“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as your self” (Luke 10:27).
To love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength is the first and most important commandment of Jesus Christ, as we clearly see in the gospels of St. Mark and St. Matthew (Mark 12:30; Matt. 22:36-37). This commandment should guide us in all we do, in our whole way of life; and the more radically we can follow it, the better. God will guide us in the ways we are to do this. Hence the Holy Spirit guides some to leave everything of this world to follow Christ with all their heart and life, as Jesus invited the rich young man (Matt. 19:21). This is the call to perfection, to a life of perfection in the service of God. All are called to a life of perfection and to leave everything for the sake of Jesus Christ, but some do so more radically than others, according to God’s guidance in their life.
The monastic life is the most radical way to observe the first and most important commandment. The ideal of the monastic life is to live for God alone and leave the world and its pleasures behind. Monks therefore live within an enclosure, separated from the world and its pleasures, noise, distractions, attractions, and temptations. They live in silence and simplicity, without television, radio, or movies, and they live a life of continual fasting—that is, without meat or delicacies, eating but one full meal per day. This is the ideal. We see it in the Desert Fathers, in the life of St. Anthony of Egypt, and in the lives of St. Bernard and St. Bruno, for example. This is an ideal which challenges monks today as well.
This is, furthermore, an ideal which can also inspire priests and religious. They live celibacy precisely because they want to live only for God in a radical way with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength. They do not want to divide their heart with the love of a human spouse. They should not divide their heart with other unnecessary worldly pleasures either. They should furthermore live a life of prayer and fasting in the service of the Lord. They should be separate from the world and not lost in it. “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world” (John 17:14). They should not turn on the television set the first thing in the morning to get the latest news and advertisements, thus profaning the most a sacred time of the day but rather should reverence the first hours of the morning, dedicating them to God in silence, prayer, contemplation, the divine office, lectio divina, the celebration of the mass, and quiet thanksgiving after Holy Communion. They should furthermore be recognizable by their manner of dress as distinct from the secular world, thus giving the much needed witness of their distinctive way of life for the inspiration of the world. And they should dedicate themselves to their neighbor in charity, offering their life in service.
EmoticonEmoticon