MGM2005

The Good News of the Lord that we have just heard is neither fortuitous nor coincidental. Rather, it is the fruit of Divine Providence, which makes use of human means to come to our help. What I mean is that the choice of readings for this Eucharist was premeditated.

What is the Lord saying to us through his gospel Word? The message seems clear, but we should mistrust our own sense of clarity when it does not come from the light of faith. The first message: The Lord is going to go away and his absence will be a cause of sadness for us, but it is also a condition for him to send us the Spirit-Paraclete. The Lord’s absence is something that depends on him; but the fact of being sad about his going is our doing. It would seem that both the sadness and the absence are conditions for the sending of the Paraclete-Defender. That is to say, there is a good sadness, the fruit of a love that desires the Lord to be present and to stay, without which the Spirit-Consoler cannot come. It would come as no surprise if during this Mixed General Meeting we experience sadness. Let us discern whether or not this is a good sadness, and, if it is, let us be thankful, because it can be a first sign of consolation and of the Spirit’s coming.

The Second message: The Spirit of Truth will enlighten us so that we might understand the full truth of the mystery of Jesus. Perhaps what interests us most during this meeting is to have a better understanding of God’s plan with regard to the subjects we will be discussing. There is no doubt that our decisions regarding a Single General Chapter, Monastic Solitude, the Authority of the Superiors ad nutum . . . and everything on the agenda has to be enlightened by the Spirit if we are to find solutions that are in conformity with the mystery of Christ and the work of salvation.

Finally, each one of us has a particular charism from the Spirit to be of service in this understanding and carrying out of God’s plans. These charisms need a certain atmosphere and a solid footing in order to act to the full: the atmosphere needed is the breath of the spirit; the solid footing is loving communion among us all.

Once again I would like to offer a contribution along anthropological lines, in the context of our monastic formation. What has made me reflect on this subject is the departure from our monasteries of six or seven young adult monks during the past two years. In almost every case there were two common factors, namely, the discovery of human love embodied in a particular woman and the total relativity given to everything the man had previously lived. It would seem that the discovery of human love had converted his former search for God into something unreal.

Obviously it is not a question now of judging the vocation of these young men. Rather, we should question ourselves about the formation we offered them. The following could be pertinent questions to ask: What human foundations was the spiritual skyscraper built on? What type of anthropology was implicit in their formation process? Are we really convinced that grace builds on nature? Are we fostering split personalities, even though we say the opposite? Why do young nuns not have similar experiences? Are women more realistic, while we men are more carnal? Do we perhaps repress what is instinctive in us, so as to favor what is rational? Do we give priority to the spirit in detriment to the body? Do we keep allegorizing the biblical texts on love and thus empty them of their human richness? And we could continue with more questions like this.

It is not my intention to answer such questions directly. However, the following paragraphs will offer an initial response. The theme we will treat can be stated like this: “anthropological notes concerning human desire at the service of monastic formation.” Therefore I will treat the theme only partially and incompletely, since these are simply “notes” and my approach will be principally anthropological, yet without forgetting that Christian anthropology finds its fullest and most adequate meaning in a theological context.

The following text from the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (n.2) has been an inspiration for me and will be a good starting point:

God himself, by creating man in his own image, has written in the human heart the desire to see God. Even though this desire is often ignored, God does not cease to draw man to Himself, so that he may live and find in God that fullness of truth and happiness which he is constantly looking for. That is why man is, by nature and by vocation, a religious being, capable of entering into communion with God. This intimate, vital bond with God confers on man his fundamental dignity.

This text from the Church’s magisterium puts desire in intimate relation to the divine image in the human being. This primordial, structural desire moves the person to search for the fullness of the Creator and makes the person a religious being, worthy of all respect.

It is hardly necessary to say that this text from the Catechism has its roots in the tradition springing from St. Augustine. We are immediately reminded of the well known words of the Saint from Hippo, “You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you” (Confessions, I.1:1). The Rule of St. Benedict and the writings of St. Gregory the Great were the principal means by which the spirituality of Augustine was transmitted to western monasteries during the Middle Ages. We are, then, at the life-giving heart of our own Cistercian tradition, where Bernard of Clairvaux discovered the foundations of his spiritual teaching.

The theme of desire is central to Cistercian anthropology. The mystical language of our Fathers expresses their experience of desiderium. There are six key words that refer to this experience: desiderium, affectus, amor, caritas, contemplatio and nuptiae. Moreover St. Bernard, in his Sermons on the Song of Songs, uses other synonyms, such as suspirare (to sigh, 59:4), appetire (to crave, 47:5), sitire (to thirst, 7:2), suspendere (to hang on, 17:2), clamitare (to cry out, 74:7), se afflictare (to be distressed, 31:5), inhiare (to be openmouthed with eagerness, like the baby pigeon waiting for food from its mother, 28,13), deficere (to faint away, 28:13), flere (to weep, 58:11). These many expressions show the importance of this theme and are another reason for discussing it with you at this moment of the Order’s life.

The present conference will deal with the following points: first we will consult Biblical revelation so as to point out the central place which desire occupies in Judeo-Christian anthropology. Then we will see the etymology of the word, its paradoxes and the continual presence of desire in human experience, especially in sexuality, religion, psychology and human cultures. We will conclude with some reflections on its relation to the theological virtue of hope. I will try to draw some conclusions from each of these subtopics and underline some aspects of them which have to do with monastic formation.

In Biblical anthropology there is a word whose importance is fundamental for understanding the human experience of desire. It appears early, in the first pages of the Bible: The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living nephesh (Gn 2:7).

A simple consultation of dictionaries and studies on the biblical theology of the Old Testament shows that nephesh appears some 754 times in Sacred Scripture with a large variety of meanings: breath, soul, life, throat, appetite, desire, living being, person. For our purposes, it is enough to say that it can mean:

- A bodily organ connected with breathing or swallowing: the throat, neck (Is 51:23; Ps 69:2; Prov 3:22; 25:25), mouth (Is 5:14; Prov 28:25), and even the stomach (Is 29:8; Prov 6:30; Ps 107:9).

- The physiological function related to these organs: breathing (Gn 35:18; Lam 2:12; Job 11:12), thirst (Ps 78:18; Prov 16:26), desire for food (Dt 23:25; Prov 12:10; Ps 106:15).

- As a transferred meaning, the tension of longing or desiring (1 Sam 20:4; Prov 19:2; Ps 105:22).

In other words, nephesh can be used to designate the living person as a being of desire, structured for a relationship with the other/Other, which relationship is necessary for his or her self-fulfillment. In this sense, the text from Genesis 2:7 can be translated freely in the following way: and the man became a living subject of desires. When the spouse of the Song of Songs speaks about her beloved as the love of my soul, she would be saying, “the desired one of my desires!” (Song 1:7; 3:1-4; cf. 5:6; 6:12). And we read in Psalm 130:6: My soul (my nephesh) is longing for the Lord more than watchman for daybreak; that is: the structure of my person, as a subject of desires, is ordered to God like the watchman who waits for daybreak (Cf. Ps 42:2,6,12; 43:5).

These examples let us see that the noun, nephesh, is sometimes translated as soul, or life, or even by a personal pronoun. Thus, when it is used in relation to human feelings it generally points to the vital center of the person, where he or she feels things, breathes, reacts and decides (Jgs 18:25; II Sam 5:8; 17:8; Is 19:10; 38:15; Prov 11:25; 14:10; Jer 42:21; etc.). This Biblical teaching is taken up by St. Augustine, who states that desire is the bosom of the heart (Confessions 10:8). Some modern philosophers adopt the same perspective, with one of them even stating that desire is the essence of man (Spinoza, Ethics IV, Prop 18).

We humans live out of this primordial structural desire. We are continually desiring and multiplying our desires, which stir up a whole constellation of feelings in us, so that we live desiring and feeling. It becomes obvious, then, that this foundational reality of our human life must be given an important place in our programs of monastic formation. The monastery is a school of charity to the degree that it knows how to educate human desires and order human affections.

A human being behaves as such when it functions in a way that is “desiring,” affectionate, decisive, moral and intelligent. In other words, desire, affectivity, will power, conscience and intelligence are the basic psychological functions of behavior on the part of any human being, whether man or woman. Desire is a basic structure before being differentiated into various types of desires. This primordial desire underlies our affectivity and our will power.

But what does the etymology of the word, “desire,” teach us about the experience which it refers to? From among its several possible derivations I think the best is the following one: the word, “desire,” comes from the Latin, de-siderare, which is composed of a privative prefix (de) and a noun (sidus, -eris: star, heavenly body). Thus we have the expressions, chasing stars or a star in one’s life.

Chinese culture also teaches us something interesting on this point. The character for “hope” (wang in Mandarin Chinese) is composed of two other ideograms. In the lower part of the character is a man standing on a platform looking up. In the upper part is a crescent moon. In other words, hope is characterized by a human being wanting and waiting for the arrival of the full moon. This same character is used in Japanese to signify desire (nozomi) and the action of desiring (nozomu).

Therefore, when we talk about desire we are speaking metaphorically. We are referring to the movement toward some absent thing or person that we perceive as good and attractive. More specifically, desire implies a feeling of absence due to a lack of satisfaction with what is presently available. Bernard of Clairvaux describes this experience of desire in a concise way by saying, “All rational beings, by their very nature, are continually longing for what seems better to them and they are not satisfied as long as they do not have what they consider to be better” (Dil., 18).

There is an important lesson for the process of personal maturity in what we have been saying. The world and other persons as different from ourselves, with all their intrinsic wealth of meaning, including a personal mission for us to accomplish, can only be perceived when we recognize our own structural “lack” of completeness.

The acceptance of this absence, of this need, with the existential solitude it implies, which is so characteristic of our human condition, is an indispensable requisite for establishing relationships with others. In fact it is only when we recognize that we are beings in need that another person, precisely as other, can become a companion on our journey. We are not everything for anybody, and nobody can be everything for us. This is the necessary condition for the success of any married couple, any friendship, any group of brothers or sisters, any community, any effort towards unity. There will always be an essential distance, separation and distinctive difference. Everything is both presence and absence, even in the most intimate forms of communion.

When our desire has been configured and limited by separation, difference and absence, it becomes possible to avoid the following three temptations:

- Fusion with the other person, which ends up annihilating love. This is a fairly common danger in the process of initial monastic formation. - Manipulation of the other person for one’s own benefit, thus reducing the person to the status of a material object. This is possibly a danger for superiors who lack adequate human maturity. - Elimination of self at the service of what one supposes to be the desire of the other person. This is a danger for not a few young persons in formation who want to please their formators.

Desire is a paradoxical reality in human life that is always present. Starting from a lack, with its need for satisfaction, it puts us in motion so that we search for someone or something beyond ourselves. To desire is to know oneself as incomplete, needy, aware that something is missing, the possession of which appears as satisfying and enjoyable. This is an important principle, namely, that every desire stirs up one’s feelings; underneath all awakened affectivity lies desire.

Someone has said that because of desire we experience a certain uncomfortable anxiety and that this experience of unease is the basis of all human activity. However, someone else replied that, if we did not have anything to desire we might be happy, but would be deeply unfortunate. Many of the paradoxes of desire have become popular sayings or maxims, such as these:

- Do not try to make things as you want them to be, but want them to be as they are. - If you were to get half of what you want, you would double your worries. - The more you want, the more you will find wanting. - Impatient desire is more stimulating than a glut of delight. - A goal hard to attain is doubly enjoyed. - Desire wanes when opportunities abound or when success is easy. - Plenty becomes little when you desire a little more.

We grow anxious when failure looms, because we could fail and not obtain what we want, but the opposite can also happen. Nevertheless, there is a long distance between our desire and its achievement, because our achievements are often less than our hopes. Nothing fully satisfies us. Satisfaction is passing. Desire leaves us this side of what we want: it always leaves us hungry. A million kisses do not extinguish the desire for a kiss! Desire seems to be satisfied only with what is infinite and eternal.

If the painful inability to be satisfied were the final result of desire, the world and we humans would be absurdly meaningless. That is why we must always remember that desire enables us and pushes us to become beings of hope. Waiting and hoping are radically human experiences. If I wait with hope, I am alive. In the last resort, desire exposes us not only to anxiety, but also, and above all, to hope.

Desire invites us to live outside of ourselves. It puts us in contact with others and establishes relationships. It is the experience of our finiteness and limits, but also of the possibility to be more and better. Since it relates us with others, desire lets us become subjects, in the sense that the look of another on me awakens my own awareness. Attention to our desires lets us know ourselves and say who we are. Here is a fundamental task in the formation process, above all in its initial stages: find out what and whom you desire and you will know who you are.

It is true that desire starts us moving. It makes us search for someone or something that is missing. It is tension toward something more. However, this “something more” in the last analysis, can only be received as a gift. Therefore desire is also space, openness, and receptivity to the gift. Above all, it is receptivity to the giver.

It is also true that among the paradoxes of desire we must recognize its goodness or its evil. Desire can be misplaced. The verb, “to desire” (hamad), is used positively in Genesis 2:9: Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is desirable to the sight and good for food. In the next chapter, however, the same verb is used to refer to the desire from which sin is born: When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was desirable to the eyes… (Gn 3:6). However, in the Song of Songs we find a reference to this situation, but prior to any sin, when sexuality was still a source of pleasure, joy and happiness in God: As an apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among young men. I desire to sit in his shadow, and his fruit is sweet to my mouth (Song 2:3).

Paul the Apostle is very clear when speaking about this ambivalence of desire: Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, preventing you from doing what you want (Gal 5:16-17). Anyone, woman or man, who has embraced the following of Christ through the inspiration of the Spirit will have to practice an asceticism of desire in order to direct desire to what is good and away from what is evil. This asceticism needs to be given the highest priority during the years of initial formation, but it has permanent importance throughout one’s whole life.

The primordial desire, which structures our human existence, generates a whole series of different aspirations, anxieties, longings, drives, appetites, wishes, ambitions, fancies, whims… which take shape with the passage of time in the life of each one of us. This all gives rise to a most complex assortment of desires closely related to the ups and downs (pleasures, fantasies, relationships) of one’s personal life story.

It can and does happen that the real objects of desire are repressed, and therefore unknown. Dreams are one way of helping these unrecognized desires to come to the surface. The wider the field of unknown, excluded desires, the less authentic will that life become, since the person does not know what he or she wants! Vague wishes are confused with sincere intentions; passing whims with deep desires. Thus it happens that totally mistaken decisions can be made, resulting in all types of frustrated vocations.

In the same way, the ignorance of our desires, combined with their self-contradiction, can paralyze our life and give rise to an unbearable conflict among our many attractions. This may be one of the most common causes of our “neuroses”, whether the latter are passing or permanent. On the other hand, dispersed desires which lack a concrete object are often the cause of vague, indefinable anxieties.

The deeply rooted structure of desire and the infinite variety of objects which appear to satisfy it make desire to be present in almost all the dimensions of our life. It is important to have inner clarity about this so as to choose well, renounce well, put order in our life and thus live with integrity and harmony. Let us look in a summary fashion at how desire shows itself in some dimensions of human existence.

- The biological dimension shows itself in appetites, attractions and sexual union. - The affective dimension wants tenderness, affection, falling in love, romances. - The playful dimension is expressed in the desire for humor, jokes and sports. - The pragmatic dimension looks for industriousness and service. - The interpersonal dimension wants paternity, maternity, fraternity, friendship, sociability. - The hierarchical dimension leads to the desire for authority and politics. - The possessive dimension is expressed in desires for property, business and commerce. - The intellectual dimension shows itself in research, information, discoveries. - The aesthetic dimension produces the desire for beauty, art and music. - The altruistic dimension expects generosity, almsgiving, sacrifice. - The religious dimension desires the absolute, the infinite, transcendence, God.

Thus desire is a basic structure of the human being in relation to a lack and/or an absence. It is open to a wide gamut of interdependent dimensions and experiences, some of which are more common than others. Among the more common experiences are the two following ones:

- Above all, desire is present in the area of our sex and affectivity. Here is its origin and the widest field for its growth. Sexuality is the dimension of human life offering the greatest promise of achieving a union which can break through the limits of differentiation, absence and distance. Affectivity, of course, feeds and enlivens many types of interpersonal relationships, such as motherhood, fatherhood, fraternity and friendship.

- However, it is probably the religious dimension which offers most possibilities of satisfying the deepest needs and longings of human life, since in religion desire finds love, protection, survival, transcendence, transformation. In all major religions, monks and nuns are people with an irresistible desire for God. God is for them the dominating attraction. God’s beauty fascinates them. It is on this foundation that a Christian, Gospel-directed monastic vocation can rest.

We have already pointed out that the dynamic source of human desire is the fact of being created in the image of God. Depth psychology teaches that its more existential origin is the fact that we are born in an act of separation from our mother. As it grows from that two-fold point of departure, desire tends towards a double goal: full satisfaction in the beatifying communion with God (its divine goal) and complementarity in the joyful union with another (its interpersonal goal).

We can refer to spiritual desire, whose goal is communion with God, as a longing for blessedness. To bodily or affective desire, whose goal is interpersonal relationship, whether heterosexual or not, we apply the terms “sexual appetite” and “personal eros.” According to this terminology, we can say that sex is biological desire, eros is personalized desire and longing is divinized desire.

We can also see that the satisfaction of the sexual appetite causes pleasure, that of interpersonal eros produces joy, but only longing for blessedness opens someone up to incomparable happiness.

The following table gives a clearer and more synthetic vision of what has just been said:

Two Basic Dimensions of Human Desire
	Religious	Bodily - Affective
Origin	- Creation in the image and likeness of the Creator	- Separation from the mother’s womb at the time of birth
Name	- Longing for Blessedness	- Sexual Appetite (sex) - Personal Eros (affectivity)
Goal	- Comunion with God	- Complementary Union with Another
Result	- Happiness	- Sexual Pleasure - Affective Joy

Personal eros and sexual appetite have something in common in that they are two powers which let us go out of ourselves and thus root out the deep-seated egoism of our being. Nevertheless, eros and sex are different, so it is important to understand where the difference lies:

- Sex produces bodily tension and its release, whereas eros gives a personal meaning to the experience by shedding its light on it and guiding it. - Eros fosters intimacy between persons, while sex only fosters a relation between their bodies. - Sex without eros terminates in one’s own body, whereas eros, even without sex, goes out to the other person. - The sexual act is the most powerful symbol of relationship between two persons and eros is the intimacy within that relationship. - Eros goes far beyond sex; if sex is the doorway, eros passes through it.

In so far as eros is a desire for interpersonal fellowship, fullness and joy with someone we love, it lets us both feel fulfilled and give this fullness to the other. Looked at this way, eros is both attractive and frightening. It is attractive by its promise of fulfillment, but frightening because it requires loosening the controls or giving up all control. Eros is awakened by affectionate intimacy, which is attractive, but at the same time the intimacy fostered by eros asks the person to keep loosening the controls, which is frightening. Celibates and those who have chosen virginity often do not know where to draw the boundary line so as to be faithful to their chosen options. In the relationship between a man and a woman, eros usually produces the following sensations:

- Pleasure, felt from being together. - Impulse, to create intimacy by lessening the degree of separation. - Silence, for the sake of “contacting” and feeling. - Joy which, if left on its own, can run in search of pleasure.

The renouncements and self-control implied in an option for virginal celibacy should not be an obstacle preventing men and women from spending some pleasurable time together. Those who do not know how to live these moments of healthy cordiality with gratitude often compensate in their daydreams for what they give up or repress.

Western culture, which now is also invading other cultures, has enslaved eros under the tyranny of sex. It is true that we are no long tied to the sexual revolution of the 1960’s, when there was a shift from forbidden pleasure to required pleasure. Sex was made obligatory. A dictatorship of the forced orgasm was imposed and required. However, most of our societies now live a sexuality which knows no moral norm whatsoever. Sex is often reduced to a game, one in which all the players lose. Our young people, both men and women, come from this type of culture.

On the other hand, some disembodied spiritualities with an excessive emphasis on what is supernatural and no support in what is natural, have produced the same effect as the secular sexual revolution, namely, the death of eros, that is, the death of interpersonal desire. As pious men and women pretending to subdue the flesh, we actually end up killing flesh, affectivity, appetite, eros and the like.

Maybe we should organize and proclaim another revolution, in order to give back to interpersonal eros all the charm of its openness to what is absolute and transcendent. This “erotic revolution” would not be a reclaiming of erotism as a disguised exaltation of the genitals. It would be a promotion of eros to make our sex more truly human and more noble.

It is well known that religion is the source of satisfaction for the most fundamental human desires. The language of God is the language of deep feelings, which are rooted in the fundamental desires of the human heart. This is where we find the source of conversion, faith, justice and love. Scripture offers many examples of these deepest desires: Lord, you enticed me, and I was enticed (Jer 20:7); Lord, you search me and you know me (Ps 138); Were not our hears burning within us? (Lk 24:32) By this type of language, God seduces our hearts so as to open them to Jesus Christ and to his Good News. Seduction by God is liberating and calls for our free response.

In this context we can ask whether the longing for God rests on the foundation of sexual desire. Put another way, is there an uninterrupted continuum between desire’s biological dimension and its religious dimension?

Many psychologists do not hesitate to reply to this question affirmatively. Some theologians have their doubts, saying that there is a qualitative leap between nature and grace. Other theologians, while not denying the gratuity of divine grace, teach that there is continuity between the human person, as a body-soul composite in the image of God, and union with God. They agree with the medieval theologians who taught that the human being is capax Dei! Grace does not destroy nature, but presupposes it and perfects it!

For St. Bernard, the human being does not have a “specific desire” which directs him or her toward God. It is the single human power of desire, which starts from the biological appetite guided by free will and leads the person to search for and to find God. In his Sermons on the Song of Songs, Bernard’s use of erotic sexual symbolism refers to the soul’s desire as it searches for God and longs for union with him. For Bernard, appetite and eros are at the service of charity.

Looking beyond this theological discussion, however, it is clear that without personal desire and eros the search for God becomes artificial, inconsistent, an empty mental game which falls apart like a house of cards when there appears a concrete relationship with someone who touches our heart and stirs up our deepest feelings. I think that we men are more vulnerable to this than women are, since we are more inclined to abstract theoretical thought.

We have pointed out from the beginning that the desire for God is constitutive of human nature. In all human beings there exists an innate capacity for God and an orientation to God that precedes one’s own choice. It is in this sense that the created human person has been made in the image of God.

Some medieval authors, especially the Cistercians, depart from the Augustinian tradition on a concrete practical point. Augustine’s tradition seems to draw a clear boundary between the “exterior man” and the “interior man,” between flesh (sexuality) and spirit. The former is the cause of perdition, while the latter results in salvation. Such a spirituality can establish a dichotomy which does not correspond to the inner reality of human existence.

Several of our own Fathers cross over the boundary between the inner and outer man, and appropriate some land belonging to the flesh. Eros and its spontaneous affectivity, rooted as they are in sex, are called to play an important role in the search for God. Here is what William of Saint-Thierry says in his Exposition on the Song of Songs:

The Holy Spirit, when he was about to deliver over to men the canticle of spiritual love, took the story which inwardly is all spiritual and divine and clothed it outwardly in images borrowed from the love of the flesh. Love alone fully understands divine things; therefore the love of the flesh must be led along and transformed into the love of the spirit so that it may quickly comprehend what is similar to itself. Since it is impossible that true love, pining for truth, can long remain satisfied with images, it very quickly passes, by a path known to itself, into that reality which was previously perceived only through images. Even after a man becomes spiritual, he still shares in the delights of fleshly love which are natural to him; but when these delights become the possession of the Holy Spirit, the person devotes them all to the service of spiritual love. That is why the heroine brazenly bursts forth from a hiding place and, without even telling her name or where she comes from or to whom she is speaking, cries out: “Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth!” (Exposition, no. 24).

William is speaking from within that wide spiritual tradition which proposes to start the search for the face of the Lord with what we are by creation, so as to arrive by grace at what we can become.

I am aware that this doctrine, with its practical consequences, can have its dangers. It can cause some fear due to the fact that the boundaries are not as clear and the inner world not so simple. Thus some questions remain. How deep can one go inwardly so as to find solid ground from which to climb safely back up toward the world of the spirit?

The basic question, however, both for monks of the Middle Ages and for us, is this: how is eros transformed into charity? The solution to this problem may be different for men and for women. The latter could unduly eroticize the love of charity, while we men could “genitalize” it or not know what to do with the carnal vibrations that can sometimes occur.

The transformation of interpersonal eros into spiritual longing is not easy, but it is possible. It requires, above all, consciously and peacefully integrating one’s own sexuality, starting with one’s genital desires. Then it means centering this experience on eros, understood as the desire for joyful fullness in interpersonal communion. Finally, it implies letting eros transcend all types of permanent attachment to any creature, in order that it be changed into a longing for unified blessedness in God.

The alternation of presence and absence, consolation and desolation, plays a very important role in the purification of eros and its transformation into a divine longing.

It is in this context that we should include in our formation a solid emphasis on Cistercian devotion to the humanity of Christ, on contemplation of his pre-paschal “mysteries,” leading to a deeper following of this divine Person and a richer communion in his glory. We also need to bring spousal spirituality up to date, understanding it as “reciprocal self-gift in fruitful fellowship.” It is certainly a rich spirituality, even though not free from its own difficulties which, however, can be overcome by adequate formation. How much more healthy, happy and fulfilled we would be if the words of the ascetic John Climacus were verified in our lives: “Blessed the person whose love for God is like the eros that a man in love has for his beloved!” (Ladder, 30:5).

Contemporary psychology in its more humanistic tendencies speaks of “human potential.” The latter phrase tells us that a human being has a natural capacity to grow into a fully personal mode of behavior. The teaching on human needs or tendencies was developed in this context. We make this teaching complete with the anthropological reality of desire.

A need has the particular characteristic of enclosing us in the present moment and in our own little world. Desire, on the contrary, opens us up. It thrusts us towards the future and towards others. Needs can be easily satisfied. When the adequate object is obtained the tension previously unleashed in one’s organism is eliminated: water satisfies thirst. But no single object can completely satisfy desire, because desire, in the last analysis, refers to the past and the future, to which nothing in the present can give a fully precise answer.

Both our needs and our desires are “tendencies” toward satisfaction. Their goal is to escape from a state of privation which can be physical, psychological or spiritual. It is easy to see that this tendency toward satisfying one’s needs plays a paramount role in any theory or practice concerning human motivation.

Let us try to classify synthetically these tendencies, both as needs and desires. They fall into three groups:

- Biological needs: air-breathing, water-thirst, food-nourishment, sleep-rest, sex-bonding-reproduction, house-dwelling-clothing…

- Psychological needs: security-protection, love-belonging, self-esteem and esteem for others, living and associating with others…

- Spiritual needs: beauty, goodness, truth, justice, order, fullness, meaning, freedom, perfection, religion, spirituality, mysticism…

It is easy to see that the “biological” tendencies are needs more than desires, whereas the psychological and spiritual tendencies belong to the order of desires.

These tendencies – both needs and desires – do not come to the surface all at the same time, or with equal demands. There is a certain hierarchy among them. Generally speaking, each of the different levels makes itself felt to the degree in which the preceding level has been satisfied. Obviously, the concrete situation of a society or group can affect the satisfaction of the needs of its members, the multiplication of such needs and their confusion with desires.

Experience teaches that it is very difficult to satisfy spiritual desires when there is a serious lack of biological needs or a frustration of psychological desires. Someone suffering from lack of sleep can hardly give any fruitful attention to the search for the meaning of God’s Word. Similarly, low self-esteem impedes liberty of action or adequate appreciation for what is good in life.

These principles have a practical importance in the area of monastic formation. In the majority of our monasteries, the biological needs of the members are taken care of, but I am not sure that the same can be said concerning psychological desires, which often act as supports for spiritual desires. One might also ask whether our communities are skilled in the art of developing the spiritual desires which lead to the mystical experience of communion with God, and whether everything in our life is ordered to this goal.

The greatest human cultures have had – and still have – different approaches to the reality of desire. Eastern culture tends toward freedom from desire, with certain currents of Buddhism considering that the person who is free from desire is free from “self” and thus achieves full freedom. One of the names of nirvana is, precisely, “annihilation of thirst” (tanhakkhaya): when the thirst of desire is eliminated, all suffering and misfortune come to an end.

Classical Greek culture will teach the control of desires. Thus Aristotle praises Plato for having stated that education consists in teaching how to desire what is truly desirable. We find this line of thought in Saint Thomas Aquinas, in his commentary on the Our Father contained in the Summa Theologica: Prayer interprets our desires before God. That is why it is right to ask for something in prayer only when it is right that we should desire it. Now in the Lord’s Prayer not only do we ask for all the gifts that we may rightly desire, but we do so in the order in which we ought to desire them, so that this prayer not only teaches us to ask, but it also directs all our affections (sit informativa totius nostri affectus) (II-II, 83,9).

During the Middle Ages, Western culture was pregnant with Christianity and thus, as we have seen, put human desiring at the service of the search for God. We can even think that some commentaries on the Song of Songs were pedagogical tools written with a view to this transformation of human desire. In contrast, contemporary Western culture on both sides of the North Atlantic moulds human desires to the service of its commercial economy. Let us look at this briefly.

The capitalist economic system is dominating today’s world for the following reason: it is producing a global “culture” by creating an anthropology for the masses which features a system of values and needs corresponding to its economic model.

In order to achieve its goal, capitalism deals with desires in a particular way. It intentionally confuses them with needs and then attempts to mould them into a particular form. As we have already pointed out, needs can be satisfied, since they are linked to social interaction, whereas deep desires are insatiable, because they are linked to the interiority of a person’s deepest, most original center of being.

Capitalist theories are elaborated in terms of satisfying needs and desires, not immediately the needs and desires for profit on the part of the business people, but rather the needs and desires of the customers. Profit is the consequence of satisfying the needs and desires of the consuming client.

However, besides the goal of satisfying needs and desires, there is also the tactic of creating and manipulating these needs and these desires. Since needs are uncountable and desire is unlimited, the possibilities for profit will be infinite. Capitalism does not educate one’s desires. Instead, it confuses them with needs, produces them, reproduces them and molds them artificially. This is why the consumer – a person with the power to acquire something – assumes and consumes what he or she desires, as well as what they do not desire, but firmly believe that they need!

In the capitalist world, the means of communication are governed by the law of maximum financial profit. They are therefore not neutral. Even though they may claim to be “independent,” they are connected to the political and economic establishment. Their profits come from advertising. The viewer, listener or reader has a value measured by the time he or she spends every day at the television, radio or reading newspapers and magazines. The owner of the respective means of communication sells to the advertiser a number of readers, listeners and viewers with the hours they spend doing this. In other words, the audiences are sold. This explains why the purpose of the program or publication is to captivate the largest possible audience for the longest possible time. The mass-media, especially television, are geared to keeping the spectator’s desire glued to the screen or speaker by means of carefully programmed stimulations. That is how their needs and desires are manipulated and converted into financial profit.

Within a monastic context, the education of our desires cannot ignore this manipulation of human desiring. Discernment is needed so that free, correct options can be made. On the other hand, the shift in many of our monasteries from manual work to commercial work obliges us to enter, in one way or another, into this world of capitalist advertising with its manipulation of human desires. Moreover, it is possible to change from being a manipulated subject into a manipulating one. It is not easy to discern the boundary line between what is financial and what is apostolic, between what is profitable for our industry and what is pastorally prudent. The business ethics of a monastery cannot use the same criteria as secular business ethics. This is a question that needs more reflection on our part, as some monks and nuns have already done, in order to avoid ambiguities which can undermine the foundations of any formation program and thus harm the transmission of the monastic charism to younger generations. It would be difficult to pray the Our Father, with its ordering of our desires and its norms for our affections, if at the same time we are involved in the manipulation of other peoples’ desires and affections.

The virtue of hope corresponds to the desire for happiness which God placed in our hearts when he created us. This hope expands the heart as it waits for eternal beatitude. Saint Augustine expressed it this way: The whole life of a good Christian is a holy desire, but you do not see what you desire. Yet by your desiring you expand the limits of your soul so that it will be wide open when the time of vision arrives. (On 1 John, tract.IV:6).

This hopeful desire, open as it is to eschatology, should be a very powerful force to help us live in persevering fidelity. Hope is not avoiding the world or launching ourselves heavenward. Rather is it a commitment in time and space to base one’s life on heaven and eternity. The Church walks and works on earth as a contemplative citizen of heaven. There is no doubt that, “For this we toil and struggle, because we have set our hope on the living God” (1 Tim 4:10).

The source of our hope is the presence of the risen Christ in the heart of the Church and in the heart of the world. This presence incites us to desire with groanings the glorious manifestation of the Lord and to work with eagerness for a better world.

One of the features of monastic life is doubtless its eschatological openness combined with its earthly realism based on desire and hope. The secular history of monasticism witnesses to this two-fold reality: the desire for God, with a deep longing for heaven, rooted in remarkably creative cultural achievements.

Some of our communities in the northwestern world are undergoing a deep trial of hope at the present time. Progressive aging, the lack of vocations, reduced numbers, diminished personal competence and an uncertain future certainly constitute a difficult trial to pass through. But they are also a fruitful opportunity, a chance to live a transparently evangelical monastic life stripped of additions which have now lost their meaning. It can be a life which has become freer and more flexible in its daily rhythm, more of a family home in its buildings and finances, centered on its essential search to meet the Lord in the communion of charity.

So that this can happen, it may be necessary to go beyond just patching and mending. We need to desire a new monastic life in a new heaven and a new earth, where new men and new women can be reborn. We need to choose what is most impossible, most difficult and most utopian. We need to be able to say, “Yes, but not yet.” We need to be changed into midwives of hope, who show that the mother wolf will suckle the lambs, that war will be an archaic word found in old dictionaries, that armed weapons will be museum pieces, that spoken promises will be more valid than a thousand documents signed by a notary public, that everyone will give up their power in order to serve, that the deaf will compose symphonies, that all human cities will be paved with green gardens, that the deserts will be filled with a divine presence, and monks and nuns will be the yeast of communion wherever there might still be a vestige of discord.

Keeping to our climate of utopia, we might dare to think that a monastic life renewed like this could prove to be attractive to the young people of today who, like those of yesterday, are searching for God. With even less hesitation, we can be sure that this monastic life would be an excellent way to communicate the charism of our Fathers to new generations.

In any case, if nothing like what I have described takes place, if we remain alone and faced with death despite our desires to live, we can believe that all peoples will remember us with gratitude and no one will forget that we were hopeful pilgrims in this life, who knew how to sing to heaven while building monastic community on earth.

Our monastic pilgrimage is fed by the “prayer of desire,” which lets us persevere at night in the desert. This simple prayer life is a cry of hope in a world searching for the meaning of its existence. God grant that we can all raise our eyes and unite our voices to sing: O true noontide, fullness of warmth and light, dwelling-place of the sun; noontime that blots out shadows, that dries up marshes, that banishes impure odors! O perpetual solstice, day that will never be over! O radiance of noon, with your springtime freshness, your summer charm, your autumn fruitfulness and your winter of restful feasting! (St. Bernard, SC, 33:6).

1) The feast of St. Ignatius of Antioch. In him we find all the fervor of the first post-apostolic generation. In his seven letters, written during his journey to Rome where he will suffer martyrdom, his heroic soul is passionate for Christ. He is the witness of a Church focused on the Eucharist, center of the Church’s unity and harmony.

2) Your vocation is holiness, the lively affirmation of the primacy of God and the transcendent destiny of the human person.

The search for the Absolute, the passionate longing toward sanctity, the desire to live a life in conformity to the Gospel – there is your essential task, the effort to pursue this day after day without respite. This is the core, the essence of the consecrated life, of your vocation.

3) This witness to the primacy of the spiritual, you bear it at a time when people are losing their way and many men and women seem disoriented and uncertain. Pope John Paul II spoke of Europe as a “silent apostasy”. The most remarkable fact today is no longer an aggressive negation of God, militant atheism, but rather apathy, indifference, the blasé acceptance of a pagan mentality and life style, enclosing oneself with purely earthly horizons.

On the other hand, thanks be to God, there is also a new spiritual restlessness, a passionate search for meaning, the will to leave this “materialistic prison” (Paul Claudel), the aspiration toward true freedom and joy.

4) In this situation of waiting for a new holy creation, a new Christian presence is emerging. The condition of this new presence is the interior renewal of the Church and first in this renewal are religious men and women. We must recover our spiritual strength with a more firm rootedness in Christ and revive the sense of responsibility for being witnesses and bearers of his word forever new. In short, to aspire ardently to holiness.

5) Holiness is to give oneself to God without reserve. It is to die to self every day to be reborn with more life and richness. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies, it bears much fruit”(Jn 12:24).

There it is: to consent to die in order to bear much fruit. What counts in the end if not to bear fruit in this short season that is our life! A fruit that will last. We do not have the right to ruin our life by egoism and laziness.

Holiness is to lose one’s life. “Whoever would save his/her life will lose it, but whoever would lose his/her life for my sake and the Gospel’s, will save it” (Mk 8:35).

We must dare to lose ourselves, to lose our foothold and let ourselves be carried away by the love of God, when so many things hold us back.

To do this there must be a kind of audacity. Jesus even spoke of violence: “The Kingdom of God has been subjected to violence and the violent are taking it by storm”(Mt 11:12).

To die like the grain of wheat, to die to oneself, to give oneself to God is basically to find one’s true self; it is to find one’s truth; it is to find one’s self. Also we can say, to become holy is to find one’s true image, beyond deceitful appearances and false illusions. It is to be in the truth. The most authentic men and women are the saints.

6) The way to get there is, according to the Cistercian tradition, cenobitic solitude.

In this perspective, the normal way to attain the ideal of Christian holiness is the cenobitic community (koinonia – life in community).

Also, the Trappist or Trappistine enjoys peace and solitude, without lacking the consolation of a loving and holy community, where nothing is preferred to Christ. You are surrounded by many brothers or sisters and nevertheless you do not live in the midst of turmoil.

What is important then, is “solitude of heart” (St. Bernard). This is the condition for an intimate exchange of love and joy with the Lord. It is in solitude of heart and interior silence that the soul listens to God.

This balance between solitude of heart and community life has its price: one must love one’s brothers/sisters and allow oneself to be loved by them, to be kind and friendly, supporting with great patience their physical and moral weaknesses (St. Benedict). For solitude of heart is totally different from the pride of the solitary who scorns the common life and encloses him/herself in singularity. The life of the one who does not love the brothers/sisters with whom one lives would not make sense. Now, the love of God cannot come to maturity if it is not nourished by and does not grow in the love of neighbor.

7) Who does not understand the timeliness of the Cistercian tradition as to prayer and mystical union with God?

Secularization can also penetrate our dialogue with God. Surely, religious communities continue to pray, some with much regularity, others with a certain relaxation. But it is often a prayer without silence. I am thinking of interior silence, of recollection, of the solitude of heart of St. Bernard.

Today, this silence is terribly threatened by the noise of the world, by the numerous obsessive images that penetrate our spirit through television, magazines, advertising, through the sounds transmitted by radio, the telephone and other recent means of social communication such as internet, etc.

Yes, silence, recollection and solitude of heart are necessary if we want to have a real relationship with God, if we want to truly listen to God’s Word. St. John of the Cross gave this counsel to one of his penitents: “The Father pronounces one Word which is the Son and it is always spoken in eternal silence, and in silence it is heard by the soul”.

8) In 1924, the young theologian Romano Guardini, recently named to the Catholic Weltanschauung Chair at the University of Berlin wrote: “If we remain on the level we are today, we will not resolve the problems of our civilization. These problems will not be resolved unless they are confronted by new people with a purer regard, a freer soul and a stronger hand. People who live at a deeper level of being, who act with soul energy, character, fidelity, sacrifice, spirit energy, unconditionally, with the energies of the Divine. Briefly, people who know how to pray, to contemplate, who interiorly stand before God” (Scritti politici, Opera Omnia VI, Morcelliana 2005, p. 159).

In reading these lines, who does not think of men like Benedict, Bernard, the Abbot de Rancé? These men confronted the problems of their time, bringing answers, because they knew how to pray; because they walked before God.

For the other 16 monks of Viaceli and for the 2 nuns of Algemesi, we are waiting for the judgment of the theologians, but it is certain that we will have to wait our turn, that is, quite awhile, before the Declaration of Martyrdom which corresponds to Beatification.

3. For Fr. Romano Bottegal, monk and hermit, I have received the vote of validity from the diocesan process with no trouble and I have worked two years with the recorder charged with causes for the Eastern Church. The Positio has just been printed. A few words of explanation for those who do not know what a Positio is: it is a critical study which, for example in the case of Fr. Romano, includes a Summary, which is the essential from depositions of witnesses in the 4 diocesan processes; then an Informatio super virtutibus, which proves in detail that the theological and cardinal virtues were lived to an extraordinary, heroic degree; a Relation of the Historical Commission that gathered the documentation and another Relation of the theological censor who examined his writings: his letters and notes; a Documented Biography, (15 Chapters long) which very carefully follows the life of Fr. Romano, based on the autobiographical and biographical proofs, documentary and iconographic testimonials. With this study we have been able to show the exceptional consistency and sanctity of Fr. Romano; we have also clarified certain difficult circumstances of his life and proven that the accusation of disobedience brought against him was not well founded.

St. Benedict says that the life of a monk ought always to have a Lenten character, but few have the strength for this. Fr. Romano was among these few who lived Lent and Easter. He felt called to go to the depths of the desert of humility, austerity and poverty in response to the gift of innocence which he had kept from baptism. After 18 years of exemplary cenobitic life, the great difficulties of his time and his community convinced him he could do this better in a solitary life in the shadow of his monastery. Providence did not allow it, perhaps to permit him to be stripped even more effectively, in xeniteia, among the Moslems, in a country at war. From a juridical and affective point of view, he remained a monk of Tre Fontane, and I think that this has been a gift of God for the Order, for he is an exceptional figure, a great mystic and at the same time, a very simple man, joyous and radiant. His whole life was praise of God and a transformation into God. A theological study of the Letters of Fr. Romano has been published in Italian by the San Paolo Editions and numerous articles in the Cistercian Revista, published at Casamari.

4. As for Blessed Rafael, there is an important development: since the month of April the diocese of Palencia has begun a process to witness a rather important cure – a presumed miracle – attributed to Rafael. During 2003-2004 we have gathered detailed documentation and given medical specialists preliminary reports which they judged positive. This has allowed us to open the diocesan process with a certain probability of success. It involves a 31 year old woman who was in her second pregnancy; her first one had gone well but the second one had caused problems from the beginning. In her 32^nd week, that is, before coming to term naturally, the doctors had to do an emergency cesarean because something was wrong with the fetus. The infant, a girl, was born very small (1.2 kilos or 2.6 pounds) but perfectly healthy. The mother, to the contrary, had everything a woman in her condition could have: eclampsia, hepatitis, ischemia, grave respiratory distress, cardiac arrest…A friend prayed and had others pray to Rafael (the sick woman who had already prayed to Rafael in other circumstances, could not do it at the time because she was in a coma…) and she improved quite rapidly without any consequences or damage to the brain. Now there are a few difficulties as usual in the cases of presumed miracles: while the gynecologists and the doctor in charge of resuscitation say that the situation was desperate and that the very rapid improvement is inexplicable scientifically, the doctor in intensive care thinks that - even though the situation was very serious – his medical intervention saved this woman from death. There have been exchanges between the doctors and the situation is in favor of the inexplicable, but we will see what the “Consulta medica” of the Congregation, which is composed of 5 specialists, will say. If the miracle is approved by the “Consulta”, by the theologians and the Congress of Cardinals and Bishops, Blessed Rafael can be canonized.

A few words on the difference between Beatification and Canonization: Beatification is the permission for a local cult of a servant of God because – after much research, investigation and inquiry – it can be affirmed with prudence that this man or woman is in heaven, that he/she lives in God and is blessed.

Canonization makes this local cult normative and canonical and extends it to the entire Church. In order for a Blessed to become a Saint, a second miracle is necessary and his/her renown must be universal or very widespread. It is not only the cardinal virtue of prudence that is at stake, but faith, and that implies the infallibility of the successor of Peter.

For what concerns Rafael, if the miraculous cure is approved, we can easily show that in Spain and Latin America he is very well known. He is less known in other countries because of language, but the community of San Isidro is doing all it can to make him know through translations and other initiatives.

For Br. Zacarias of La Oliva, who D. Francisco presented to you at the last Chapter, the Diocesan process is beginning, supported by the diocese of Pamplona. He was a lay brother from 1929 until the unification of 1965. If he is beatified we will be linked again with the former tradition of the Blessed lay brothers of Villers and so many others of whom our menologies speak.

Already last year we came to a total agreement and were able to begin the preliminary investigation for the cause, as the risk of losing the testimony of certain older witnesses is becoming more real from year to year. One reason for waiting, at least for our monks, was that at the time there was a lot of commotion in the French and Algerian press regarding the monks of Tibhirine because of the suicide of a journalist who was interested in the question and many declarations of President Bouteflika. It was not opportune – even while acting with much discretion – to increase the confusion of opinions. I had proposed going ahead temporarily without the group of Trappists, waiting for a little more clarity, but the other Congregations did not accept this. All 19 were martyrs of the Church of Algeria and they must not be separated.

This year we met twice at the White Fathers and chose as General Postulator, the Postulator of the Marist Brothers, who had been officially named by Bishop Tessier. The White Fathers insisted that the process take place in Algeria, with discretion but in total openness. We had another meeting with the Congregation, with the Prefect, who strongly reassured and encouraged us. Yes, even for the Congregation there is no doubt: we can have confidence ie the faith that has always been in our hearts, that all 19 are true martyrs, even if for the last ones there were probable manipulations or causes that are not those declared officially. The Cardinal and the reporters who habitually treat the complicated cases of martyrs, in which motivations are very mixed, were already a little aware: they asked us questions but encouraged us to proceed. In substance, they told us the following:

1. We must exclude no one from the list, but treat the cause in several lists (for example the first eleven, the Trappists, Claverie). The members of the diocesan tribunal can discern if it is more prudent for them to go to listen to certain witnesses instead of making the witnesses come to them.

2. Certainly, the martyrdom of our brothers and sisters should be inserted into the great martyrdom of a people. It should not be a provocation, but a proposal, very humble and discrete, of the values of love, friendship and fidelity for which these men and women lived and accepted to die. This proposal is very important for inter-religious dialogue: it is our duty to keep and diffuse the memory of the martyrs of Algeria.

3. If, on one hand, the sense of justice makes it totally legitimate and even requires that the perpetrators of the murders be sought out, and if these inquiries can help to clarify the witness of the martyrs, on the other hand we must distinguish well: in the midst of a process such as the one we wish to introduce, there are the martyrs and the values for which they gave their lives, and not the assassins.

Up to now, nothing official has been done; Bishop Tessier is coming to the end of his mandate and he can only take preliminary steps. All the Congregations have accepted the cause having taken votes in their General or Provincial Chapters. For us, given that it is not the Order who is the Petitioner of the cause, to take a vote is not necessary, our Constitutions do not ask for it. However, I am suggesting that we take it, as a material and moral support, since we have the most important group in number and renown. The formulation of the vote could be as follows:

In the event of an official introduction on the part of the Diocese of Algiers of the Cause of Declaration of the martyrdom of the 19 witnesses to the faith in Algeria – among whom are our 7 brothers of Atlas – would you accept that our Order takes its modest part in sharing the costs, and above all, in technical help?

The costs will be very limited since everyone wants to do things economically: we have suggested to the Marist brother who will be the General Postulator of the future cause, to establish a monetary fund from the beginning, but he didn’t want this, saying that for the first steps the costs are minimal. Regarding technical aid, I am thinking of the work in gathering the documentation, classifying it, evaluating it, and in the future, perhaps collaborating in the drafting of the Positio.

We have biographies of certain ones but nothing of a synthetic or complete nature, at least at the level of the Order, to give our observers, postulants and novices; nothing to put in our shops, guest houses and eventually in Catholic book stores…I have seen what Catholic Action is in the process of doing for its saints: a series of very well made booklets in a small case, with an intelligent portrayal, a chronology and a bibliography for those who want to know more. It costs 5 Euros! Why not copy this initiative in the principal languages of the Order, at least for our 4 Blesseds, for the Viaceli martyrs, Consolation, Liesse, Tibhirine, the Loeb family and Fr. Romano? I believe that we have a heritage to transmit to the young, and not just to keep in our libraries or in the hearts of the seniors. I repeat: it is just a proposal…

One more suggestion that someone gave me: a reporter, of whom I had asked explanations about the documentation to give to the Historical Commission for the martyrs of Tibhirine, said to me: “Do you pray to your martyrs?” “Yes”. “Do pray to them for vocations?” “No”. “Pray to them: the blood of martyrs is the semen christianorum…et monachorum; formerly Europe was Cistercian from Sweden to Cyprus. You still have many things to say to the Church, to Europe and the world”. I am simply offering the suggestion. As for me, I have found it good and have begun…Now, if there are any questions, I am ready to respond.

My purpose in this conference is to return to a subject I treated at the last General Chapters, that is, precarious or diminished communities. But I would like to do so from a different perspective: concretely, how these communities are called to bear witness to God in the present-day situation of the Church and the world.

There is no need to point out again the characteristics of these communities. Each person can judge whether my words apply to him or her, whether they are of some use, and whether they are helpful for growth in hope.

First, I will try briefly to identify the causes of the present-day precariousness of consecrated life. Second, we will ask ourselves what is the face of God to which we want to bear witness. Third, we will deal with monastic life as a witness to this God in the midst of the present crisis. I will conclude with an invitation to hope.

Causes of Our Existential and Spiritual Precariousness

Many authoritative voices are affirming that consecrated life in the Catholic Church and the North-western world are in a situation that can be characterized in such terms as seeking, crisis, chaos, winter, exodus, night. Without dramatization or delusion—even though with some reservations—we can accept this diagnosis and apply it to the particular form of consecrated life we call monasticism.

Concretely, then, what are the causes of our monastic night? In my own opinion, the cause is not that monastic life has lost its identity. As monastics we know very well who we are, even though in our actions we do not always live up to our word.

Nor is the cause a lack in our “theology of monastic life.” Even if we lacked such a theology, I do not think its absence would necessarily be a cause for worry or anxiety.

Although I fear to say so, I do not think monastic life today is particularly under attack by the demon of mediocrity. The virus of mediocrity makes itself felt in times of historical and cultural stability, which does not seem to be the case for our times. But this is not to say that we have no need to continue growing in human quality and spiritual depth.

Nor does it seem to me that we monks and nuns are suffering from a “dark night of faith,” granted that we are not always fervent and hopeful believers in the human desert of unbelief and indifference.

We could continue reviewing various causes, but in the end we would need to admit that, to some degree, a convergence of many causes is at work to bring about the phenomenon of our night, a more or less dark night, with its traits of precariousness, fragility, instability, diminution of personnel, lack of vocations, little perseverance, lack of capable officers, etc.

In spite of all these considerations, I would now like to dwell on one cause that I consider crucial: concretely, the impact on monastic life of the profound transformation taking place in the culture and societies of the Western and North Atlantic world and its sphere of influence.

In this larger context we can say that European society and culture is at a new crossroads in its millennial history. Rather than speak of an epoch of change, we can speak of a change of epoch. Agrarian culture is in the last of its death throes, and modern culture, now losing its hegemony, is coming into a new globalized technological cultural context that is dominated by the means of social communication and is as yet difficult to characterize. The following table, ingenuous in its simplification, illustrates what we are saying here:

It is difficult to characterize the transmutation we are undergoing and enjoying, even though there has been no lack of descriptions of it. On the other hand, it is easy to point out the impact of this phenomenon and its consequences for our monastic communities. The impact in question has occasioned a concrete reality we can baptize with the name “existential and spiritual precariousness.”

I would like to point out something important: this epochal transmutation affects the “First World” above all in its cultural dimension and the “third world” in its economic and social dimension. First World precariousness can reach out and embrace the misery of the Third World. Our monastic communities immersed in precariousness can place themselves in solidarity with the masses of those who are impoverished by the rapacity of the global economy.

In conclusion, then, what I have meant to say is the following. Many of our communities are going through a peculiar moment in their histories. This moment can be experienced as a tragedy, as an evil that will pass, or as a marvelous opportunity to renew ourselves and live to the full. Only in this latter case will we be able to bear witness to the God of Jesus Christ.

Let us begin by saying—by way of self-criticism—that there are many theologies that would appear to know everything about God, which proves their total ignorance, a lack of knowledge that would be wise if only it were admitted. Many conceptual and theological skyscrapers create distance from the living God and turn us into believers in our own knowledge.

At the heart of theological reflection is contemplation of the mystery of the triune God. We gain access to this mystery by contemplating the mystery of the incarnation of the Son of God: the mystery of becoming human and walking on toward his passion and death, the mystery that leads to the resurrection, and ascension to the glory of the Father, from where he will send his Spirit of truth to build up and enliven his Church. In this panorama theology must seek to understand God’s kenosis: his self-emptying and descent ending in glorious exaltation, his supreme humiliation that shows a self-giving love that asks for nothing in exchange.

Without falling into the temptation of a “washerwoman’s faith,” we can accept that the little people, the poor, the diminished, and the weak (even more so if they are believers) can know and bear witness to God with greater authenticity than the great, the rich, the powerful, and the strong (as devout as they might be).

Jesus’ question to his disciples Who do you say that I am? (Mk 8:27–33) continues to be repeated in the heart of each Christian and of each local community. This question also reechoes in hearts of monks and nuns, in every monastic community, and in monasticism in general as a universal Christian phenomenon.

Our witness of God consists precisely in the response we give to the Lord’s question Who do you say that I am? And if our witness is to be convincing and motivating, it needs to be backed up by one’s own life. What, concretely, will we say in answer to Jesus so that all might hear him from within the night we are immersed in? I propose the following answer: You are the only Son of a revolutionary God who raises up and brings down, who humiliates and exalts.

By way of illustration, we will consult a biblical text that is on our lips and in our hearts each day, the Song of Mary (Lk 1:47–55). We present it in a way that brings out its two-fold structure:

I. My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden.

For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me,

he has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree;

He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his posterity for ever.

Along with contemporary exegesis, we can affirm that this canticle comes from the Judeo-Christian community of Jerusalem. Its original source, as Saint Luke attests, could be Mary of Saint Joseph herself.

The general meaning of the text can be resumed in a few words: joy in God’s revolution and witness to his preference for the poor and simple. Or again in other words: thanksgiving and hymn of praise to God our Savior, who, through the great things realized in Mary, definitively overturns the relationships of grandeur and strength that rule the world. In the final analysis, it is the most tender (the Merciful One who looks upon the lowly) and strongest (the Mighty One who overturns relationships) canticle of the New Testament.

Our attention now turns to a pair of verses that exemplify the divine revolution as a paradigm of God’s action: he has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away.

The most serious problem with the mighty and powerful of this world is that, not only do they oppose the humble, but they also oppose the one and only Mighty One. The lowly and the poor, as opposed to the powerful, can be defined as “those lacking power.” Mary situates herself among these latter.

Let us note that, in this divine revolution sung by Mary, any kind of revenge is excluded: the poor and the humble do not take over the thrones of the strong and powerful! Not even Mary, whose Son was promised the throne of David (Lk 1:32), aspires to take over a throne (which belongs to her as the Queen Mother: cf. 1 Kings 2:19).

Wealth is a blessing (Dt 28:1–14), but it usually becomes a danger (Lk 18:24–27). The Bible denounces the rich (plutûntes = “plutocrats” = those who hold power by virtue of wealth; cf. Jm 5:1–6). The plutocrats will have nothing to do with the most miserable the poor (those who do not even have enough to eat) and forget God (Lk 14:15–24), for which reason God intervenes and reverses the situation. The story of the rich man and poor Lazarus is a moving illustration of this situation (Lk 16:19–31; cf. 1Sam 2:5).

In synthesis, from her own experience Mary sings about God’s usual way of acting. There is nothing spectacular about god’s revolutionary activity; the saving incarnation of his Son takes place in silence and hiddenness. Mary rejoices in the defeat of the rich and/or powerful in their pride, for only in this way can they receive God as Savior and Lord. Before God the effectiveness of the proud is turned into ineffectiveness in order to cure them of their pride (1Cor 1:25; Jm 1:9–11; 5:1–6). God fills the poor with the hope that he will be on their side and favor them: his providence moves other people to perceive their need and provide for it so that no one will be wanting (Acts 4:32–35). Moreover, he shows that there is greater happiness in giving than in receiving (Acts 20:35) and that power and authority are services (Lk 22:26–27).

There is no doubt that Jesus, Son of this revolutionary God and of Mary the Singer, was always in conformity with this divine way of acting (Lk 10:29–37; 13:30; 15:11-32; 16:19-31; 18:9-14; 24:10-11). In this sense, and in this sense alone, Jesus was a revolucionary: Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted (Lk14:11; 18:14; Mt23:12; cf. Ez.21:31). It is for this reason that the letter to the Philippians bears witness saying: [He] who was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men...he humbled himself...Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name... (Phil 2:6–11).

In the final analysis, the reversal of situations so characteristic of God’s revolutionary way of acting within history has as its end to show his preference for the poor and to free captives from the power of wealth so that we can all become true human beings, that is, sons and daughters of God and of all people. Our witness allows God to be known, not as a God of the dead but of the living, and as one who pours out his merciful love wherever he finds any kind of misery, miseries of the oppressors and miseries of the oppressed.

It remains now to see how we can translate and communicate our witness of the “revolutionary God” that casts down and raises up, humbles and exalts.

As I see it, Christological orthodoxy is of little value if it is not accompanied by gospel orthopraxis: solid and carefully reasoned convictions must be followed up with carefully discerned, flexible, and daring action. We know and bear witness to Christ to the degree that we give of ourselves. Consequently, the witness of our monastic life must be vital rather than verbal, by example rather than by words. In other words, we witness as we live.

But for this witness to be possible there are number of prerequisites, requirements that can be understood as operative convictions if we translate them into subjective terms:

-To embrace the darkness of the night as a marvelous opportunity to grow in faith, hope, and charity, the pillars of both mysticism and cenobitic communion.

-To avoid useless and superfluous complaints. Eighty percent of humanity is in a more precarious, poor, miserable, and dark situation than we are.

-To recall that a Rule is a measuring stick because it is straight and leads directly to the end proposed; literal observance diverts the course from the goal and twists the one observing.

-To mistrust intellectual, juridical, and institutional schemas that stifle the embers that are still burning beneath the ashes.

-Never to sacrifice persons for the sake of traditions and customs, structures and projects that have lost their meaning and validity for today.

-Not to confuse spirituality with ideology: the first is a bearer of life; the second is a mutilator of the living.

-To be in deep communion with the life of the universal and local Church and also with the joys and sorrows of men and women of today.

-To be critically open to dialogue between cultures and generations, recognizing that the young are also creators of culture.

-To dream communally of the utopia of a monastic life that is anchored to the foundational mystical experience of monasticism and that reaches out toward the encounter with Him who each day comes to meet us at the heart of the community.

-To ask the Spirit to make us capable of taking risks so that we can venture to take unknown paths and experience the great adventure of letting ourselves be led and carried by him.

-To have plenty of patience in the present in order to have an abundance of hope in the future.

-To enter the night school of the art of dying well, knowing that graduation will depend on the daytime art of living well.

-To have plenty of humor, especially when the smoke gathers, the eyes tear, the air runs out, the fire burns, and there comes the desire to cry for help.

If these conditions and convictions are a reality, even in part, we will already be bearing witness to God’s work among us from within the poverty of our own precariousness. These convictions, rather than coming from human choice are a gift of God and a clear sign of his presence and action.