If We Can Laugh At Ourselves, We Can Learn

Usually every Friday at the hermitage lunch is silent.  As monks we sit in the refectory, that is, the monastic dining room, and eat and drink, as we abstain from speaking, as we listen to one of our fellow monks read to us.  The text read is sometimes spiritual autobiography, at times Papal guidance, at other times from another spiritual writer.  Then we hear a brief excerpt from the Rule of Saint Benedict before the closing prayer.  

For weeks now, we've been listening to one of our fellow monks read from the book "Alive in God: A Christian Imagination" by Timothy Radcliffe, a Roman Catholic priest who's also a Dominican friar.  Once he'd been diagnosed with cancer, he threw himself into writing the book, which he had been postponing.  In it he explores what it means to be alive in God, and how to live fully.  

Yesterday as Father Isaiah was reading "Alive in God," I finished eating.  Rather than wait until after the meal, I decided to bring my bowl and silverware to the cart where the used items are placed.  Once Father Isaiah had finished a sentence, I dropped the silverware into its basin, so as not to be making noise during the reading.  Then I knocked the bowl against the side of the cart, it fell to the floor and shattered.  

After my effort to be silent, I ended up making much noise.  On top of the crash, I made a further distraction as I swept up the pieces.  I was struck by the irony of how, despite my aiming to be as quiet as I could, I created a disturbance.  We have aims, we make our plans, and then sometimes we end up sabotaging ourselves.  Yet also in ourselves we find opportunities to recognize the irony and humor in life.  

I'm reminded of how someone recently told me that, as a postulant in a Buddhist monastic community, she was proceedingly slowly, and, she thought, carefully, into the sleeping quarters one night when she knocked over the wooden apparatus that was used to correct beginners.  As she tried to be quiet, she made noise.  As she knocked into something, she upset the very thing used to correct mistakes.  

Rather than wait to be corrected, as she was making her mistake, she corrected herself.  Years later, as she recalled the mishap, she was laughing.  If we can laugh at ourselves, we can step outside the immediate circumstances.  Then we can see what there is to learn.  If we are able to laugh at ourselves, we are able to see the correction being offered to us.  

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