A Chapter Conference for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

The floor of our future library.

+ If there is one thing that the Gospel teaches us today, it is that worries about material things – food, drink, clothes, etc. – are nothing new. Our Lord’s generation knew them only too well, as do we.
 
Even monks must have material resources and places and spaces in which to live the monastic life. As we prepare to celebrate – with profound joy and thanksgiving to all who have made it possible – our fourth Sunday here in our new home, we are acutely conscious of all that needs doing in these buildings and on this estate of which we have become the privileged custodians. And, humanly speaking, what is needed is beyond us: we are poor and have no means, of ourselves, of generating the necessary funds to heat the chapel, rebuild the library floor, complete the dormitories or begin the work of restoration on the other buildings, etc., etc.
 
Humanly speaking we shouldn’t even be here. You know that the reason that we are is because a visiting monk took one look at the place, inquired as to the means we had available and then fraternally rebuked me with the question: “Don’t you believe in God’s Providence?!” Five months after that rebuke we moved in.
 
And so, here we are. A great deal has been done in four weeks. We have a functioning chapel and refectory. Our cells are taking shape and even have elecricity. The chickens and bees are happily installed. Yet very much more needs to be done. The enormity of the task at hand could easily give rise to worries, even anxieties – greater ones, perhaps, than those listed in today’s Gospel.
 
If he found us worrying about all of this our monk friend would rebuke us again, as does today’s Gospel when it teaches: “Quaerite ergo primum regnum Dei, et justitiam ejus: et haec omnia adjicientur vobis.” Seek first the kingdom of God, and His justice, and all these things will be added to you.
 
This, surely, is one of the most instructive verses of Sacred Scripture – and not only (but certainly) in our particular circumstances. For what is a monk if not one who seeks first the Kingdom of God; one who spends himself in a life of the worship of God by putting nothing before the Work of God; one who seeks entry into the school of the Lord’s service so as therein to seek God before all else? A monk is – or should be – the epitome one who seeks first the Kingdom of God.
 
So too, a monk is one who seeks God’s justice. God’s justice requires our conversion. The old man must die. The new man, remade in God’s image and likeness, must live and grow. It is, perhaps, easy enough to seek first the Kingdome of God – celebrating the ancient rights of the Sacred Liturgy beautifully and optimally in a monastic context (and indeed in an eleventh century Romanesque chapel) are captivating and enthralling, certainly – but the conversion of my life, the conforming of myself to God’s ways, is costly. It is painful. And it is necessary if I am to find God.
 
Of course, the sweetness of dwelling in the Lord’s Temple (of which today’s Introit sings) is a consolation and indeed a motivation for this conversion. The Lord does not require us to endure an arid desert so as to find Him. In His mercy He gives us the beauty of the Sacred Liturgy with its many sacramental supports and consolations. He gives us the charity and fraternal love of our brethren and the consolation of a beautiful place in which to pray and work.
 
But he gives these gifts to us precisely so that we may conform ourselves to His justice. If we avoid this duty, if we do not truly seek to progress in the conversion of our lives, we are little better than passing tourists or, a rather sad form of (monastic) liturgy geeks. And that will not do. We are called to seek the Kingdom of God and His justice, not to acquiesce in the ways of the old man whilst admiring the aesthetics of a beautiful Romanesque apse. The integrity of aesthetic beauty exists so as to call us to become ever more integrally beautiful in the sight of God. The privileged encounter with God into which we enter in the Sacred Liturgy draws us closer to Him so that we may be purified. If we hold back, if we will not let go of the old man, if we will not wholeheartedly enter into the refining fire that is the encounter with God that in the Sacred Liturgy, we are not truly seeking God, but ourselves.
 
Yet, if we do truly seek God and His justice, the Gospel assures us that “all these things” – all that we need – shall be ours without asking.
 
My brothers, our very presence in this building is proof enough of that. And yes, certainly, we are concerned, and rightly, about how are we going to find the means necessary to maintain, renovate and restore our new – but very old – home. First, however, as our Blessed Lord teaches us today, we must be concerned about maintaining, renovating and restoring ourselves by first seeking the Kingdom of God and His justice. If we ensure that our monastic lives are lives of evangelical and monastic integrity, then, as we have seen already, all that we need shall be ours for, as our monk friend rightly recalled in March, God’s Providence is a reality. +

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