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The Profession in Initial Vows of Jeffrey Bruce Neal, SSJE

Curtis Almquist, SSJE
Monastery

January 27, 2008
Isaiah 43:1-4  s  Psalm 61 s  1 John 1-9  s  John 15:12-17

Some years ago I had the opportunity to visit Saint Benedict’s Monastery at Snowmass, Colorado.  This is a Cistercian monastery of strict observance, monks who are called “Trappists,” who are especially revered for the silence they keep.i  (Thomas Merton’s monastery, The Abbey of Gethsemane in Kentucky – a monastery known to our Brother Bruce since his college days – follows this same strict observance.)  At this Trappist monastery in Snowmass, Colorado, I met one of the monks, Father Theophane.  He had just authored a small book entitled Tales of a Magic Monastery, all whose stories are true, so he said.  One of Father Theophane’s Tales of a Magic Monastery is about silence, which is no surprise.

            A young monk tells of a conversation with his elder in the monastery:
            “Would you teach me silence?” I asked.
            “Ah!”
            He seemed to be pleased.  “Is it the Great Silence that you want?”
            “Yes, the Great Silence.”
            “Well, where do you think it’s to be found?” he asked.
            “Deep within me, I suppose.  If only I could go deep within, I’m sure I’d escape the noise at             last.  But it’s hard.  Will you help me?”  I knew he would.  I could feel his concern, and his             spirit was so silent. 
            “Well, I’ve been there,” he answered.  “I spent years going in.  I did taste the silence there.              But one day Jesus came – maybe it was my imagination – and said to me simply, ‘Come, follow             me.’  I went out, and I’ve never been back.”
            I was stunned.  “But the silence…?”
            “I’ve found the Great Silence, and I’ve come to see that the noise was inside.”ii
           
It is a wonderful experience to see the inner noise in our own lives abated.  The English word “silence” comes from the Latin, silentium, which is to be quiet or still.  For some of us, it is both necessary and difficult to become quiet, to become still.  The cadence of monastic living reveres silence.  There is the greater silence during the night, something we practice from the end of our praying Compline (about 9:00 p.m.) until the following morning.  During this night time of greater silence, we don’t talk.  We do say aloud our early morning prayers and praises, but we don’t otherwise talk.  Twelve hours later, at 9:00 a.m., we break the silence in of hymn of devotion to the Holy Trinity.  And then, as the day opens, we practice what in the monastic tradition has been called the lesser silence throughout the day.  Most days we are free to talk, but to talk with intention.  Even then, the “monastic default” is to listen and only to speak if there is something important and responsible to say.  Now it’s a rather presumptuous for me to talk to you in this way, because I am frequently prone to lose track of this discipline around talk, but it is my goal, that is our goal as monks. 

One of the vows which we take in monasticism is the vow of obedience, which is all about this.  The English word obedience comes from the Latin, obaudire, meaning “to listen deeply.”  Obedience is first about listening, and second, about doing.  Monks are professional listeners; it’s what we profess to do with our lives –  to listen to God, and to listen to our neighbor, and to listen to what is going on in our own soul and to become one with that, which changes the inner noise into a harmony.  The monastic practice of silence is a means to that end: to become silent and still, and to carry that stillness within us in our life and into our world.  Those of us who here are monks need the structure of a monastery “24-7” to learn this and to live this; for most of you with us today, God has entrusted you with a much longer leash in life.  God hasn’t called you to be a monk.  Maybe you just need to come to a monastery on occasion to renew your own cadence of silence, stillness, your own posture in life of receptive listening.

The lessons from the Scriptures appointed for our liturgy today are very rich fare.  I want to draw from these Scriptures three principles for becoming still.  I’m not here talking about becoming vacuous, or mute, nor about hiding in life, nor about living in self-imposed solitary confinement.  I’m speaking here like Father Theophane, about stilling the noise inside our lives so that we can be fully receptive to the gift of life God has given us.

We hear in our reading from the prophet Isaiah that “God is light and in him there is no darkness.”iii  Many children are afraid of darkness; it is the worst thing about going to bed at night, the darkness.  (Some of you may know the old Scottish bedtime prayer: “From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us!”)  Our experience of darkness – whether we speak of darkness literally or metaphorically – can be frightening, disorienting, with shadows that are looming and potholes and ledges which are invisible, and sometimes the terrible feeling of being very alone and vulnerable.  No wonder that many children are quite afraid of darkness, and some people, maybe some of you, never completely grow out of that fear.  But as we grow into adolescence and adulthood, I think there is a fear that oftentimes supersedes the fear of darkness, and that is the fear of light, of being exposed, of the truth about our own lives getting out.  Light is very revealing, sometimes searing.

I remember a period in my own life many years ago where I was receiving lots of praise, many accolades, and yet I could hardly hear it because of all the noise in my own soul.  With every word of praise I heard, I said to myself, “If you only knew….”  Because I knew if they knew, they would not be holding me in such high esteem.  That’s what I thought.  (I was eventually, wonderfully, proven wrong; but that’s what I thought then.)  I was afraid of the light.  You may have an experience of this in your own life.  That inner noise can be quieted.  And I know of no more powerful way to make that inner noise become still than to embrace the truth that God does know.  I’ll use here the words of the prophet Isaiah which we’ve just heard: God’s saying to us, to you, “because you are precious in my sight and honored, and I love you.”  “I have called you by name.”  Not the person we could have been, had things been different; not the person we feel we should have been; but the person we are God knows, God loves, God calls.  God calls us each by name.  This truth – that we are known by God – may change our actions in life; but first it will change our heart and make us real, not pretend, and not frightened.  “God is light and in him there is no darkness,” and God loves what he sees in you.  Really loves.  During the serving of Holy Communion today we’ll sing, “I want to be a child of the light.”  God is light, and God can see into our own darkness, and what God sees in us is like a hidden jewel. There is an old adage, “love is blind.”  It’s not true.  Love is eyes wide open, and what God sees in you, God loves.  Your knowing that God knows you will help quiet your inner noise.

Secondly, anxiety creates a lot of inner noise.  Anxiety about what might be ahead in life can create a terrific amount of noise in our own souls.  Many of us may get in touch with anxiety for one of two reasons: anxiety about our future life, or anxiety about our future death, or both.  The latter is the easy one: death.  It’s only a matter of time.  We live in a culture and in a time where there is a great attempt made to escape from or to anesthetize our mortality – this apotheosis of youth.  There’s a kind of code of conduct in our own culture where we’re not supposed to talk about death or think about death.  I think that’s living half a truth.  It is true that God has given us the gift of life, and whetted our appetite to live forever… but it’s not all about this earth.  In the vocabulary of the church we talk about life on this earth, as a preparation for what we call “the life to come.”  Don’t confuse or conflate the two. 

In some monasteries down through the centuries, the monks have literally slept in their wooden coffins at night to always keep in mind how short life is.  Now that may sound so extreme that it’s repelling, and we don’t practice that here in this monastery (though I have begun a woodworking project to craft a wooden box for my cremains…).  You will know, those of you who have prayed Compline with us here in the monastery chapel or at Emery House, that at the close of Compline we are sprinkled with baptismal water, reminding us of our baptism in Christ in which we reaffirm we have died and been promised resurrection in Jesus Christ.  Life is full of daily dying and rising.  Many experiences in life are real killers and then, amazingly enough, we get up and go on, what Saint Paul calls the daily dying and rising in Christ.iv  And then there comes our ultimate death and the promised resurrection into new life.  Rather than be anxious about your impending death, live with a sense of surprise and adventure that you’re still alive.  Live a day at a time, as if today is your last day.  Live it fully; live it thankfully; live it faithfully, believing if you make it through the night and wake up tomorrow, for perhaps as much as one more day, it must be for reason.  And God is in it: God’s presence and God’s provision.  Don’t fear death; rather, be surprised, be absolutely delighted you’re still alive… today.  That truth will quiet a lot of inner noise.

And if you find yourself anxious about your future life, especially if you fear you will suffer, you can replace your anxiety with certainty.  The truth is ‘yes,’ almost certainly you will suffer.  As Christians, we have the cross always before us.  As Christians where we find strength and comfort in the prospect of suffering is in Christ’s promise, not to spare us but to companion us in our suffering, to be with us always.  Christ does not promise us anesthesia; he does promise us his presence and his power.  And it will happen.  We hear in the words of Isaiah, “Do not fear,” which is a theme Jesus repeats.v  Jesus would say, the things you are most afraid of may well happen to you, but don’t be afraid because he is with you.

A third principle for quelling the inner noise I’ll speak quite personally to you, Bruce.  I hear Jesus’ words from John’s gospel read a few moments ago quite personally for you: Jesus’ saying, “You did not choose me but I chose you.”vi  A great deal of inner noise in our own lives dies down when we find our vocation.  The English word “vocation” comes from the Latin, vocare, which means “to call.”  I think you have been hearing God’s call on your life, Bruce, your vocation, since you and your twin sister, Jenifer, were very small.  I think your maternal grandmother, “Mamaw,” had it right in saying you would be a preacher.  You are, and a very gifted one, indeed, and we listen to you.  I think you heard God’s call on your life through your paternal grandmother, your “Grandmom,” in what she taught you about Psalm 23: you are like a sheep, and even when you get lost, Jesus, the good shepherd, will find you and love you, no matter how far away you stray.    Who could have guessed that your high school visit to Washington, to the National Cathedral, where you saw spires and stained glass and smelled incense for the first time was all part of God’s lure, as was Gethsemane Abbey in Kentucky, all part of God’s lure into this place where you belong, with spires and stained glass and the prayer of incense saturating the walls?  Who could have guessed your precocious gift for singing would prepare you to be a monk-cantor?

And then to Disneyland, and from the Magic Kingdom to here, what Father Theophane calls a Magic Monastery.  Somehow the glitter and costumes and sense of escape that Disney wonderfully, temporarily, has provided for many of us whetted your appetite for belonging to a different kind of cast.  This was clearly aided, I think necessarily aided, by your older adopted sisters who are here, Meg, Bonnie, Sarah, who taught you something crucial about your self worth.  And your devoted Mother who blesses you here with her presence: her Baptist boy who loves Jesus and who’s become a monk.  As you say, it’s stranger than fiction that you’re here in this monastery at this time, and yet I think you’ve been getting ready for this, or readied for this, all your life, this vocation, this call.  The proof of the fit, I would say, is in the joy about which you speak and which shows on your countenance.  You may be surprised by your joy, but we’re not.  Monasticism, as you know, is no escape.  It’s a real deal, and you are becoming real, Bruce: a real presence of Christ’s presence among us, for which we’re so thankful.  Here you may be still; here you may abide.vii  Welcome home.

  © 2008

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