Intentio Cordis: Reflections On Monastic Vocation

July 2011, #2
Vocational Discernment: A Spiritual Narrative
Fr. Daniel Manger, OSB Cam

Discerning a monastic vocation is a continuous process that is an outgrowth of an individual’s on-going spiritual narrative. This on-going narrative, underway for at least a couple of years and often longer, precedes applying for entry into a more structured monastic formation process.  

Monastic life reveals an intensified thirst to live out one’s baptismal calling in a celibate community of on-going conversion within the Church. An experienced spiritual director who walks with the individual on this journey of discernment, can facilitate the distinction between various prayer experiences and spiritual practices, observing how each narrative is integrated into the daily practice of the individual and whether there is, beyond the prayer experiences, particular signs suggesting a monastic vocation.

Perhaps, for example, a narrative could emerge as a desire toward total self-donation, as a humble recognition of ongoing conversion in all areas of a person’s life. Indication of a monastic narrative would show signs of feeling comfortable with natural quiet and interior disciplined listening to the Word of God. Monastic life centers on the desire for union with God and living in hope and charity in a monastic faith community, pondering the Word of God daily in liturgy and personal meditation practice.

Or another narrative could emerge around docility in relationships; attending with kindness and anticipation to others based upon a personal experience of God’s hospitality toward one’s own self development. This is often expressed in a person’s life as a capacity for transparency in relationships and a pattern of reconciliation and self-donation to the common inter-dependence in living.

Beyond the narratives themselves, spiritual direction can help discern the interactions among emotional, social intelligence and spiritual intelligence that color the narratives. The daily practice of one’s prayer and spiritual practice, like meditation, are gently observed in spiritual direction. A willingness to surrender to this kind of self-exploration is a healthy sign of spiritual growth and the discernment of the various daily practices, observed within light of these narratives, may point toward a possible identification that God is calling a person to embrace a monastic way of being.

The monastic vocation is a way a living. It involves being attuned to the Word of God and its ultimate call to conversion of that living. Checking in on a regular basis with one’s spiritual director and with others who spiritually support a person, can provide valuable external feedback on whether it is time to approach a monastic community with a request for spiritual formation.

Underlying all of this is the discernment of living a monastic life with includes the active engagement with the monk’s vows of chastity, obedience, and poverty. It is my belief that chastity is a grace, one which generously calls forth an expansive way of self-donation toward each person, regarding each individual not as an object for personal pleasure and possessiveness, but as a sheer joy in the delight of life.

In the monastic life, obedience revolves around a capacity for “actively listening” to the Holy Spirit within relationships to both God and other human beings. We are blessed with countless examples of obedience when reflecting on the lives of Jesus, his mother Mary, and the saints, all of whom discovered and acted upon Divine guidance, often sacrificing their own opinions to the often mysterious and unknown design of God. Obedience is born of faith, understanding that even while holding an opinion, one is elastic enough to engage and explore compromise in deliberation with God, which leads to a greater good for the community. Here again, spiritual direction can assist in the discernment of the part that obedience may play in the narrative of one’s faith journey, verifying the capacity of growth and the coming to life of one’s true purity of heart.

Finally, the vow of poverty opens up the narrative of detachment and ascetic discipline where a person’s life is narrated by simplicity. Poverty magnifies the unmerited gifts God bestows in life asking one to observe and question the balance between a natural good and its “cost” to the poor, the not so gifted, the less successful. Poverty calls one to return that which is truly surplus and give more of one’s means to the aid of others. Poverty often calls one to safeguard the natural resources of this planet for all creatures, looking to insure a future for all in generations to come. Poverty is a notable proclamation of the Beatitudes of the gospel emerging in a person seeking a more total self-donation in love.

In total, these are some of the characteristics that arrive in the narrative of discerning a monastic vocation. Woven through all of this are the Beatitudes that Jesus taught us to live by. We are not chosen because we are perfect human beings, rather we are chosen in our poverty and incompleteness to be vessels; giving thanks because we answer a calling to put faith and trust of our heart’s thirst to witness; that all of life is a gift from the hand of God.

June 2011, #1
Sensing gravity within monastic vocation:
Fr. Daniel Manger, OSB Cam

Gravity, in popular thought, is something we often associate only with the physics of what keeps our two feet firmly planted on the earth. However, gravity is an apt metaphor for the monastic to consider as a way of relating to stability.

Stability is difficult to cultivate in the movement of economic and social dynamics that surround us every day. However, monastics must take careful assessments into their meditations, their work and their relationships within the community; assessments of who it is that bonds them to any particular way of exploring the nature and substance of their commitment to their vocation.

There are many lifetime relationships that are developed in a monastic’s life and the initial ones mirror the personal experience of the gravity of God’s Holy Spirit in the life of each monk or nun. This personal experience is expressed in the individual’s predilection to respond faithfully, to the offer of repeated reconciliations – both great and small – of themselves and of others in the community.

The gravity toward joy and delight sprouts from the seed planted within the inner and outward silences where listening and observation skills undergo (with God’s energies) the opening of the heart; a process that mirrors the way an eye dilates to the depth of a night sky filled with stars.

Every star, we are told, has immense gravitational energy. Each star holds a center for planets, asteroids and even comets in its Helios sphere, encompassing its total grouping - what we call a solar system. The Voyager space craft (launched back in 1970’s) is just now reaching what is believed to be the outer boundaries of the gravitational influence of our Sun. And yet, we do not completely understand the gravity effect of other stars or star systems on our own solar system.

Meditations on these metaphors offer a perspective on how our human heart-spirit yearns to be bound by the gravity of the divine love. The monastic engages this tension between the interior gravity produced by the Father through Christ in the Spirit abiding, and the gravity of the human question which asks how to actualize this wonder of discovery with the stability of listening silence and relationships in the peace and reconciliation of one love divine.