A Chapter Conference for Ash Wednesday

+ Ash Wednesday 2022 finds our small monastic family a little larger than heretofore, with the prospect of further growth throughout this year. Deo gratias! It also finds us faced with some important decisions in respect of our future in the light of the Holy See’s persecution of individuals and groups attached to the usus antiquior, and it finds us in a world where the principle of ‘might makes right’ has been emerged anew in an unjust invasion of a small, sovereign (and Christian) country by a neighbouring superpower. Domine, adiuva nos!
 
Let us consider this atrocity a little. This afternoon we received a message from a young Ukrainian man who follows the monastery on Facebook. It reads:
 
“Today was a hard day for us. If we'll survive, tomorrow at 6AM EET (4AM GMT), our family will try to reach outside of the city, which is really dangerous now. Today artillery damaged our neighbourhood, including our home. The city is under heavy chaotic fire. We really rely on your prayers. This is our last chance. Thank you.”
 
Tomorrow morning, as we sing matins, he and his family will make a bid to flee danger and seek safety. Please God they will succeed. But they may not. They may live. Or they may die. They are relying on our prayers.
 
My brothers, if ever we doubt ourselves or our vocation, let us remember their faith and their reliance on us in the unspeakable circumstances in which they find themselves this very night. I said in respect of the votive Mass ‘in time of war’ that we offered on Monday that we have no weapons other than the spiritual ones of prayer, fasting and charity, and that that we must use these weapons. Indeed, we must!
 
But to use them efficaciously we must ourselves be pure of heart, mind, body and soul. To be spiritual soldiers we must be spiritually trained and in optimal spiritual health.
 
This is where Lent for the monk is so essential. Yes, our life is Lenten. Our observance is as demanding as it gets, and the workload of a small community in largely unrestored buildings and on lands that have not been cared for or developed for a long time is larger than we are. But even if the opportunity for penance is not lacking in our ordinary life, be that in the physical demands of work, or in the fraternal charity that is demanded of us daily, we ourselves must still purify and refine our motivations, our wills and our passions. If we take this demand of Lent more seriously, our prayers shall be all the more pure and efficacious: God knows, the Church and the world need them!
 
So too, the purer our motivations, the more detached are our wills, the greater control we gain over our passions, and the more easily we shall know and do God’s will in making the important decisions that are before us in respect of our community.
 
It may be that we have a mixture of consolations and of difficulties ahead of us, but even so, and even if we must suffer for our fidelity to our vocations and to the truth that the usus antiquior is not a privilege parsimoniously permitted by positivistic authorities, but a right given by the Church’s immemorial and living tradition, our purity in moving forward shall bring its grace and peace, as others in similar situations have found in recent history, even if some will not or cannot understand our holding fast to that which “earlier generations held as sacred [and which] remains sacred and great for us too, and [that] cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful,” (Benedict XVI, 7 July 2007) and wish even to crush us and others for so doing.

If we are faithful we shall be able worthily to welcome and form those men – who are by no means few – who are knocking at the door of the monastery. And in persevering in that fidelity we shall, with God’s help, ensure that what they find in the monastery is a monastic life that is pure and authentic. Certainly, they shall come to know monks who are in via, who are not yet where they would like to be, but please God they shall be able to recognise that we are each making genuine and substantial efforts to advance in the conversion of our lives, to give Almighty God the worship that is His due, and to grow in holiness and worthiness of the Benedictine habit that it is our privilege to wear…
 
Last evening, we celebrated the solemn rite of the blessing of our new apse crucifix: a work of true beauty which shall, please God, sustain us and those who come here permanently or as guests in our common quest for God, in our daily efforts to turn ever more towards Him whose sacrificial love wrought our redemption. As St Paul taught, Christ crucified is foolishness to the world (cf.  1 Cor. 1:23). But as we look with the eyes of those who have been given the gift of Faith upon Christ crucified, newly represented in our apse, we can perceive His divinity more clearly, we can encounter His beauty more personally and be immersed and participate more fully and fruitfully in His loving and efficacious self-sacrifice.
 
My brothers, this is our vocation. It is our privilege, and it is our duty – for the good of the Church and of the world, for our Ukrainian friend and his family in their hour of danger, and for so many others in peril in this moment, for our oblates and associates and our friends and many benefactors who sustain us in our life here, be they personally known to us or not. Let us be clear: in living in loving sacrificial fidelity to this vocation lies nothing less than our salvation, and to an extent we cannot know, so too does the salvation of others.
 
In these days of Lent, therefore, let us lead lives of great purity and expiate our negligences. (Rule, ch. 49). Let us “hasten to do now what may profit us for eternity.” (Rule, Prologue)

Saint Benedict: pray for us! +