Becoming All Flame

Dom Bernardus has sent out a circular letter for Pentecost in which he seeks to respond to discouragement in many quarters, due to situations of diminishment and disorientation in communities, in the Order, in the Church and the world.  He mentions letters that he has received, asking for a return to traditional forms, or for a new direction, but the request that seems to have touched him most came from the younger members of a certain community:

“Please, help us to shift our focus from what is lacking in our community, in the Region and the Order to what blessings exist now. Please, emphasize the positive and give us hope!”

So he sets as his task to point out the magnalia Dei, the “marvels of God” in the present time, to show how the Holy Spirit is doing great things in the Order, to make visible what is invisible, as St Bernard outs it:

“When St Bernard preaches to his brothers on the day of Pentecost, he tries to make visible to them what is invisible because ‘Today is the feast day of the Holy Spirit, on which the Invisible became visible’. In this letter, let me try to make visible where the Invisible Spirit of God is at work in the life of the Order today.”

We might also say, to invite the dove out from the clefts of the rock, as yesterday’s hebdomadary so aptly put it.  Dom Bernardus chooses to focus on five areas, which I will not go into here in depth, since we will be hearing the letter read in the refectory.  The five areas in which he perceives the Spirit’s work:

1. In the courage of embracing our vulnerability – embracing reality, being honest about the challenges facing our communities, and taking concrete steps toward the future, whether this entail preparing for closure, collaborating with another community, or working toward revitalization.
2. In engaging in innovative collaborations – between communities, within regions, and beyond the bounds of the Order, acts of solidarity that are more than sporadic acts of generosity, but express an abiding sense of community in the broadest sense.
3. In the new life of (the projects of) foundations, which testify to the willingness of communities to take the risk of giving new life, of passing on and enculturating the Cistercian charism, of fulfilling the mission of evangelization in a monastic manner.
4. In a growing awareness of the complementarity of men and women in the Order, expressed in how female superiors are being called upon to take on greater role in assisting other communities, whether of nuns or of monks, recognizing that the nuns of the Order may outnumber the monks by the time of the next General Chapter.
5. In the actual lived co-responsibility – the shared responsibility of all members of a community and of all communities of the Order, and indeed of all baptized persons, avoiding isolationism or the tendency to wait for others (the abbot/abbess, the Abbot General, even the Church hierarchy) to seek solutions and work toward revitalization.

In hearing these signs of the Spirit, we must notice that these are not just comforting words, a way of “patting ourselves on the back.”  They are most challenging signs, disconcerting movements of nature:

“The blowing of the Spirit in these difficult and painful situations is often not a gentle breeze. It is the storm on the lake in which the enticing voice of Jesus sounds: ‘Take courage! It is I! Don’t be afraid.’”

There is a reason we use such images as a strong wind or fire for the Spirit.  It is because the Spirit calls us, draws us, even pushes us into a dynamic of conversion that we tend to resist.  Dom Bernardus applies the five stages of grief to the acceptance of change: “‘shock and reluctance to believe it; an attempt to “bargain” and an irrational longing to somehow “avert” or negate the painful event, followed by an inner struggle sometimes involving feelings of rage and revolt; and moments of resignation - before we finally achieve the peace of reconciliation - accepting the reality.’”

Dom Guillaume, who currently serves as Superior ad Nutum of Sept Fons and Monastic Commissary of Latroun, gave a talk at the regional meeting for the Region of Europe and Israel, in which he asked the question: is it possible to help a monastery?

“…many conditions are needed for this process to be possible: the desire for genuine refoundation, the readiness to change, the choice to put the good of the community above one’s own interests, the ability to put the choice of monastic life as the first criterion of discernment more important than one’s emotional attachments or habits.  And perhaps above all, the ability to start afresh.  This cannot be demanded of anyone, whatever their age.  But it does presuppose a particular spiritual disposition.”

To cultivate such a spiritual disposition is the great challenge of our times, but really points to the fundamental goal of monastic life: to be conformed to Christ, available to the Spirit, ready to do the work of God.  We think of Jesus’ passionate exclamation: “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!” (Lk 12:49).  And we remember the famous saying of the desert fathers: “Abba Lot went to Abba Joseph and said to him, ‘Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?’ Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, ‘If you will, you can become all flame.”

I found three poems on the coming of the Spirit which I would like to leave with you.  Each one invites us to explore our fear and reluctance in the face of the cost of discipleship, the all-demanding fire of love.

The first, by Theodore Roszak, expands upon the need to be enflamed in all our faculties:

Unless the eye catch fire
     The God will not be seen
Unless the ear catch fire
     The God will not be heard
Unless the tongue catch fire
     The God will not be named
Unless the heart catch fire
     The God will not be loved
Unless the mind catch fire
     The God will not be known

A famous poem by T.S. Eliot teases out the metaphor of the Spirit as demanding fire of love using language suggestive of a World War Two dive-bomber:

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
—Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre—
—To be redeemed from fire by fire.
Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
—We only live, only suspire
—Consumed by either fire or fire.

Finally, and quite uniquely, Mary Pratt’s poem “Not Like a Dove” recasts the imagery in terms of various sizes of lizard, from the tiny red eft to the dragon of myth and legend, whose threatening appearance hides a purifying effect:

Come Holy Spirit, come
like a red eft creeping out
from under wet leaves,
crossing the travelled highway
at night after rain.
Come like the brown anole comes north
unexpected in bananas or limes;
like a gecko hunting roaches on a wall.
Come like chameleon;
like iguana still as deep green death
flittering a cloven tongue.
Come like Komodo parting the ways
with your stinking breath.  Come
clear the carrion from this isle.
Come Holy Spirit
come like the Dragon remembered of old
rattling and clanking on golden wings.
Seize our treasures for your twinkling hoard.
Burn away all that will burn.

Sources:
https://ocso.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/4.-Circular-Letter_Pentecost-2024-EN.pdf
https://artandtheology.org/2022/06/03/catching-fire/
https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2018/03/22/meditating-four-quartets-little-gidding-iv/
https://gladerrand.wordpress.com/2011/05/24/not-like-a-dove/
https://betweenbluerocks.wordpress.com/2012/05/25/like-the-dragon/

Image: Jyoti Sahi, Holding the Flame of Fire, 2005