The Scandal Of The Monastic Life

[frateumile]

It’s sad to ascertain as all in the monastic life currently is adapted to modernity, to the consumerism, Capitalism: dresses, buildings, furniture, new technologies, continuous mitigations to the ancient rules. The monastic life has fear to testify the scandal of the poverty, of the austerity of the continuous penance and the prayer. The monastic life would have to propose an ancient model of life returning to its tradition a model that respects the nature and the animals and that it is only made of the essential thing or of the deprivation of the essential thing for sacrifice spirit, of expiation and penance. The scandal that saint Francis has represented for his age not is never more reproduced. We are therefore pusillanimous person that we do not know more to scandalize our brothers and our sisters with our hidden life of separation from the world, prayer and renunciation to the comforts and flatteries of the world more and more to the drift and corrupt.

Frate Umile

[Starets]

I am not sure I agree with you. There are many monasteries here in north america that combine the old traditions wiht the new technologies, buildings, and etc. The Rule of St. Benedict does allow for artisans to ply their trade as long as they don't get puffed up or greedy.

[ovenbird03]

Not all monastic life is based on complete material poverty and rejection of technology. Incorporating new technology into evangelism and other work is an important part of some orders, even monastic ones.

I think you may want to be careful that you do not romanticize the monastic tradition.

[cathoholic_anonymous]

[quote name='Blessed Imelda Pray for Us' post='1434884' date='Dec 16 2007, 05:49 PM']I think you may want to be careful that you do not romanticize the monastic tradition.[/quote]

I agree. I have a friend who wanted to enter a contemplative community, and who was deeply drawn to the most traditional Poor Clare monastery that she could find. She urged me to consider this particular monastery over the two Carmels that I was looking at, as the nuns wore wimples and rose to pray at 1.00am. These were her chief reasons for recommending the place to me. I was disturbed. She found it very tough going in that convent - for her 'the traditional monastic life' was all about flowing habits and enraptured silence, and she got disillusioned very quickly when she found that the reality didn't match her expectations.

Marcia Berstein's book [i]Nuns[/i] mentions an idealistic young woman who entered a Welsh Carmel in the 1940s and was distraught to find the nuns sitting down to a hearty supper when she arrived. She had expected to live off nothing but the Communion host. I think we can be guilty of the same kind of romanticism when thinking about the religious life, even if we don't take it to that extreme. Nuns and monks are human beings. They don't live on another planet altogether. "We are very ordinary women and ours is a very ordinary life," cautions the website of Quidenham Carmel. That in itself can be a cross for postulants, who want something extra special.

[frateumile]

I do not find nothing of romantic in the example of penances and deprivations that many saint monks and many saint nuns have left like warning to us of our weakness . All the great reformers of the religious orders at first have restored more hard and strict their rule. I think that the rules of our religious orders today are very laxist and corrupts. The young people are not more attracted from the religious life because a normal daily life is much harder living, than living in a convent that guarantees comfort and well-being that a worker today does not have. If the religious life represented an authentic sacrifice, an authentic imitation of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ the vocations would be multiplied. Instead who embraces the religious life has assured food, comfortable beds, warm garments, heaters, air conditioners, car, televisions, moneies, etc. Hypocritical it’s to say that they belong to the order and not to the single ones, when the single ones of it gain all the advantages. Sure I know well that the radicalism scares the modest and lukewarm minds, those that today would be scared if there were a Christ still crucified or do not perceive of the many crucified siblings in the pain, disease and misery . By now the world has corrupt to us and to return to think free from its conditionings and from our daily habits it is much difficult. It is called: metanoia.

Frate Umile

[Starets]

[quote name='frateumile' post='1434902' date='Dec 16 2007, 02:05 PM']I do not find nothing of romantic in the example of penances and deprivations that many saint monks and many saint nuns have left like warning to us of our weakness . All the great reformers of the religious orders at first have restored more hard and strict their rule. I think that the rules of our religious orders today are very laxist and corrupts. The young people are not more attracted from the religious life because a normal daily life is much harder living, than living in a convent that guarantees comfort and well-being that a worker today does not have. If the religious life represented an authentic sacrifice, an authentic imitation of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ the vocations would be multiplied. Instead who embraces the religious life has assured food, comfortable beds, warm garments, heaters, air conditioners, car, televisions, moneies, etc. Hypocritical it’s to say that they belong to the order and not to the single ones, when the single ones of it gain all the advantages. Sure I know well that the radicalism scares the modest and lukewarm minds, those that today would be scared if there were a Christ still crucified or do not perceive of the many crucified siblings in the pain, disease and misery . By now the world has corrupt to us and to return to think free from its conditionings and from our daily habits it is much difficult. It is called: metanoia.

Frate Umile[/quote]

Some of those things have been part of the monastic life for generations. And I have no doubts that some have joined monastic life for exactly those assurances. The monastery I plan on joining has heating, but no air conditioning. And no electricity in the guest house. There's a whole one television, and its only on for Movie Night once a month or so. There are a couple cars as well, but then again its 30 miles from the nearest town. Should they walk there and back for groceries? There is nothing hypocritical in saying that it belongs to the monastery or the order. That is simple truth. I see no reason to condemn modern monastics for being lukewarm or modemst because they are not the early Desert Fathers and do not live that life.

[stlmom]

Hosea 6:6 reads, "For it is mercy I desire, not sacrifice, and knowledge of God rather than holocausts".
I would be careful to not put external vicarious self -imposed hardships and penances ahead of conversion of heart.
Simplicity of lifestyle is good for all of us who wish to be close to God, and certainly religious life should set an example of contentment with what God provides in common life. Liviing in community can be penance enough, you don't have to pile on much else, unless your object is to make people take notice of your sacrifice, which is a bit prideful, eh? I think Jesus had a bit more to say about those who make their sacrifices obvious to onlookers.
Some religious do live better than the rest of us. God will take note of that too. It doesn't bother me.

[frateumile]

You do not want to understand blind people as you are. That God has mercy of you!

Frate Umile

[cathoholic_anonymous]

[quote name='stlmom' post='1434926' date='Dec 16 2007, 08:22 PM']Hosea 6:6 reads, "For it is mercy I desire, not sacrifice, and knowledge of God rather than holocausts".
I would be careful to not put external vicarious self -imposed hardships and penances ahead of conversion of heart.[/quote]

Yes! Saint Therese was treated with scepticism by some members of her community (could Sister Therese of the Child Jesus [i]really[/i] be as holy as some people made out?) because she refused to take part in the more austere penances favoured by the nuns at that Carmel. She would not hit herself, for example, even though self-flagellation was a widely accepted custom of the time. Yet could anybody call St Therese lukewarm or modernist in her thinking? She loved Jesus with everything she had, and she knew that He loved her. Secure in this knowledge, she saw no reason to put on a show of being holy according to the other nuns' expectations of her. So she didn't participate in all their penances.

[quote name='frateumile' post='1434973' date='Dec 16 2007, 09:34 PM']You do not want to understand blind people as you are. That God has mercy of you!

Frate Umile[/quote]

I may be blind, but the Holy Spirit is a good guide-dog. Be careful with how you dismiss people, Frate Umile. Jesus' reference to logs and specks comes to mind here.

[Starets]

Disagreeing with frateumile is not necessarily the same as being blind. Do grasp that. For your own sake.

[ovenbird03]

""If the religious life represented an authentic sacrifice, an authentic imitation of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ the vocations would be multiplied.""

Penance (as you are thinking of it), fasting, and austere life are not the only ''authentic sacrifices''. Often people can become fond of certain penances through pride rather than pure motivation. Charity and moderation can be more of a sacrifice for people who desire such austere practices. For someone who desired to live in a permenant state of abstinence, it would be a greater sacrifice, and surely more pleasing to the Lord, to joyfully and thankfully accept a gift of meat every day than to abstain from meat.

Often in my own life I have to make sure that my motivation for devotions is because it is how I feel God is asking me to serve Him or praise Him and not my own prideful idea of how I want to serve or praise Him.

[Mary-Kathryn]

[quote name='frateumile' post='1434902' date='Dec 16 2007, 02:05 PM']I do not find nothing of romantic in the example of penances and deprivations that many saint monks and many saint nuns have left like warning to us of our weakness . All the great reformers of the religious orders at first have restored more hard and strict their rule. I think that the rules of our religious orders today are very laxist and corrupts. The young people are not more attracted from the religious life because a normal daily life is much harder living, than living in a convent that guarantees comfort and well-being that a worker today does not have. If the religious life represented an authentic sacrifice, an authentic imitation of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ the vocations would be multiplied. Instead who embraces the religious life has assured food, comfortable beds, warm garments, heaters, air conditioners, car, televisions, moneies, etc. Hypocritical it’s to say that they belong to the order and not to the single ones, when the single ones of it gain all the advantages. Sure I know well that the radicalism scares the modest and lukewarm minds, those that today would be scared if there were a Christ still crucified or do not perceive of the many crucified siblings in the pain, disease and misery . By now the world has corrupt to us and to return to think free from its conditionings and from our daily habits it is much difficult. It is called: metanoia.

Frate Umile[/quote]


Let me tell you a story I heard some years ago from a person in religious life. There was a young man set to join the Carthusians. Someone mentioned how exciting and wonderful that must be for him. The young man became indignant. Oh no, he said, this is about penance, fasting, and mortification!

He lasted about three weeks

You can do all the disciplines in the world and have it mean nothing. Yet if you give God one moment of giving and give with total joy, then you have given everything. That young man had to learn this lesson. It's a life lesson I think we all have to learn.

[frateumile]

I think that we must disitinguish between vocation and one vocation to the monastic life. One case is the vocation for the active religious life, other case is the vocation for the monastic and contemplative life to which God calls only some elect spirits, those spirits that are fascinated from the madness of the cross.

Frate Umile

[brendan1104]

Come sono il nipote di immigranti siciliani, risponderò nell'italiano (a frate umile).

È vero che Gesu ci dice nel vangelo di Luca (13:3) ciò a meno che infliggiamo una penitenza, periremo.

Le tradizioni lunghe di astinenza perpetua, i digiuni, portando la disciplina, ecc. sono tutta la dogana onorata di ordini come i carmelitani scalzi e capuccini. Soltanto alloggia sfortunatamente come quelli con le liturgie e vita tradizionali (Clark, Wyoming per i monaci e Valparaiso, Nebraska, USA per le suore) e Morgon, Francia trattiene tuttavia questi. Nessuno i dubbi questi sono importanti, o buoni, o utili.

Comunque, che dice tutti gli ordini, le congregazioni, le comunità o le case sono chiamate a questi?

Ricordare che il nostro Signore non vuole sempre la mortificazione esteriore (pesante), ma la mortificazione spesso interna. San. Giovanni della Croce, dottore della chiesa, sembra dare l'orgoglio di luogo agli atti interni, e descrive questo nella sua dottrina celeste.

Lasciare quelli che sono chiamato a un realmente rude, la risposta di vita di penitential alla vocazione e praticare questo. Quelli che non sono, fa non. Potere noi tutti impariamo a amare il Signore nella propria maniera, secondo il nostro carisma della regola o secondo le pratiche approvati dal nostro direttore spirituale.

[Ora et Labora]

I don't know if it's just me or not, but, I have heard that the young people are entering more Traditional, solid convents and monasteries, instead of the questionable orders that are actually dying today!

[ovenbird03]

I don't think the original poster is talking about the questionable orders.

And, to the OP, I know what you are speaking of. I believe I have a monastic vocation and have applied for postulancy to the Dominican Nuns in Summit. I lived with them for three weeks this summer and it really broke all the misconceptions I had about monastic life.

A person could be entirely devoted and passionate about the Cross...but they do not choose how to serve God, God chooses. And this is even within a monastic vocation. We must love Christ more than we love penance and we must enter monastic life because of our love for Christ, not a love for penance.

[frateumile]

I beg God to give us many vocations for a traditional monastic life. "Penance or Hell" there was writ in Padre Pio cell!

[url="http://www.franciscan-archive.org/sosm/Flyer.pdf"]http://www.franciscan-archive.org/sosm/Flyer.pdf[/url]

[cathoholic_anonymous]

Forgive me if I have misunderstood you, but you seem to be suggesting that the apostolic religious life is a soft option compared to the monastic life. That isn't true. It takes just as much courage and faith and endurance to live as an active sister or brother as it takes to live in the cloister. Each situation presents its own challenges, and just because apostolic religious have more contact with 'the world' as we know it doesn't mean that they have it easy or that their sacrifice isn't big enough. Sister Wendy Beckett, a hermit living in the wooded grounds of a Carmelite monastery in England, used to be a teacher with the Sisters of Notre Dame. She says that the life she led as an active sister was much more difficult and demanding for her personally than her current life as a hermit, which is very austere. (Sister Wendy's daily diet consists of raw vegetables, wholemeal bread, water, and a little milk, and she's been subsisting off this for years.)

Penance [i]is[/i] essential, yes, but it's never about depriving yourself of food, making yourself continually cold, and not owning anything. It's about coming to a deeper knowledge of God, and that's something that can't be measured by externals.

[frateumile]

In order to know God it must humiliate and mortify oneself, to cancel the own will and to punish our body source of every temptation and sin. The habit to the modern world, to its illusions and vanity does to think these words us of the heresies! Nevertheless this is the road that the Saints has taught to us, this is the road that the Child has taught to us who in these days is born in order to die on the cross in order to save us from our sinful nature.

Frate Umile

[alicemary]

I really wish this thread would end.
My God is a God of love. He does not require me to mortify myself and punish myself to find Him. Thankfully thinking like this went out years ago and is practiced only by a few. This is not the way to find salvation.
I find some of your thoughts very distrubing and I certainly wonder you intend...not to edify that is for sure.