This is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis

The Fatherhood Chronicles LXXXIII

On Monasticism

The late M. Scott Peck, who died of cancer this past weekend, said about marriage that it is a monastery of two. If one has read the Rule of St. Benedict, one immediately can agree.

Our parish, well before it became Orthodox, once had a vowed community of celibate brothers. And given that we are largely a convert parish comprised of many former evangelical Protestants, it is probably not too remarkable that one often hears some of the men pining after monasticism. In fact, it has been but a few weeks ago that during coffee hour one parish member and myself asserted that if (or perhaps when) our life circumstances were to change and we found ourselves widowed and without children to raise and care for we would hi ourselves to a monastery and seek admittance.

Speaking for myself, such comments are temptations to sheer hubristic delusions, however sincere the longing. Fatherhood itself is its own rule, and marriage a most holy askesis. What St. Benedict says to his brothers is equally applicable to my own "little monastery":

This, then, is the good zeal which monks must foster with fervent love: They should each try to be first to show respect to the other (Rom 12:10), supporting with the greatest patience one another's weaknesses of body or behavior, and earnestly competing in obedience to one another. No one is to pursue what he judges better for himself, but instead what he judges better for someone else. . . . Let them prefer nothing whatever to Christ, and may he bring us all together to everlasting life. (Rule 72:1-7, 11-12)

No, it does no good to long for something imaginary when the reality is right here and right now. Behold, now is the day of salvation, now is the time of repentance.

[T]he Lord waits for us daily to translate into actions, as we should, his holy teachings. Therefore our life span has been lengthened by way of a truce that we may amend our misdeeds. (Rule Prologue 35-36)

And each day there is much I have to amend. It is a most daunting task, an unbearably great and weighty calling to be made both a husband and a father. In the one I am called to image the incarnate God, to offer my life as a sacrifice so as to present my wife and daughters to the Lord, holy and blameless. In the other I am called to image Him Who is the fount of divinity and of all Life. It is an ineffably fearsome thing and an unbearable joy. I can not do it. But he can energize such a reality in me.

We must, then, prepare our hearts and bodies for the battle of holy obedience to his instructions. What is not possible to us by nature, lest us ask the Lord to supply by the help of his grace. (Rule Prologue 40-41)

Posted by Clifton at September 30, 2005 09:43 AM | TrackBack