Who Am I?

Who am I?  Why am I here on this earth?  Many people ask themselves these questions.  Some people more specifically ask what God is calling them to do.  Every person is called by God to a particular vocation.  A person can define his or her vocation as the specific ministry, work or pursuit to which God is calling that particular person. 

Last weekend here at the hermitage, we had a retreat for persons aged 18 to 30 who are trying to discern their vocations.  Father Raniero, Brother Bede, Father Cyprian and a lay religious teacher led the retreat.  I was able to sit in on the sessions and offer some thoughts during some of the discussions. 

People could sign up for this particular retreat while discerning various vocations.  Those who attend this vocation discernment retreat might wonder if God has been calling them to marriage.  Another participant might feel called to consecrated religious life as a nun, monk, friar or priest.  Yet another attendee might be discerning whether to apply to graduate school. 

As usual with preached retreats here at the hermitage, participants arrived on Friday afternoon.  During the Friday evening session, Brother Bede offered some general thoughts on discerning one's vocation.  Attendees received some brief excerpts on vocation and spiritual identity to read in anticipation of the next morning's session.

During the Saturday morning session, Father Cyprian guided our guests through a couple of the writings.  We discussed the reality that each of us has a choice.  We are given many chances to decide whether we are going to do what is common and what is expected from others.  At times doing so may be necessary and other times superfluous.  We decide whether we are going to do what nourishes our souls.  We can choose to try to listen to God, who is calling us to utilize the gifts He has given us, to glorify Him and to serve our neighbor, and thus pursue genuine joy.  We can elect to try to be who we are meant to be, who God has intended us to be and has planned for us to further become. 

In the afternoon, participants had opportunities to receive spiritual direction from monks.  They got to speak with monks about their discernment, consequently receiving spiritual accompaniment with attendant insight and questions to guide them and spur further thought, to aid them in their discernment. 

Later in the afternoon, these retreatants learned about lectio divina, a monastic practice toward reading the Bible and listening to God through the Word.  Insofar as God speaks to us through the Word, and seeks to guide us through the Word, lectio divina is helpful as one proceeds in discernment of one's vocation. 

On Saturday night, we got to know the vocation discernment retreatants a little better during a social gathering.  Over fruit, cheese and crackers, we talked about our spiritual journeys and whatever else happened to come up as we socialized. 

In the final session on Sunday morning, our guests shared with us what they learned during this vocation discernment retreat.  Amongst thoughts we heard expressed, we heard some say that they feel called to pray to God.  We also heard the realization that one can't go it alone, that one can't rely on oneself.  As is often the case when people stay here at the hermitage, we heard hopes too of, upon leaving here, continuing to feel some of the peace felt here. 

After someone experienced peace, he wanted more peace.  What we wish, we seek.  What we seek in the praise and service of God, we will find.  "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened."  Matthew 7:7-8.  

Are we asking, and if so, for what?  Are we seeking, and if we are searching, for what are we longing with the deepest recesses of our souls?  Are we knocking on the doors of our innermost being?  If we launch on such inquiries, we find that God is calling each of us to a special endeavor specifically intended for each of us.  God is inviting all of us to something extraordinary.  

God is at the door for each of us.  God is saying to every person, "I stand at the door and knock.  If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with Me."  Revelation 3:20.  Let us ask, seek and knock, and let us open the door to God when He knocks.  In asking, seeking, knocking, and answering the door when God knocks, let us become more than we have been.  Let us experience true happiness.  Amen.  

The Next Step

Earlier this month, on a gloriously sunny Sunday, punctuated by clear blue skies, one of the monks here at the hermitage, Brother James, made his profession of simple vows, that is, temporary vows.  After a year as a postulant and then a year as a novice monk, he vowed, or promised, that for the next three years, he will keep living as a monk in this community.

He vowed that he will continue living a life of poverty, chastity and obedience.  Insofar as this is a community of Benedictine monks, and all Benedictine monks also make a vow of stability to a particular monastery, he is also agreeing to live as a member of this particular monastic community here at this specific hermitage.

In this life of poverty, no monk is earning money to keep for himself.  In Chapter 33 of the Rule of Saint Benedict, Saint Benedict directs monks to hold all property in common, aspiring to emulate the Apostles of Jesus Christ who, as is described in Acts 4:32, freely shared their property with each other.

Chastity requires refraining from sexual activity, but it entails much more than simply abstaining from sexual relations.  A chaste person holds people and possessions in right relation with himself or herself.  One who is chaste respects other individuals and property; he or she properly treats persons and things.

Obedience is reflected in various ways.  One is called to be obedient to God.  A monk is required to show obedience to the prior, or head, of the monastery.  Yet as Father Cyprian, the prior, noted in his homily the day Brother James made his profession of simple vows, a monk vows obedience to the other monks of the community, as Chapter 71 of the Rule of Saint Benedict instructs. 

I found compelling and moving Brother James' profession of simple vows.  It was powerful to witness him, before a church full of people, including much of his extended biological family, vowing to keep living a life of poverty, chastity, obedience and stability in this hermitage for another three years. 

And what is the next step for me?  Whether or not it is a day on which I take a big step, every day presents many little steps, or choices, or decisions, for me.  Each day I am presented with opportunities which have the potential to help whittle down my ego.  The more we relinquish our conceptions of ourselves and let go of our own ideas, and the less we insist on being right and the less we cling to our perceptions of situations, the more we can give to God.  To draw closer to God, we have to unlearn what we think we know.  We must have the humility to realize that there is a great deal which we have been getting wrong and which we do not know. 

A person could easily become quite uncomfortable when faced with these types of psychological demands which are entailed in dismantling one's defense mechanisms.  One must be courageous to persist in such a spiritual endeavor.  Yet a person becomes less anxious in the midst of such otherwise unnerving challenges if he or she remembers that God is always faithful and without a doubt will be true to His Word.  He will help us draw closer to Him. 

Thus the question really becomes one of what I want.  In discerning whether I take the next step, whether I continue in this monastic life, I recall how one of the new monks here framed this very question evaluating whether to keep living this monastic life: "Do I like the changes which are taking place in me?"  One could rephrase this question so that one inquires, "Do I like the work which God is doing in me?"  Alternatively one could ask, "Do I like who I am becoming?" 

In posing these questions, and in responding how we do, we are choosing how we shape our eternal destiny.  Therefore, I assert that each and every one of us everyday should be asking ourselves such questions. 

My Mom Visited!

My mom came to visit!  I was so glad to be able to share with her this monastic life here at the hermitage.

I was especially glad that she could experience life here at the hermitage given that, before she met my dad, she was a nun for three years.  She was a Discalced Carmelite, in the tradition of Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint John of the Cross and Saint Therese of Lisieux.  

Discalced Carmelite nuns are strictly cloistered: they are separated from the public.  Thus they remain inside the walls of the cloister, the boundary of the monastery, for more silence and solitude, to facilitate communion with God; they live a predominantly contemplative life.  They leave the monastery only for unavoidable necessities such as a doctor's appointment or a dentist's appointment.  Consequently, it has not been uncommon for Discalced Carmelite nuns to stay inside the cloister for years at a time.  

Simultaneously, adding to the spiritual rigor inherent in a life of being so separated from the world, often they also do not have contact with those who come to their monasteries.  Thus when guests come to such a monastery to pray in the chapel, the nuns are not speaking with them.  Often such a community will have an extern nun who regularly goes out to run errands, but such a person might be the only such person within such a strictly cloistered community.  

Some Discalced Carmelite communities have lessened the degree to which they are separated from the world.  Others remain strictly cloistered.  Each community lives out its faith depending on the spiritual life they feel called by God to lead.

So, my mom was coming here to the hermitage, viewing and assessing the life here, from her previous consecrated religious life as a strictly cloistered Discalced Carmelite.  In contrast, the life here at the hermitage is not as stringent.

It is true that the monks and I are generally here at the hermitage.  However, the monks and I leave the hermitage when we go on an outing of some sort as part of our monthly recreation day.  Any of us might leave now and then to get things done in town, that is, Carmel or Monterey or Salinas or elsewhere.  There is a particular monk here who, every week, drives to these towns and gets things done.  But any of us might go to town perhaps once a month to go to doctors' appointments, purchase things we need, or pick up or drop off an arriving or departing guest or traveling monk.  

Thus I drove to San Jose to pick up my mom when she landed in San Jose.  Since Casa de Clara, the Catholic Worker House where I lived and worked for a few months in the latter half of last year, is so close to the airport, I got to take her to Casa de Clara.  She met my friends who are the Catholic Workers there, as well as the women who, rather than being homeless, live there as they earn and save money in preparation to move out into their own apartments.  My mom was glad that she got to visit Casa de Clara, since she is familiar with the biography and writings of Dorothy Day, who founded the Catholic Worker movement.  I was happy that I was able to take my mom there after picking her up from the airport, a benefit of the particular approach to the contemplative life which we follow here at the hermitage.  

Just as life here at the hermitage does not entail staying here as much as my mom stayed in the monastery when she was a nun, so too the lifestyle of this hermitage involves more contact with visitors than she had as a Discalced Carmelite.  People come and stay here overnight.  They might ask us questions in the church or in the bookstore or in the retreat house, which is one place where they stay here.  Even longer than that, guests here sometimes receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation, that is, Confession, from one of the monks who, of course, is also a priest.  A guest might also choose to receive spiritual direction from a monk when she or he is here.  Other guests spend even more time with the monks when such guests attend preached retreats here: over a weekend, such guests attend a series of a few seminars and/or workshops on various spiritual topics.  These preached retreats are given by monks and also by oblates, who are lay people belonging to the Camaldolese Congregation who have vowed to follow the spiritual practices of the Camaldolese.

Additionally, at the hermitage, employees not only work here, but many of them live here.  Consequently, we not only have daily contact with, but much more importantly, receive indispensable support from, friends and loved ones here who are not monks and who are not on the path to becoming monks.

With all this contact with those who are not monks, my mom found this lifestyle here to be feasible, in comparison with the lifestyle she led as a strictly cloistered Discalced Carmelite.  I cherished hearing her perceptions of life here.

I was also glad that she was able to come here on Mother's Day!  It was marvelous to have her here at all, and her visit became even more special given that she was able to be here on Mother's Day.  I am so blessed by God, including through my mother's visit here.  I am looking forward to my family and friends visiting again as I spend more time here.