You Can Only Do What You Have Been Given Power To Do

You can only do what you have been given power to do.  I definitely do not have the grace to be celibate, so I am in the process of transitioning out of being a monk.  

I have been struggling with this question for years.  This is not a brash decision.  In consultation with my spiritual director I arrived at this point.  All things considered, it is not surprising to be leaving for this reason.  

In addition to spiritual direction, I've read quite a bit about celibacy and sexuality.  In that reading, I found the confirmation that celibacy is not something you can live if you don't have the grace for it.  

Consequently, after I move out of the hermitage, which will probably be in a few weeks, I expect to return to dating.  Someday I hope and pray that I'll get married.  

In the meantime, I have been well supported by my fellow monks who are wishing me well.  While they have said they're disappointed I'm leaving, they're supporting me in the discernment decision I've made.  

I've also been marvelously supported by the community of oblates.  These lay people who live out contemplative practices in their everyday lives are warmly encouraging me to become an oblate, which I plan to do.  

It's a tremendous help knowing I will be part of the extended spiritual community of the hermitage.  I had been dreading giving up so many of the benefits of living here, namely the spiritual community, the communal prayer, the silence, and the solitude, among so many other blessings.  However, now I realize that God still will be bestowing so many of these blessings on me, partly through the oblate community, and partly since I will be coming back to visit the hermitage.  

I'm also immensely comforted knowing, in the midst of my final discernment decision to stop being a monk, that God loves me after this decision I am making.  In today's Gospel, Jesus looked with love at the rich young man who told Jesus that he had kept all of the commandments and who asked what else he needed to do.  Then Jesus told him that he lacked one thing; He told the rich young man that if he wished to be perfect, to go and sell all he had and he would have treasure in Heaven.  Then Jesus told the rich young man to follow Him, but the rich young man went away sad.*  Yet Jesus still loved him.  And Jesus loves me after this decision I am making to stop being a monk.  

After the rich young man went away sad, Jesus remarked about how hard it was for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God.  Jesus noted that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God.  Then Jesus explained that what is impossible for people, is possible for God.  What you can't do without grace, you can do with grace.  However, you have to be given that grace, and I have not been given the grace to be celibate, so it's impossible for me to be a monk.  However, I am still loved, by my fellow monks, by the extended spiritual community including the oblates, and most of all by God.  Therefore I will be leaving the hermitage full of love.  

* Mark 10:17-27 

Try Your Hardest To Enter By The Narrow Door

Recently in one of the Scripture readings at Mass, we heard someone ask Jesus if only a few people would go to Heaven.  In response, He tells us to try our hardest to enter by the narrow door.*  To love as best as we can, we have to fit through a narrow space, we must humble ourselves so we can love more.  We are to strip away all in ourselves that prevents us from loving God and our neighbor.  

We are called to shun anything that leads us to hate.  God calls us to uphold the dignity of our neighbor.  We all must respect our neighbor regardless of the race of our neighbor; to do otherwise is to be racist and reject God's law of love.  Racism reflects hate, and so we are called to be antiracist, working against racism.  I think of the Black Lives Matter sign that I saw in the window of a bookstore in San Jose last week.  

A sign is just a beginning.  Last month, on the feast day of Saint Peter Claver who ministered to slaves in the 1600s partly by bringing food and medicine to them, I heard someone say that Saint Peter Claver would have approved of the statement that Black lives matter.  While likely true, Saint Peter Claver showed that Black lives matter much more through how he treated them rather than what he said about them.  

What we do matters much more than what we say.  Black persons should not be subject to the discrimination which continues to be inflicted on them.  Black individuals should not be brutalized by police officers or anyone else because of their skin color.  While it is important to declare that Black lives matter, it is much more important that we show through our actions that we value the lives of our Black sisters and brothers.  

This particular bookstore I've mentioned prominently stocks books on racial justice.  They are encouraging their customers to be antiracist, to change not just what they say but also what they do.  

It is easier to change what we say than what we do.  Nevertheless, God has given us free will.  We can use our free will to work for racial justice.  We can decide to be in psychotherapy to address the psychological insecurities which drive us to degrade others, including on the basis of race.  We can get to know and become friends with others of various races, to demolish walls of prejudice.  We can read books on racial justice so we recognize how institutional racism breeds, in our voting laws, our criminal laws and our law enforcement policies, and in how these laws and policies are made, interpreted and implemented.  We can make the choice to pray, to ask God for grace.  Through grace, we can do what we would not otherwise be able to do.  If God pours His love into our hearts,** then we can love our neighbor as God does.  Amen.  

* Matthew 7:13; Luke 13:24 

** Romans 5:5 

Moment Of Surrender

Last week I was grateful to drive up to San Francisco and visit some of my family.  My brother Greg, my sister-in-law Dede, my nephew Julian and my niece Miriam were vacationing in San Francisco for a few days.  

Up there, I was happy also to stay with fellow monks who live in Berkeley at Incarnation Monastery, our Camaldolese monastery there.  I was glad to see my good friend Michael who lives in the East Bay.  

On the way back south, at the airport in San Jose, I picked up a young fellow named JP who is participating in the Ora et Labora program here at the hermitage.  He'd heard about the program from a friend.  

Word gets around.  Young men who are not asking to become monks but who want to experience monastic life may come work and pray with us for a couple of weeks as this particular man is doing.  

In the car on the way back here from San Jose to the hermitage, at one point we were listening to the song "Moment Of Surrender" by U2.  JP explained to me that the band recorded the song in a single take.  

The relevance to the spiritual life?  When we are in a moment of surrender to the grace of God, we are empowered to succeed at what we are doing in just a single try.  

Unto You A Child Is Born

Unto you a child is born.*  He is here, with us always.**  

He was born in a stable two thousand years ago.***  Now He knocks at the doors of our hearts, asking us to grant Him entry.****  God knocks at the doors of our hearts, respecting our free will, never forcing Himself upon us.  

God invites us to be co-creators with Him.  He does not force us to decide in a particular way.  He leaves it up to us.  

We will become who God made us to be to the extent we cooperate with grace.*****  We will become our true selves insofar as we open our hearts to God.  

We can become much more than we have ever been.  God awaits our response to His invitation.  

* Isaiah 9:5; Luke 2:11 

** Matthew 28:20 

*** Luke 2:7  

**** Revelation 3:20  

***** Catechism of the Catholic Church. (Liguori, MO: Liguori Publications, 1994), 1996.  

Invited To Step Outside Of Ourselves

God corrects us since we are ignorant.  God shows us what we do not want to see.  In what God shows us, our misperceptions are corrected so that we see with clear vision.  

We have preconceptions of who God is.  In our mind's eye, we have picture of what we believe God looks like.  Similarly, we can have an idea of the appearance of Mary, the mother of Jesus.  What we imagine is not necessarily accurate.  God sets us straight so we see right again.  

We get an inkling of such correction from Our Lady of Guadalupe, who appeared in 1531 to Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, a native peasant, on Tepeyac Hill in what is present-day Mexico.  After initially coming to him a few times on that hill, later he went before the bishop to convey her request that a shrine be built there, so that people could go there to receive grace.  The bishop told Juan Diego that he needed a sign to confirm that the apparition truly was Our Blessed Mother Mary.  When Juan Diego, at Our Blessed Mother's direction, returned to the bishop with flowers from Tepeyac Hill even though it was winter, upon Juan Diego opening his tilma, or his mantle, and letting the flowers fall to the ground, upon his tilma was impressed an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  

Our Lady of Guadalupe is depicted on the tilma as having the features of a woman native to the land in which she appeared.  Europeans, only having arrived in the Americas less than forty years earlier, only had seen such native people for the first time a few decades before she appeared to Saint Juan Diego.  For centuries Europeans likely had been envisioning Our Blessed Mother Mary as not looking like she appeared to Juan Diego.  

Europeans were coming to the Americas to evangelize the native peoples, having a certain idea of what Our Blessed Mother Mary looked like.  As it turned out, the native people seemed to have evangelized the arriving Europeans, who were probably corrected in their misconceptions of the certainty of the appearance of Our Blessed Mother Mary.  

We can be convinced we have something to show to our neighbor, when in fact our neighbor has something to show us, when God wants to show us something through our neighbor.  We can be sure we are the teachers, when in fact we are the students.  The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe is a call to humility.  

In this summons to humility, God guides us to see our neighbor with fresh eyes, casting aside our inaccurate perceptions of our neighbor.  So often we avoid seeing our neighbors for who and what they truly are.  God is in our neighbor, but we can refuse to see God in our neighbor.  

Jesus told us that we find Him in those of the least among us.*  Jesus is in the impoverished person who comes to us.  When the bishop received the poor man Juan Diego, he welcomed Jesus.  When we welcome our neighbor into our hearts, we open our hearts to Jesus.  

What we do to our neighbor, we do to Jesus.  When we subject our neighbor to racism, we are not only disrespecting our neighbor, we are also rejecting Jesus, who is in our neighbor.  

When we refuse to open our hearts to our neighbors, we close our hearts to God.  In the one in front of us who is different from us, we receive a call to open our hearts, to see anew, to see as God wants us to see.  

We receive this summons to see with new eyes as we gaze upon Our Lady of Guadalupe.  By appearing as a native, she challenged the assumptions of the Europeans who likely did not expect her appearance to be as it was.  

In Our Lady of Guadalupe, we see a rebuke of racism.  In her we see a call to welcome those who are different from us, to listen to them, to pay attention to them, to see them with fresh eyes.  As we consider her, we are invited to learn from those who are different from us.  

Race is an invitation to step outside of ourselves.  When we are with someone of another race, God wants to teach us through that person.  If we are racist, we reject God's advances.  As we open our hearts to someone of another race, we open our hearts to God.  

* Matthew 25:40,45  

Rise Above By Remaining In Jesus

Earlier this week we heard at Mass how Jesus meets us in the challenges we face.  He invites us, through Him, to rise above what would drag us down.  

In the Gospel that day, we were reminded that 

Jesus made the disciples get into a boat

and precede Him to the other side of the sea, 

while He dismissed the crowds.  

After doing so, He went up on the mountain by Himself to pray.  

When it was evening He was there alone.  

Meanwhile the boat, already a few miles offshore, 

was being tossed about by the waves, for the wind was against it.  

During the fourth watch of the night, 

He came toward them, walking on the sea.  

When the disciples saw Him walking on the sea 

they were terrified.  

"It's a ghost," they said, and they cried out in fear.  

At once Jesus spoke to them, "Take courage, it is I; 

do not be afraid."  

Peter said to Him in reply, "Lord, if it is you, 

command me to come to You on the water."  

He said, "Come."  

But when he saw how strong the wind was 

he became frightened; 

and, beginning to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me!"  

Immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and caught him, 

and said to him, "O you of little faith, why did you doubt?"  

After they got into the boat, the wind died down.  

Those who were in the boat did Him homage, saying, 

"Truly, You Are the Son of God."  

After making the crossing, they came to land at Gennesaret.  

When the men of that place recognized Him, 

they sent word to all the surrounding country.  

People brought to Him all those who were sick

and begged Him 

that they might touch only the tassel on His cloak, 

and as many as touched it were healed.*  

Jesus sent the disciples out onto the sea.  God knows what is going to happen.  God lets us go through trials.  We go through fire and water.**  Through tribulation we are tested.  At times we are refined, but not like silver, rather in a furnace of affliction.***  At other times, God tries us as silver is tried in fire,**** polishes us like silver, to become ever more beautiful.  In all that tries us, God is giving us oil to make our faces shine.*****  Through all that tests us, God makes us more luminous because God is strengthening us. In giving us the grace to do what we could not do ourselves, God is thus glorified.  As God is glorified through us, we become more beautiful, because we are reflecting the magnificence of God.  

Of course the disciples probably were not thinking thus in the midst of their rowing across the sea as they were being tossed by the waves.  So often, we do not think about the benefits God is bestowing on us as we are enduring hardship.  

When the disciples saw Jesus, they fearfully cried out.  Indeed, we can become so absorbed in the struggle that we do not even recognize Jesus, that we forget that Jesus is with us always.******  

Jesus is not only there with us every moment as we are being tested; He is there for us to step toward Him in faith, as frightening and impossible as that may seem to us through our impaired vision.  He bids us come to Him as He bid Peter to come to Him.  

Peter sank because he took his eyes off Jesus.  He started focusing on the wind instead of on Jesus, and consequently he gave into fear.  When we take our eyes off of Jesus, we sink.  

Jesus wants us to rise above what would drag us down, to remain above it all by keeping focused on Him, by fixing our attention so much on Him that we remain in Him and He remains in us.*******  If we remain in Him and He remains in us, we will stay above all that would pull us down since we totally trust in Him.  

We remain in Him, we abide in Him and He abides in us, when we live in faith.  If we embrace the gift of faith that God has planted in us, we will remain above all that would drag us down.  

In the midst of these challenging days of the coronavirus, how are we responding?  Someone asked me if I have been praying for a cure for the coronavirus.  Sure, it's well and good to pray for a cure for the coronavirus and for all that threatens our physical health.  

However, if all we do is pray for a medical cure, it's tantamount to saying to God only, "God, get me out of this situation that is such a problem."  It's implicitly telling God that we're not interested in how God wants us to learn and grow through the coronavirus.  

We can only cry out for God to catch us so we don't sink.  When waves threaten to drown us, we can pray not only that we not be engulfed by the waves.  Frankly, though, if we nurture and cultivate the gift of faith that God has given us, we're not going to be desperately crying out to God.  If we embrace the gift of faith that God has given us, we're going to be calmly and confidently turning to God for the strengthening and sustenance and grace that we're sure God is going to give us, and that God is already giving us.  

We can prepare for such challenging times in advance.  We can decide ahead of time how we want to respond.  We can visualize in our mind's eye being in the midst of a storm and feeling assured of God's support of us.  We can envision the storm raging around us as we serenely step toward Jesus, having already chosen to keep our eyes on Jesus.  

We turn to God.  God reaches to us.  God holds us up.  

* Matthew 14:22-36 

** Psalm 66:12 

*** Isaiah 48:10 
****Psalm 66:10 

***** Psalm 104:15 

****** Matthew 28:20 

******* John 15:4, 5, 6, 7 

Let Us Let God Remake Us

Today in his homily Fr. Cyprian really got to the core of my basic orientation toward the coronavirus. Indeed, when the idea came into my head to blog expounding a little on what he'd said in his sermon, I stopped to consider that perhaps he'd already fully expressed it.  

Fr. Cyprian referred back to the first reading we heard at Mass tonight.  In that reading, we heard 

This word came to Jeremiah from the LORD:
Rise up, be off to the potter’s house;
there I will give you my message.
I went down to the potter’s house and there he was,
working at the wheel.
Whenever the object of clay which he was making
turned out badly in his hand,
he tried again,
making of the clay another object of whatever sort he pleased.
Then the word of the LORD came to me:
Can I not do to you, house of Israel,
as this potter has done? says the LORD.
Indeed, like clay in the hand of the potter,
so are you in my hand, house of Israel.*  

Fr. Cyprian explained that perhaps God is trying to remake us now.  Maybe we are being called right now to unlearn maladaptive habits which have become very comfortable.  Just because we're used to a certain way of thinking or acting, it doesn't mean it serves us well.  

Fr. Cyprian described that when we're addicted, we are overflowing with our addictions.  He continued that recovering addicts are told to visualize their addictions as being in a cup.  They're told to overturn the cup and let its contents spill out.  

Yet when we are emptied, then what do we do?  How can we fill ourselves?  How can we know what we need to fill us in a healthy way?  How can we nourish ourselves?  How can we provide the source of our own life?  

Instead of trying to fill ourselves, we can sit and wait.  We can practice patience.  We can develop the skill of sitting still.  We can learn to be silent.  We could listen instead of talking. We can try to be attentive to God.  

We embrace all of these difficult endeavors, they suddenly begin to happen, through the working of God's grace, when we're removed from the world.  If we give our consent, we give God free rein to work miracles in and through us.  Having stepped out of ourselves, God steps into us.  

Indeed, we have been extricated from our usual routines.  We have been given the blessing of being helped to step out of our maladaptive patterns.  

It wasn't until I quit my job as an attorney, accepted an invitation into the Peace Corps, moved to northern Morocco, and then went even deeper, moving into the Sahara Desert, that I had sufficiently departed from distractions to be able to consider a new way of being.  It was time.  
Sometimes we willingly choose to go into the desert.  The dry, arid expanse of the physical desert can be a good analogy for the metaphorical desert in which we feel deprived of all we had found so comforting.  

Yet if we stay where we are not challenged, how will we ever grow?  If we never step out of what is familiar to us, we will never step into the territory in which we find that we have been capable of more than we have ever been.  

Right now we have been picked up and dropped into a landscape where we have never been. How we will emerge from it is up to us.  Are we going to accept the invitation to become what we have never been, or stay right where we have always been?  

* Jeremiah 18:1-6 

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 

Spiritual, Not Optical, Illusions

Today I felt spiritually weak.  I prayed to God for grace and strength.  

Instantly I felt better.  Often our problems seem to us to be bigger than they truly are.  

In such moments we can choose to pray to God for the grace and the strength we need.  Then our problems seem much smaller.  

What God Wants

Some things in life we must do.  If we want to stay alive in our bodies, we have to eat.  If we wish to keep living in these bodies, we have to keep breathing.  

We also are presented with matters of choice.  We make choices about mundane matters.  For those of us living in the first world, the vast majority of us make choices everyday about what we eat and drink.  

However, many homeless people in the first world often cannot eat whatever they like.  Additionally, very often in the first world we have choices which others elsewhere in the world do not have as luxuries.  For many people living in the third world, often they do not get to choose what to eat; they eat what they can get, if they get anything at all.  For some, they cannot even choose to eat, dying because they have not gotten enough to eat.  

Sometimes we are able to choose in which jobs we work.  However, even in the first world, when the economy is poor, we can only work in jobs which seem less than ideal to us.

Especially for those of us in the first world, usually we evaluate choices in life in terms of whether or not we want to do something.  If we want to do something, we do it.  If we don't want to do something, we don't do it.  

However, what if God wants us to do something which we don't want to do?  We can, and indeed should, pray to God to give us the grace and the strength to weather the storms and trials we must face, which we cannot avoid.  

However, what if we could avoid tribulation?  Understandably, we often want to escape it.  In such situations, what if we suspect that God wants us to undergo such trying circumstances?  Sometimes God tests us.  He wants us to show Him what is reflected in the absolute deepest recesses of our hearts.  In our most private, secret corners of our souls, do we wish to do God's will and submit to God, even if we have another, less painful option available to us? 

Under conditions in which we are presented with such formidable circumstances, which we could choose to avoid, but which we suspect God wants us to endure, we are being tested.  Do we truly want what God wants, or do we want only what we want?  

When confronted with the avoidable suffering to which God invites us, we can wisely choose to turn to Him.  We can become more than we have been: we can transcend our own narrow, short-sighted desires and plans.  Such a choice requires courage, yet such bravery is well-placed, since it reflects faith in God, who loves us infinitely, more than we can know and understand in this lifetime.  To trust in this way, one must think, pray, speak and act out of humility.  A humble, contrite heart, O Lord, you will not spurn.*  

Pray that your desire be conformed to God's will.  Pray that He transform what you want, so that it becomes what He wants.  Amen. 

* Psalm 51:19.