A Homily for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

​+ As any postulant discovers quite rapidly, the contemplative live in a monastery is quite busy. Certainly, in the early hours of the morning we drink deeply of that silence and stillness in which God never fails to speak to those willing to make the time to listen, but the remainder of the day is full of prayer and work and (we are finding here increasingly) ‘interruptions’ sent by God in His Providence in the form of people seeking something at the monastery. Contemplatives do not spend their days in idle pondering. We are busy about all that needs doing—manually, intellectually and, increasingly, pastorally.
 
At the centre of this activity is, of course, is the Work of God—the optimal celebration of the whole of Sacred Liturgy—the beating heart of the monastic life, pumping the life of grace through our veins constantly through its seven offices each day as well as one in the night, through our participation in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass offered conventually (and for monk-priests, also privately). A minimum of some four to five hours of each day is spent in our choir stalls praising God, listening to His Word, giving Him the worship that is His due to the best of our ability and interceding for the Church, the world, for ourselves poor sinners that we are, and for the many people around the world who ask for our prayers.
 
Thus, a monk is of his very nature busy man: busy first and foremost about the things of God, and then, like anyone must rightly be, about providing for himself and others, maintaining a house, working in the garden or the workshop or at the desk, welcoming guests and dealing with all the exigencies that the state of the Church and the world throw up. St Benedict teaches us that idleness is a grave danger for monks (cf. Rule, ch. 48). The fact is that any monk who takes the Rule and its liturgical duties seriously has little time to be idle (!) which is, of course, no bad thing.
 
Nevertheless, whilst peeling the vegetables or cleaning the building or getting on with any number of menial tasks, the monk’s mind should not be empty or wandering. Rather, having been filled by the Word of God sung in His praise and attended to its liturgical proclamation, the monk should be constantly turning over that which he has been given—digesting it as it were—and continually drawing from its riches the nourishment and inspiration for his daily perseverance and ever more complete giving of himself to God through his faithful observance of the Rule under the obedience of his superiors. Yes, the golden early hours of lectio divina are given over exclusively to this, but the riches contemplated in word and song and ritual and in art in the Sacred Liturgy rightly overflow into every element of the monk’s day. Have you ever had a musical melody stuck in your head? Well, a monk is one in whom God’s ‘tune’ has taken root, and which does so ever more deeply, bringing forth its fruit in due season (cf. Ps. 1:3).
 
It is rightly said that the monastic life is simply the Christian life: it is just that it is Christian life organised to be lived in the enclosure of the monastery which serves to protect weak men from at least some (hopefully many) of the snares of the world. That is to say that the duty of contemplation of the Word of God is not the sole preserve of monks. Every Christian is called to ponder, to interiorise, all that is revealed in Jesus Christ, the definitive revelation of God in human history, the unique Saviour of mankind.
 
To be sure, we want our airplane pilots and bus and train drivers concentrating on their work. Doctors should attend to their patients, most especially during surgery and lawyers should study both the law and the cases before them. Cooks must cook with care: no one likes burnt food! But no matter what our duties in this life, be we in the cloister or without, we must each allow the Word of God to penetrate our hearts and minds and take root and grown therein. Otherwise, in the world or in the monastery, we shall become mere activists—efficient machines, hopefully good at what we do, but with no inner core that will sustain us and enable us to endure when the activity stops, or when it is abruptly brought to an end.
 
This is why our Holy Mother the Church insists that we must participate in Holy Mass at least each Sunday and day of obligation: that we might be at least minimally nourished by the riches she has developed and handed on in her liturgical tradition. This is why, this morning, she addresses to us the magnificent passage of Epistle of St Paul to the Galatians which can serve as a vademecum for the whole of the Christian life, and the moving healing of the son of the widow of Naim. This is why she sings so beautifully in her ancient melodies the prayers that arise in our hearts, seen so poignantly in the Introit and Offertory of this Mass.
 
My brothers and sisters, as rightly busy as any of us are, if we are not to become empty functionaries we must nourish ourselves on the things of God. As we worship before His altar this morning, let us “taste and see that the Lord is good,” for as the Psalmist teaches us, eternally “blessed is the one who takes refuge in Him.” (Ps. 33) +