all have to ponder and work with before we make our commitment. We have to ask why we want to make profession, why do we want to live Benedictine spirituality in our daily life? More than that we have to keep asking these questions, keep looking at our motivation and commitment. A key part of this commitment is then stability, we remain with this community, this motley group of people. There will always be a better community down the road, another group of people, another monastery that does things better, where the people are nicer or more committed or whatever it is we are looking for. But Benedict says that the growth comes from staying in the same place, it comes from the daily rubbing up against reality and growing in the place where we were called.

For many of us in monastic life we have come to see the heart and essence of the monastic commitment in the “Suscipe,” the verses from the Psalm that sisters sing at their profession. In the Rule Benedict has the new member sing the Suscipe three times: “receive me O Lord as you have promised and I shall live, and disappointment not in my hope.”

The newcomer sings this verse at the end of a long period of waiting, discernment and testing. She has struggled with her call, with her own limitations and those of the community she is joining. She has finally decided to make the commitment, to live this Benedictine way for the rest of her life. In this context the Suscipe reflects the deep hearts longing that has brought her to the particular chapel and community where she will make her promise. The Suscipe is a plea to God. The newcomer does not come before God or community full of confidence and assurance, having crossed the finish line of the race. She stands before God and her sisters in a place of humility, of trust, ready to make a leap in the hope that the arms of God and her sisters will catch her. She comes before community and God knowing that she has no strength of her own but only that which comes from God, from her community. The verse comes from a depth of pleading rather than assurance. There is no entitlement in our profession or in our relationship with God. The Suscipe is about a naked trust and hope, it is about being stripped bare clothed only with the assurance of God’s presence and love and the strength of the group of people we promise to live with and serve.

Benedict has the community sing the Suscipe back to the newcomer. In this moment, which is profoundly moving for all of us who sing it as we remember our own profession, is the essence of what it means to be community. We welcome someone new into our midst, into our common journey of uncertainty and hope, the journey of the hard work of transformation, the journey through darkness into the heart of God. With the newcomer we stand not in strength and confidence but in the stunning realization that all we have and are comes from God. We enter into our frailty, our limitation, our hope in complete dependence on God. Our existence is dependent on God and not our own force of will and desire.

The ceremony continues, there are hugs and songs and claps and rejoicing. But as we leave the chapel all of us leave with the knowledge that as we welcome a new member in our midst we have also renewed our own commitment to live this way of life in the spirit of the Suscipe.

Congratulations Sr. Wendy!

Katie's Profession

Saturday was a joyous event at the Monastery as we celebrated Sr. Katie Cooper’s first profession. The monastery was full of people here to support and cheer people on for the occasion. Jeannette reports that at least a quarter of the oblate community was here for the occasion.



We celebrated the Feast of St. Gertrude Saturday so the special Office, readings and decorations helped set the tone for the profession. We hope that under the patronage of Gertrude we too might know the profound, mystical love of Christ that she did. The background of her feast day made Katie’s commitment in this monastery that much more powerful as we reflected on another Benedictine woman who made her own monastic profession so many centuries ago.



Ceremony

The profession ceremony, like all significant Catholic rites, always takes place in the context of Eucharist. In this way we acknowledge that all important events of our life are simply a small part of the greater paschal mystery. Everything in our life happens in the context of Christ’s life, death and resurrection.



There are also parts that are unique to the monastic profession ceremony. After the Gospel reading Katie and Agnes went to the back of chapel. Then they and the monastic community sang “The Call” three times. “Come my daughter, and I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Draw near to Him that you may be radiant with joy and your being will always be at peace.” As this was sung three times as Katie and Agnes moved further down the aisle.



Then, standing before the altar Katie made her profession by answering “I do” when Clarissa asked her whether she promised fidelity to the monastic way of life, stability and obedience. This was followed by a great round of applause from the whole community, the sisters, oblates, family and friends of Katie who filled the chapel and expressed their joy at her commitment.



Next, Katie read her profession formula, showed it to Clarissa and Fr. Eamonn and placed it on the altar. In the Rule of Benedict this act of placing the formula on the altar, written out by the monastic in his/her own hand, is a powerful symbol of uniting oneself with the self-sacrifice of Christ. Every day in the Eucharist we remember and re-enact Christ’s self-giving love on our behalf. By personally writing out her commitment to the monastic way of life in this community and placing it on the altar, Katie indicates her willingness to be united with Christ in the commitment to this community.



Next is the “Suscipe” the ancient song that symbolizes the nature of monastic profession. In the front of the altar Katie sang “Receive me O Lord, as you have promised that I may live, and disappoint me not in my hope.” After she sang it the whole monastic community stood and responded with the same verse in song. We did this three times.



The Suscipe is a prayer of profound humility. We do not take God’s love and mercy for granted. We come before God in hope, always willing to see God’s presence as gift. By responding to Katie’s Suscipe the community indicates that all of us are united with Katie in hope and that we will journey to God together as a community, supporting and upholding one another. By repeating the verse three times we allude to the reality of the Trinity, the ultimate community. We express our hope that as a monastic community we may in some small way model the self-giving love of the divine Trinity.



After the Suscipe came the homily by Sr. Clarissa, reflected on the Rule of Benedict as the compass by which Katie would live her life as a monastic. Sr. Wilma and Katie’s daughters Cheryl and Tina were gift bearers. The schola did an amazing job of of providing very moving music that added to the richness of the ceremony. One of the very last things Sr. Judith did before she died was to prepare the worship booklet.



Celebration

After the Mass there was a big celebration in the dining room where everyone had a chance to rejoice in the amazing and wonderful gift that Katie is to our community and to congratulate her on what is very clearly her call from God to be in our midst as a member of our monastic community. On behalf of Katie and the entire cenobitic community, many, many thanks to all the members of the oblate community who were here to help and celebrate this joyous event.