Truly Becoming Ourselves: Making Simple Vows

Today I became who I am.  Today I declared my true self.  

I couldn't have done this on my own.  Grace has gotten me safely this far.  
I've kept asking for grace.  When we ask for what we need to do God's will, God gives it to us, so grace has kept coming.  

How do we get grace?  I can tell you that Jesus listens to His mother Mary: she asks for the grace people need to do the will of God, and so people receive the grace of God.  

At the wedding feast of Cana, Mary told her Son Jesus that they had run out of wine.  He performed a miracle, turning water into wine.*  

Jesus can turn water into wine in us, since through Him we are transformed according to the will of God.  He is The Way, The Truth and The Life.**  Mary has kept leading me back to her Son Jesus, who Is The Way to The Father.  

One of the many ways Our Blessed Mother Mary has tried to lead us back to her Son Jesus was when she appeared in Fatima, Portugal, beginning on May 13, 1917, exhorting us to pray the rosary for peace, to repent of our wrongdoing, and to make sacrifices so as to bring people to God who don't know Him.  Each year on May 13, the Catholic Church celebrates the Feast Day of Our Lady of Fatima.  

Today, on the Feast Day of Our Lady of Fatima, here at the hermitage the Mass began at 11:00 a.m.  When the Mass began, the other monks and I processed from the back of the church, past the icon of Mary and Jesus, 

to the front of the church.  

In the first reading of Scripture today here, we heard that 

When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to ransom those under the law, so that we might receive adoption.  As proof that you are children, God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying out, "Abba, Father!"  So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child, then also an heir, through God.***

In today's Gospel reading, we heard that 

While Jesus was speaking, 
a woman from the crowd called out and said to him, 
'Blessed is the womb that carried you 
and the breasts at which you nursed.' 
He replied, 
'Rather, blessed are those 
who hear the word of God and observe it.'****  

Right after the Gospel reading, I walked from my seat to stand before Father Cyprian. There, in recognition of, and in gratitude for, the grace that Mary has obtained from her Son for me to do the will of Our Father, I took the middle name "Maria" as I addressed Father Cyprian, "With the help of God, I, Martin Maria Herbek, have studied your rule and lived among you as your brother for the time of probation.  Father, I now ask that I be allowed to dedicate myself to God and to His Kingdom by making monastic profession in this community."  

During Father Cyprian's homily, commenting on today's Gospel reading, focusing on Our Blessed Mother Mary since today is the Feast Day of Our Lady of Fatima, Father Cyprian echoed Saint Augustine.  He noted that Saint Augustine had pointed out that Our Blessed Mother Mary was blessed moreso because she kept The Word of God so well than because she physically gave birth to Jesus.  

After the homily, we proceeded from the seats of the church, into the rotunda where the altar is.  

There Father Cyprian and I stopped at the entrance to the rotunda, where he asked and I affirmed my desire to live according to monastic profession of vows.  

Father Cyprian then extended his hands over my head.  He prayed that the good work that God has begun in me may bring God glory and further His plan for redemption of us.  

Then I proceeded to the altar, where was the book containing the simple vows, that is, the first vows, of every monk who has ever made profession of simple vows here at New Camaldoli Hermitage.  Out of that book, I read my vows of stability, reformation of life, poverty, chastity and obedience, which are to last for three years.  

I signed my name, Martin Maria Herbek, to the vows.  

Then another monk, a dear mentor, Father Isaiah, who had just witnessed my pronouncement of the vows and my signature, signed the book as one witness.  

Next another of my fellow monks, another model for whom I am grateful, Father Raniero, who had also just witnessed my profession of the vows and my signature, also signed as a second witness.  

I then picked up the book, open to the page we had just signed, and I slowly turned until I made a complete circle and had shown it to everyone present in the rotunda.  

Then I proceeded back to Father Cyprian at the entrance of the rotunda.  Up until that point in the Mass, I had been dressed in the robe, belt, scapular and hood I had received when I became a novice monk one year ago, but which I have been wearing for the past year with the belt tied around the robe, with the scapular on the outside; then, at that point in this Mass, Father Cyprian untied the belt around my waist and retied it outside the scapular.  

Then he placed a cowl over my head, and I put my arms through its sleeves.  

I was presented with a copy of the Rule of Saint Benedict as well as a copy of the Camaldolese Constitutions.  

Mass proceeded.  My offering of myself in my vows, remained on the altar with the offering of the bread and the wine, as we did this in memory of Jesus, as we prayed that Our Father's will be done on earth as it is in Heaven, 

as we received the fruits of Jesus' sacrifice of Himself for us, as we received in the Eucharist the Body and the Blood of Christ.  

And thus, in this monastic community, here at home, I became a simply professed monk.  

You see now.  I am him.  Who Are You?  

* John 2:1-11 
** John 14:6 
*** Galatians 4:4-7 
**** Luke 11:27-28 

Jolted Into Becoming Our True Selves

We get into our routines.  More than that, we get into set ways of thinking, speaking, acting, and praying.  Sometimes it takes a jolt to jostle us out of a rut or a groove that might seem comfortable, but which in fact has been holding us back from becoming our true selves.  

Saint Ignatius of Loyola literally got thrown off course, as he might have seen it at the time.  In retrospect, it seems he might have sensed that a course correction was being made, not that he was being blown off course.  

In his mid-twenties, as a soldier, his leg was shattered by a cannonball.  His leg was so severely damaged that it had to be re-broken and set again.  Sometimes we're so set in our own ways of doing things, that it takes a major mishap to get us to see the way.  

Even then we still might insist on clinging to our preconceptions of what we're supposed to look like. Once his leg had healed, its irregular shape displeased him, so he had his leg cut and set again, despite subjecting himself to the worst pain he had ever felt.  We're willing to undergo the discomfort we choose so things can look as we envision them; do we embrace the suffering inherent in the present moment?  

As he was recovering, Ignatius asked for some reading material, hopefully some tales of adventure. We have our ideas of how we can get better, to get ourselves from where we are to where we want to be.  We make our assumptions of what's best for us based on where we think we're heading.  Maybe something else is best for us, especially if we're heading for someplace other than where we thought we're going.  

In the place of his recuperation, there were no such swashbuckling stories.  Instead Ignatius was given a book on the lives of the saints.  First he started reading the book just to help him be less bored.  When we take up what has been given to us, do we do so only grudgingly, or with fully open hearts?  

Slowly he became entranced reading the lives of the saints.  After not too long he was wondering, "What if I should do what Saint Francis did, what Saint Dominic did?"  In the midst of our troubles, perhaps we are being invited to imagine becoming more than we have been.  

As he imagined doing as the saints did, or alternately succumbing to worldly pleasures, he noticed the varying effects these different thoughts had on him.  Thinking of worldly enticements, he relished them, but later found himself dry and uncontent.  Yet pondering ascetical practices, he felt consolation not only as he considered them, but he also felt consoled later after having set aside such ideas.  

Having listened, Ignatius kept listening.  He kept paying attention.  He considered and discerned what was being placed before him.  He pondered the options before him.  Once he had fully healed, he had become a new person, a metamorphosis he welcomed.*  

Ignatius was seriously injured by the cannonball.  Some might see only misfortune in such an occurrence, yet God works all things to the good of those who love Him.**  In that injury, Ignatius received an invitation.  In his convalescence, he was put into a situation where he had not only the time and the ability, but indeed the necessity, of evaluating who he was and what he was going to do.  

Right now we too are forced to sit and wait.  We can welcome this lockdown, imposed due to the coronavirus, for the conditions which help us see the way.  As we embrace our current challenges, we choose to learn from them.  As long as our hearts remain open, we can accept a course correction, and perhaps start heading in a new direction.  

If we so desire, we can become more than we have been.  With such inclinations, it becomes easier not only to accept our present situation, but through it, to thrive, to become more fully alive, to become our true selves.  With this perspective, we can be broken out of the inertia that has been preventing us from moving forward, that has been holding us captive.  If we consent, we can be set free.  

* Ellsberg, Robert, "The Saints' Guide To Happiness." 2003, New York; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, p. 110-111.  
** Romans 8:28 

Out Of So Little, Much Good Can Come

A worm has been on my mind.  It's been crawling around in my head.  I can't get it out of my head.  We speak of earworms, songs that get stuck in your head.  In a similar sense, this worm has been on my mind, so perhaps it's a mindworm.  

Earlier this year I read about how scientists had determined that all animal life there has ever been on earth has been suspected to have been evolved from a certain species of worm that lived 555 million years ago.  Once I heard of this worm, it has seemed that the knowledge of this worm has been echoing, over hundreds of millions of years, after burrowing down into the earth, bringing forth to light the truth that much comes what seems to be so little.  

I imagine God saying to this worm, "I have great plans for you.  From you are going to come fish and lizards and elephants and giraffes and apes and all kinds of creatures that creep and crawl and swarm all over the earth."  

Of course the worm was not able to think as we think.  But if it could, and if this conversation were to occur, I would expect it would respond something like, "But I am nothing.  I am a nobody.  I can do next to nothing."  

In this littleness, in this next-to-nothingness, in this humility there is wisdom.  The worm would see itself as it is.  

The worm was also exactly what God called it to be.  It wasn't trying to be something else.  The worm was embracing what God made it to be.  When we are who and what God makes us to be, we give praise to God.  

In the question the worm would ask, there would be openness.  When we ask, we invite an answer.  When we ask, we are interested in finding out what we do not know, what we cannot see or find out on our own.  

An angel told Our Blessed Mother Mary that she would give birth to Jesus.  Our Blessed Mother Mary asked how this could be so, since she had not had relations with a man.  God, through the angel, told her what she could not know on her own, that the Holy Spirit would come upon her.*  

Having asked what we could not know through our own efforts, having been answered and empowered with the knowledge of who we can become, we are then faced with the choice of who we decide to become.  God invites us to become so much more than we have been.  God asks us if we would like Him to perform miracles through us.  For miracles, we need faith.  

Our Blessed Mother Mary embraced the message of the angel by going forward in faith.  She responded to the angel, "You see before you the handmaid of the Lord: let it be done to me according to Your Word."**  

And so a peasant girl, obscure, unknown, passed over, ignored by many around her, became much more.  In her lowliness, she was lifted up.  Having gone forward in faith, now hundreds of millions of people beseech her, that she may pray for them, and through her, God works countless miracles.  

God wants to work through us for the good of us, for those around us.  God invites us into much more than what we have seen.  We can be much more than we have been.  We are so much more than what our current circumstances show us.  

We are trudging along in what seems to us like drudgery.  In these days of the coronavirus which might seem to be moving along so slowly, we may feel like we are crawling through something like mud, through a murky, filthy slime, the challenging morass of a virus which seems to disable us in so many ways.  

In what seems meaningless, we might be situated very well to become so much more than we have been.  Rather than mislead ourselves into believing that we are doing nothing of much worth, instead if we ask and pray and remain open, God might work wonders through us, miracles that we never would have imagined, if we merely go forward in faith in Him.  

* Luke 1:31-35 

** Luke 1:38