| Dear Friends of the Monastery,
Blessings to you! May this time of Christmas bring you joy and gladness in your lives. May all of us have some sense of the presence of God in our lives and a sense of God’s presence in our world.
The natural disaster in Asia of an earthquake and tsunamis following it has caught the attention of all of us at this moment in history. Every day we pray for those who have died and for those who have survived and must find a way to go on living.
In the Monastery here, as soon as Christmas was over, Brother Andrew left to return to his studies. Brother William left the following day to return to Santa Fe where he runs The Monks’ Corner for the community.
Christmas, or any great feast in our religious life, never stops ordinary monastic life from continuing forward. Brothers who are involved in studies or other projects for the community continue in their studies and projects. At home, we change our schedule slightly for a few days and then return to normal schedules.
So much of life is about ordinary living and not about the feasts, the holidays and the changes that happen in our lives. Spirituality is really about living whatever happens in the awareness of God’s present in all that happens.
There are times in any family or in the Monastery where a person can feel totally alone and uncared for, even at the same time that the person recognizes that he or she is loved by others. Always it is important to listen to such emotions and feelings.
Many times people have asked me about my personal life. So much of my time is spent listening to others, trying to help others and serving others in a variety of ways. So people ask me about how I survive. Do I have someone to speak to and who listens to me and serves me and helps me. I suppose that is a natural question.
My response is that I talk with all kinds of people, that I seek to live with whatever is sent to me, that I sense for me that I am supposed to take everything to prayer. Obviously there are times when I need to speak with others about my own emotions and feelings. For years I had Abbot Gilbert Jones as a person in whom I could confide and with whom I could discuss most anything. He died earlier this year and left a huge void in my life. There are a few other abbots in whom I confide.
Honestly, though, I find that my real challenge is to bring all that I experience to prayer. I think that is the challenge for everyone. Of course, if one does not believe in a God, that is not something that a person could do! But for me, believing is part of my living experience. And so I strive to bring all my hurts and pains and sorrows and challenges, and my joys and happiness and delights to the Lord.
For me it is interesting that I find myself more able to pray in the morning than in the evening. In the morning I find that my prayer comes more spontaneously and without much struggle. In the evening, often I don’t want to pray! I find very helpful the advice of Dom John Chapman: “On the other hand, the only way to pray is to pray; and the way to pray well is to pray much. If one has no time for this, then one must at least pray regularly. But the less one prays, the worse it goes. And if circumstances do not even permit regularity, then one must put up with the fact that when one does try to pray, one can’t pray—and our prayer will probably consist of telling this to God.”
So even though I don’t want to pray in the evenings, I try to pray at that time. It is not how I feel that counts, it is simply that I must try to pray. The only way to pray is to pray! It is at times a real struggle, but over these many years, I am convinced that real praying is often a struggle. How I feel is something that I can be aware of, without letting how I feel determine the choices about what I do.
At a practical level, I am blessed because of living in the Monastery provides me with regular prayer in common. The challenge for me is to keep up a private, personal life of prayer outside of the common prayer. In my first years, I could always find the time to spend one or two hours of personal prayer each day. Now, as the community grows, as there are more needs for administration, as the physical plant of the Monastery takes more of my time, as the number of brothers takes more of my time, I simply have to fit prayer in whenever I get a moment. Even when I do plan ahead so that I can have a half hour or an hour of quiet time, quite often something will happen to take that time away. So it forces me to develop a habit of praying whenever I get the chance.
By praying, I mean taking the time to focus my attention and my energies on God and to be in God’s presence in as active a way as I can. This type of activity often looks passive. If someone were to watch me, they might ask if I am resting. My inner response would be: Yes, of course, I am resting in the Lord.
These great feasts of our faith invite all of us to reflect a bit on how we give our lives to God, whether we are in a Monastery or whether we live in a family home or whether we have a private apartment and live alone—or whatever our circumstances are. God always invites us to give ourselves to the divine presence.
Be assured of my prayers for you and for all of your needs and intentions. May this time of Christmas joy bring to each of you a deep awareness of God’s love for us and God’s divine presence. I shall celebrate Holy Mass this week for the intentions of all who read this online letter. Please pray for me and for all the nuns and monks of our communities.
Your brother in the Lord,
Abbot Philip, OSB |
