Monk: Hermit; thoughts on contemplation

The monastic life is a contemplative life; the ideal must be the vision of God. To see God face to face for eternity is the very life of the angels and the saints. For us here, in its best state and that of one progressed in contemplation, we live in a twilight; and that vision in this twilight is what a monk/hermit must strive for.

The monk is the man for whom God is a person: a person whom he can meet, whom he longs to meet, a person to meet whom he abandons everything else. "Thine eyes shall see the King in his beauty"'; this promise is the motive power behind the monk's whole effort, once it has led him to loosen his hold on all those earthly things which so delight others.

This mystical element is central to the monk/hermit's life, to be alone with the One, solus cum solo. The genuine monk, who is such not only in external observances but interiorly from the heart, is a man who understands that he has undertaken the ascent of Mount Tabor. To see the light of Christ at the summit of the climb must be the monk/hermits highest aspiration.

A sense of the holiness of God is critical to the monk/hermit. He must be permeated with the holiness of God and to desire to exist on holy ground. God is not just a comrade or the gifter of benefits. The monk/hermit knows that God is the Lord, the Pure, the Inaccessible, the Wholly Other. The meaning of the word "holy" or "sacred" is "that which is set apart." To know God as Other includes entering into the Divine darkness, to comprehend that which God is not.

One has to reach this total obscurity in order to even begin to have a mere inkling of what God is. To speak of Him, to speak of seeking Him, is literally not to know what one is saying so long as one has not grasped something of this "mysterium tremendum". But the unsurpassable beauty of Christianity, the unrivalled grandeur of the monastic vocation, are revealed when, having attained to this holy fear of which we can truly say that it is the sole beginning of true wisdom, we can see welling up there what is to become the river of overflowing joy. For the divine Mystery, which is the "Mysterium tremendum", the mystery which communicates to us a fear which is like to us no other fear and which has been revealed to us in the Gospel in its fullness, reveals to us at the same time that it is also the "Mysterium fascinosum", the mystery which is supremely desirable [fascinating?].

Grace is the gift of God.

John Cardinal Henry Newman's poem, "The Dream of Gerontius", demonstrates man's being caught afire with desire for that which will seemingly shatter him. It is this mysterious, double movement toward God which is both desirable yet fearsome. The Psalms express this movement: the longing to be in God's presence; the fear of His awesome holiness; the inexpressible joy in God.

The monk is precisely the Christian who has recognized in Christ the way, the truth, the life, and intends to act logically over this discovery, a discovery of such a nature that it should not leave any of those who have made it tepid or indifferent...The monk, like the seer of the Apocolypse, has seen a door opened in heaven...From now on, for the monk, everything resolves itself into passing through that door, into plunging into the vision which it opens on to the Invisible.

All this is tantamount to saying that the ascent of the Thabor of contemplation, and the entering into the luminous cloud where God dwells, and the vision of Christ transfigured, are all one.

The monk is one who lives not only "with" Christ, but according to the extraordinary Pauline expression, "in" Christ.

This does not necessitate undergoing a mystical experience, although in another way, the mystical experience is what constitutes, for a monk/hermit, the daily existence. St. Gregory the Great wrote of contemplation as the natural environment o fhte monk/hermit:

There is in contemplation a great effort of the mind, when it rises to heavenly things, when it fixes its attention on spiritual things, when it strives to pass beyond all that is visible, when it withdraws into itself in order that it may be expanded. And sometimes, indeed, it is carried away and takes its flight above the darkness of its stubborn blindness, so that it reaches out in some measure to the infinite light, furtively and in an imperfect manner. But, in spite of all, immediately baffled, it returns to itself, and sighing, re-enters the darkness of its blindness, as it goes out into this light into which it passed trembling. [Homilies on Ezekiel II, 11.12 and ff.]

Jesus Christ, in whom God reveals himself in giving himself, is the sole Bridegroom of an unique Bride, the Church. The Church does not seek for the truth and knowledge of God. She has them...The individual Christian life, par excellence, that is monastic life, is then only an insertion by faith, the prayer of faith, and the reception of the mysteries of faith, into this life of the Church. It is by that and by that alone that such a life will enter into the heritage of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge which are hidden (and revealed) in Christ Jesus.

As a contemplative, the monk has in no sense to be a discoverer of new continents, nor, consequently, the subject of unheard-of or exceptional experiences. He has only to allow himself to be wholly absorbed by the realities of faith which were all set before him at the beginning of his believing, but which a whole life of detachment and prayer will not be too much to enable him to penetrate and in some measure to be penetrated by them.

And, the Mass is central to the reality of this mystery. Through the Mass we share in the mystery of redemption, through Communion we communicate in the Redeemer himself. And in the sacred psalmody, Christ the eternal Word of God, himself speaks in us to God; the Spirit who intercedes in us with unutterable groanings....

The monk/hermit then can say, "I live, not now I, but Christ liveth in me".