Word of Power

This past week, in response to our General Chapter’s call for prayer for vocations and the renewal of the Order, we gathered to pray for each of our sisters by name.  It was a brief but solemn act.  We are also praying by name for each of our houses at Lauds and Vespers during these days.  I find it very powerful.  This extension of our intercessory prayer, which in each of our hearts is ongoing and unscripted, means more when spoken in public.  Giving voice to those names, hearing them, and responding to them verbally has an effect greater than a generic prayer intention.  This is because words are real.  That is, when something is spoken, something is.  The speaking of the word itself creates or makes real.  To put it another way: speaking a name in prayer is performative, it has power beyond our individual good intentions.

As we were praying, I was overtaken by the sense of our humbleness as a community.  We gave thanks for the gift of each vocation, but I could scarcely avoid thinking of the human limitations, the frailties – physical, emotional, moral – that we represent.  My thought was: here we are, not the greatest, not the strongest, not the smartest; just us.  St Paul calls the Corinthians to look at themselves in just this way:
“Consider your own calling, brothers and sisters.
Not many of you were wise by human standards,
not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.” (1 Cor 1:26)
I think we can agree in an unqualified manner.  So far so good.  But as we go on, perhaps we are not so comfortable, not so ready to raise our hands and say aye:
“Rather, God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise,
and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong,
and God chose the lowly and despised of the world,
those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something,
so that no human being might boast before God.” (1 Cor 1:27-29)

It reminded me of a day not long before I made Solemn Profession, when while walking in the woods, I undertook a similar exercise.  I deliberately thought of each sister in the community to which I was about to commit myself until death.  I reflected on each one’s gifts and contributions, her unique beauty, her irreplaceable person.  But in addition, I could not help seeing faults, failings, limitations, blindness, struggles, etc.  I had the faint intuition (not as strong as it has become since) that I was not to commit myself to an imaginary community, peopled by cardboard cut-outs of virtue, honor, heroism, and integrity, whose main purpose in life was to help me achieve my potential and feel good about myself.  I was, rather, committing myself to a community of ordinary people, weak and strong, heroic and mediocre, fearful and courageous, virtuous and faulty.  It can take us awhile to recognize that we do not enter the monastery as a strong and immoveable institution, a fortress amid a chaotic world, but rather we add our small contribution to Christ’s little flock, a motley crew whose only real security is in him.

The duty to pray for my sisters has been before my eyes, poked and prodded frequently by St Benedict, but also by the simple fact of coming to know them better.  It becomes all the more necessary, faced with the mystery of each person as they stand before God, to pray for his guidance.  And it is in living through the ups and downs, the agonies and the ecstasies that we all go through, that I begin to feel the truth of St Paul’s words:
“It is due to him that you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, as well as righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, so that, as it is written, ‘Whoever boasts, should boast in the Lord.’” (1 Cor 1:30-31)
We are not much before the great challenges of life, but we are his, and he chooses to reveal his glory in our lowliness.

Praying for the communities of our Order by name during these days has a similar effect on me.  Since attending the General Chapter, their names have become familiar to me, and though I cannot match a face and a story to each name, there are many for which I can picture a person I met and remember a story I heard.  Again, I find myself reflecting on the lowliness of our Order today.  Fragility is the word that is used.  We are not on a great upswing, overflowing our buildings into new ones, full of energy and self-confidence, and held in high esteem by all, as was the case in the twelfth century, and even in the early twentieth century.  Quite the contrary.  Our Order today is in many ways akin to the biblical remnant.  Because of the poverty of our resources – in some cases material, in others a question of personnel – and the ongoing struggle to live in an everchanging world that appears to drift further and further from the Gospel, we find ourselves relegated to the margins of society, and not by choice.  The prophet Zephaniah has these words of the Lord for a people disoriented and questioning:
“But I will leave as a remnant in your midst a people humble and lowly,
who shall take refuge in the name of the LORD:
the remnant of Israel.” (Zep 3:12-13)

We have been hearing Bishop Erik Varden’s Chapter talks at Compline.  He speaks persuasively of the call to live a faithful and meaningful monastic life in a challenging time in history.  Perhaps we would rather have been born to another time, when living a monastic life was accepted and esteemed as a sure and certain way of salvation.  The challenges of our times and the poverty of our circumstances do not mean we are any less Cistercians, any less monks.  Quite the contrary.  It is for this that we were born, that we responded to our call, that we gave our life – to be his.  It is following this path, no matter how winding and hard to find, that we do our part for the growth of the Body of Christ.  More than this, we must blaze a trail for monastic life into the great unknown of the future, because this is all we have to give to a disoriented world.  And this is what the people of our world have a right to expect from us, what they need from us, whether or not they can articulate it.  We are to show them the beauty of Christ, not in our own beauty, but through our lowliness, our dependence on him, which gives us all we need.

In today’s Gospel of the Beatitudes, Jesus speaks a word into the time we are living, as a community, as an Order, as a human family.
“He began to teach them, saying:
‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’” (Mt 5:3)

If I may tender a paraphrase:
•    The poor in spirit accept their poverty and weakness and even their sinfulness with boundless gratitude to the one who fills their emptiness with his bounty.
•    They who mourn allow the suffering and confusion and sin in the world, in those they know, and in themselves to touch them, to pierce them.  These tears heal.
•    The meek are not afraid to absorb into their hearts and even their bodies the violence directed toward them without allowing it to pass from them and victimize another.
•    They who hunger and thirst for righteousness desire more than anything to see humanity standing upright before God, not bent in upon itself in contorted self-worship.
•    The merciful long to pour out upon all the gratuitous gift they themselves have received in their nothingness, to be the hands of him who lifts up the lowly.
•    The clean of heart have sat in long vigil over their inner thoughts, choosing what is of value and what not, so as to live continually the mind and heart of Christ.
•    The peacemakers are like children of God who do not know enmity and cannot bear to see fissures emerge and widen between brothers and sisters.  If necessary, they throw themselves into the breach.
•    They who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness drink from the cup that Jesus drank and find their joy in him.

When Jesus says, “Blessed are ...” he is not saying, “Do this and you'll be blessed” or “In God's eyes this is blessed” or “One of these days these folks will be blessed.”  I believe Jesus is actually blessing the meek when he says, “Blessed are the meek,” and that the meek, upon hearing the words, are actually blessed. These are not vague aspirations, but words of power, performative words.  

As we name each sister, each monastery, each intention in our prayers, let us treat them as words of power.   Let us remember and receive Jesus’ words of power, which bring about the blessing he speaks on all who recognize their lowliness and put their trust in him.

Image: J. Kirk Richards, Every Knee Shall Bow