“Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.” (Mt 4:19)
Last week, we received a Circular Letter from our Abbot General, on the theme of prayer for vocations and the renewal of our Order, which is to be our focus on the upcoming Solemnity of our Holy Founders on January 26th. It is interesting to see how Dom Bernardus weaves these two intentions into one:
“It is about receiving vocations as a gift from God. This is the much-needed culture for vocations in a monastic community.
After all, every vocation, first and foremost our own, is given to us from elsewhere. All of us once found the vocation to monastic life and the Cistercian way of life in our hearts without any merit. It is only afterwards that this vocation was cultivated in a community and by ourselves. Vocation is an external call that leads to change. It affects our whole being. A vocation brings us into a new network of those who feel called ‘to a holy task, not because of our deeds, but because [God] had decided to do so by grace’ (1 Tim 1:9). Praying for vocations thus brings us back to this call of God and to the network in which this transformation of our humanity takes place, the community. The fruit of prayer is not so much x number of vocations but a strengthening of culture in which the call can be heard and cultivated.”
(Dom. Bernardus Peeters, OCSO, Circular Letter, January 2023)
Dom Bernardus is pointing to vocation as both a gift of God and something that must be cultivated. In light of today’s gospel, in which Jesus also puts together the call of the first disciples to follow him and their sending to cultivate the vocations of others, I would like to unpack this a little.
Our call is an event and an ongoing story, existing in three dimensions:
In the past we remember a moment in which we perceived a call to leave everything familiar and follow Jesus on a path of life as yet indistinct, but one that promised purpose, fulfillment, and intimacy. We felt known, loved and claimed by Christ as his own. Everything that happens afterwards hangs on this moment.
In the future, we look toward another moment in which we will be called to leave everything again, this time fully and finally, and drawn into the unknown horizon of God’s eternity. We do not know where we are going, but we put our trust in One who loves us. Everything that happens beforehand prepares for this moment.
In the present, we must seek to discern the golden thread of God’s action in the vicissitudes of life, to listen for the whispered directives of the Spirit amid a cacophony of voices, to find again the guiding hand in the gloom. We inhabit a process of becoming – not becoming someone else but becoming who God created us to be.
Monastic life is a lifelong process of becoming the person God created me to be – uniquely beautiful, free and loving – at the cost of anything and everything that stands in the way. As Cistercians, we make a vow of conversatio morum, promising never to give up on walking the way of conversion. Our active effort to keep moving on the road of gospel living, faithful to those time-tried monastic practices which help us, and with the support and challenge of others, is the sine qua non of growth, not because we accomplish it ourselves, but because God desires our cooperation. And yet, it is only when we have abandoned the cause-and-effect relationship between diligent effort and real human and spiritual growth that we may get a glimpse of some results. And they are often not what we expected. We do not sprout six-foot wings all of a sudden, especially if we keep checking our shoulders for bumps!
During our recent retreat, Fr Isaac, commenting on the unforeseen development of each of our monastic lives, said this:
“The core of who we are – who we might have hoped to escape – becomes actualized in a very radical way.
We become incorrigibly who we were, are and will be.”
I was struck by the fact that I had heard something remarkably similar from the mouth of our own family brother, Bill. After decades spent living and working beside a monastic community, he could see that, as he put it:
“They try to rearrange the pieces, but when you go to bed, Christ puts them back where they were before.”
This is not a contradiction of vocation as a call to change, but a nuancing of it. We become who we are. Another Christ. This does not imply the loss of our personality, our particular way of being, our quirks or even our faults (for now). Our wounds, like his, remain and form part of the fullness of who we are. Nothing will be hidden. Nothing will be lost.
This radical giftedness of vocation does not mean that efforts to maintain a good formation program or to upgrade our community’s monastic observance are for nought. We are placed in the garden to cultivate it – the garden of the community no less than that of our own souls. It is to be hoped that we can offer newcomers to our life, as well as ourselves, a fairly coherent explanation of why we are here, living this way. We speak in terms of a goal and suitable means, of union with God by purity of heart through a life shaped by liturgy, lectio and labor. We speak in terms of a tradition handed on, of vows and virtues, of steps of humility and truth, of a life poured out in love and sacrifice for a world transformed. We speak in terms of a journey of faith and a personal relationship, of the search for God and the following of Christ, the discovery of oneself, in misery first, then in beauty under the merciful gaze of God. Any of these facets of our vocation may provide essential sustenance at a given moment in life. But in the end, words fail us. The call is far more than the sum of its parts. We can only stand in awe before the unique and unrepeatable work done by God in ourselves and those around us. It may be the non-verbal witness of those living in long fidelity which ultimately draws in the netful of fish.
According to Dom Bernardus, to pray for vocations implies that we truly live our vocation. This means that we recognize our call, not just as a past event – a youthful ideal set aside with a resigned sigh and a cynical chuckle – or a job description – to be carried out with uninspired efficiency – but as the meaning of our existence, which brings forth the ongoing gift of self. It means that we allow this to realization to lift us up, from time to time, from the difficulties and distractions of daily life, to see the shining horizon of our hopes and dreams still there, beckoning us. Our vocation is a reality that transcends us, that deepens as we grow, that always draws us onward. The Welsh poet R.S. Thomas expresses this well:
“The Bright Field
I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the
pearl of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realise now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.”
(R.S. Thomas)
I invite you to ponder these things as we move toward Founder’s Day. May we celebrate it with thankfulness for our vocation and that of each member of the community and Order. And may this engender renewal of our monastic culture that will draw others to respond to the call and allow it to be cultivated among us.
“Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.” (Mt 4:19)