The Cathedral of Leon, Spain
“Let your life be like an observance of Lent” — Saint Benedict
If you had one week to live, how would you spend it? We’ve all read stories of people who’ve gotten the bad news, thrown caution to the wind, and then frantically tried to cram a life-time of living into a few days.
That is the subject of one of my favorite movies: Last Holiday, starring Queen Latifah. In it she plays Georgia Byrd, a New Orleans sales clerk who had worked hard all her life and had time for little else — or so she thought. She looked forward to the day when everything would be perfect. But for now life was a constant grind — a book filled with unrealized dreams.
Christ in Majesty, Cathedral of Leon
Day after day she brushed aside the opportunities that came her way, until one day she got the dreadful news. She had only weeks to live. Hit hard by reality, she dropped everything to live the dream she had always put off.
There’s more to the movie than that, but it’s enough to say that her life was transformed. And that transformation happened just before she learns that her death-sentence was in fact a misdiagnosis. But by then it was too late to put life back in the box. She had come to realize a wonderful truth: you need not wait until you are at death’s door to start living.
In his Rule Saint Benedict asks the monks to keep death daily before their eyes, and years ago we stumbled on a very literal way of doing it. We had converted the attic into additional housing, and as we moved in we still lacked several pieces of furniture. Little by little we found them, until we were down to one last item: in the television room we had no stand on which to enshrine the sacred box. We were resigned to making something, when one monk remembered an extra wooden coffin in the carpenter shop. Sure enough, it worked beautifully, until the day when someone finally had need of it. But in the meantime, the more television we watched, the more we kept death daily before our eyes. What good monks we were in those days.
I imagine there are a lot of people who must think that the monastic life is some sort of vale of tears, or at least a trail of tedium. And Saint Benedict doesn’t help the cause when he writes that a monk’s life should be like a Lenten observance, on top of keeping death daily before our eyes. To the casual reader this sounds absolutely depressing, and to the average Christian it doesn’t seem like this particular path to God is terribly rewarding. But looks can be deceiving, especially when your observations are based on one or two sound bytes.
Stained Glass, Cathedral of Leon
You can better appreciate what Benedict means if you look at the larger context of the Rule. Saint Benedict is dead-set against depression and unhappiness, because his goal is union with God. And that union should happen here, and not just in the hereafter. Joy is what he’s after, and the monk should experience that joy now, and not years later, when he’s dead. At that point it’s just a little late to be making plans. And I would submit that this course of action applies to non-monks just as well as it does to monks.
If you’ve been putting off going to your own version of Disneyland, or if you’re waiting to tell your spouse or kids that you love them, don’t put it off until you’re practically dead. If you do it today, it can be a lot more fun, and you’ll have the strength to enjoy it. And if you’re not paying attention to life’s challenges each day, then you will likely leave an awful lot of things undone as you commence on your grand departure.
And that goes double for our observance of Lent. Lent is all about taking an inventory of our lives and where we are going — or not going. If we choose not to pursue our dreams, then that is sad, both for monks and for everybody else. Saint Benedict suggests that monks don’t get many second chances so they must live with awareness and intensity. They should keep their eyes and their minds open, and they should act as if today may be their last day. And if that were true for you, how would you want to spend it?
The Abbey Bell Banner, in warmer times
Personal notes
+Three images from the cathedral in Leon, Spain, illustrate this post. The cathedral had no monastic connection, but it occupies a fond niche in my own memory. Years ago, as a graduate student, I spent most of a summer in Leon doing research on my dissertation. The cathedral was by far the coolest building in town, in both senses of the word. Summers in Spain are hot, but the cathedral’s cool interior provided a wonderful haven each afternoon. Its stained glass is among the finest Spain.
+On March 7th I and Fr. Bob Koopmann, president of Saint John’s University, attended an alumni and friends picnic in Tucson, AZ. The University’s baseball team joined us, along with many parents who had flown in to see them win all of their spring training games. Arizona clearly agreed with the team.
+On March 9th Fr. Bob and I attended a luncheon for alumni and friends of Saint John’s in Scottsdale. The featured speaker, Joe Mucha, presented plans for the renovation and expansion of the athletic facilities at Saint John’s. Last week Joe was elected to the Board of Regents — soon to become the Board of Trustees. He was also elected vice-chair of the Board, and we wasted no time in putting him to work.
+On March 10th I gave a day of reflection for the members of the Order of Malta in the Seattle area.
+I am in the middle of Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, which for me has been fascinating reading. Like all of the rest of us, Job’s had his virtues and vices, but his seem to stand out in technicolor. There is something singularly unattractive about his early years in business, and the author minces no words in describing his faults. But at the same time Jobs had vision that changed the lives of his colleagues and most of the rest of us. I found myself speculating on what greater good he might have achieved had he added a smidgeon of humanitarian awareness to his obvious genius. But perhaps by the end of the book it will peep through. Appropriately, I am reading an elecronic version of the book.
+During Lent we adapt our reading in the Abbey to suit the season. At evening prayer we add to the regular reading from Scripture a second reading, which comes from a variety of ancient and modern authors. At table we turn to spiritual themes. In the refectory we are listening to “A Community Called Taize: A Story of Prayer, Worship and Reconciliation,” by Jason Santos. This revered Protestant monastery in France always makes for interesting reading, but the tone of the book may be a bit too elementary for many. It has received mixed reviews from the monks.
