A Chapter Conference for Ash Wednesday

+ “Qui meditabitur in lege Domini die ac nocte, dabit fructum suum in tempore suo.”
 
These words, which are amongst the very first words of the Psalter and which are sung during the Communion procession of the Mass of Ash Wednesday, resound deeply in the monastic heart: “He who contemplates the Law of the Lord, day and night, shall yield his fruit in due season.”
 
For what is the monastic vocation if it is not to contemplate the Law of the Lord day and night: in singing the Lord’s praises in choir, in the precious, golden early-morning silence of lectio divina, in the silence and recollection that protects us whilst we are about our monastic work no matter where it must be, in our various studies, and even in our rest? The world may see this as a burden, as a restriction, as an imposition, but as every novice who perseveres to profession comes over time to discover from within, the discipline of silence is a liberation—the liberation of the new man “created according to God, in justice and holiness of life” (Rite of the Clothing of a Novice) from the old man, from the constant noise in which the world engulfs us and anaesthetises us, that he might become the man, the monk, Almighty God calls him to become so as to be able to yield his fruit in due season.
 
To be sure, monks young and old and everywhere in between must work at maintaining and protecting the discipline of silence, just as a novice must patiently learn its fundamental importance over time. It is all too easy for us to let the observance of silence slip and to allow noise to infest our hearts, minds and souls, leaving little or no room for the contemplation of the Law of the Lord.
 
This, then, I would ask, is our first Lenten priority: to ensure that our observance of silence is as it should be externally, and that it is generous and loving internally. The Law of the Lord must not only find space within us in which to enter, it must also find a welcome that allows it to take root and grow within us. It must find in us the good soil of the Gospel of Sexagesima Sunday.
 
This welcome must also be a patient one. We are used to instant messages and responses and to all manner of immediate cause-and-effect activity. But he who contemplates the Law of the Lord, day and night, shall yield his fruit in due season, not by return of electronic message.
 
That is to say that a monk—indeed any Christian, but especially those who live by the Rule of Saint Benedict—must have a supernatural patience which is content with doing that, and only that, which is the business of the day. A monk who is anxious to see the fruits of his prayer in this life, shall in all likelihood see the shipwreck of his vocation sooner rather than later. Our fidelity to the Office in Choir, to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, to the other liturgical rites, to our lectio divina, to perseverance in fraternal charity, to all of the customs and observances that shape and protect our vocation, is sufficient for today. They shall yield their fruit in due season, according to the Providence of Almighty God, in this life and in the next. Looking anxiously at our watches will not help: indeed, it may be regarded as a lack of faith in God’s Providence—and at worst a blasphemy.
 
So, brethren, we must be patient with ourselves, and with Almighty God. God is God: He knows what He is doing with us. He knows what He is doing here in our small, new foundation. When He is ready, we shall see more of His Holy Will for us. We must be patient—whilst all the while contemplating the Law of the Lord. This supernatural patience is, I submit, our second Lenten priority.
 
The third is that we offer our Lenten penances for two particular intentions. Firstly, for those young men within whom the Holy Spirit has begun the stirrings of a monastic vocation. Some of them we already know; some are at this point known to Almighty God alone. Such stirrings are a grace, certainly, but it requires courage and fortitude and many other supernatural gifts for a young man in the modern world to allow them to bear fruit. We have our very real part to play in winning for them the graces necessary that they may respond generously to His call so that they may themselves bear the fruit in due season that He wills.
 
Secondly, I ask that we offer our penances for the Church. She is sorely afflicted throughout the world by strife within and without. The former is more insidious. We do not expect the pastors of the Church to inflict unnecessary suffering upon us, most especially in respect of the very foundations of our ecclesial life, but even in the past day the monastery has received several messages from faithful around the world anguished at the restrictions being placed on the traditional liturgy in the name of obedience.
 
Our little monastery cannot solve this crisis, but we can carry the suffering of others with us into choir and to the altar. So too we can light a lamp, howsoever small, that will nevertheless shine in the current darkness; we can become an oasis in a desert if that is God’s will. But only if, first and foremost, we are faithful to our vocation to mediate on the Law of the Lord, day and night.
 
Our duty, then, is clear. May this Lent of 2023 be a time of purification, growth and renewal in our vocation that each of us, when the due season arrives, may indeed be found to have brought forth the fruit that is his due. +