The Abbot's Homily at the Simple Profession of Br Juan Edgar

Br Juan Edgar’s First Profession

Dear Br Juan Edgar, all of us are gathered here this morning for your First Profession. We had hoped to be back in the abbey church by now, but, as you have seen, British workers are a wee bit slower than their Peruvian counterparts: they knock off by four in the afternoon and don’t appear on Saturdays. So things take a long time and cost far too much.

Even so, the monastic refectory isn’t a bad place for you to make your Profession. At least it brings home to us the important fact that monastic vows refer to the whole of one’s life and that no aspect of our lives can be excluded from the vows we make the day of our profession. Now traditionally in monastic architecture, the refectory is the reflection of the church: we sit in the same order as in choir, we even take our meals in a liturgical way, prayer and reading being the main condiments of the food we eat.

In professing monastic vows, the vows St Benedict describes in the Holy Rule, we commit our whole life to Christ in a specific monastic community. St Benedict tells us that from the day of our profession, not even our body is our own. We give everything away and our whole being belongs to God and to the community of brothers among whom we work and pray as we strive ahead towards the heavenly Kingdom, our hearts overflowing with love and joy. Monks are chaste but not really celibate: we are not single like hermits but live in community.

St Benedict uses many images for a monastery, mostly taken from the Bible, in his “little rule for beginners”. It is a School for the Lord’s Service, the word school being used both in the sense of a place of learning and in the sense of a team of players or singers. Using the powerful arms of obedience we are like soldiers setting out for war and battling against the forces of evil: the monastery is like an army. Some monasteries, though not Belmont, even look like an army barracks. In that the Abbot is called to be the shepherd of his flock, the monastery is like a farm. All abbots should keep border collies! St Benedict tells him that he has been given the care of weak and sickly men, of men who are sinners like himself, so a monastery is also like a hospital where the infirm are healed. He is also given Christ’s name, Abba, and holds the place of Christ in the Community, so the monastic community is like a family. In this we reflect the early Church in Jerusalem and the very first Christian community. The key word in the Rule is coenobitic. We are that strong kind of monk, coenobites, who live under a Rule and an Abbot and who follow the Gospel as guide and teacher.

One of the biblical images St Benedict does not use to describe his monastery is the one found in today’s Gospel, a net. “The Kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea, which collects fish of every kind.” That’s a good way of describing a monastic community, for the Abbot, taking the place of Christ, is also a fisher of men. Some fish are easily caught, others less so and some just slip away: not even a strong net can hang on to them. But we monks are also fish of every kind, no two of us are the same, we don’t always get on, at times we tend to flap around a bit, and yet each one of us has been caught by Christ and it is his will that we should live in community and together come to be part of his Body, which is the Church. The Belmont Community is rich in fish of every kind and your presence among us makes the catch even richer.

A monastery, then, is an image, an icon, of the Church or, in the words of the Second Vatican Council, a domestic Church. As monks we are aware that it is Christ who has called us to the monastic life, Christ who called us to be monks of Belmont and only Christ who can make us what he truly wants us to be. So, Br Juan Edgar, as you take your First Vows today, we pray that, in the depths of your heart, you will always be open to the saving work of Christ, the true Opus Dei. We pray that you will always allow the Holy Spirit to form and transform you and that you, together with all your brethren, will one day come rejoicing to our heavenly home, whither we run together, placing all our hope and trust in God. As we go forward with our eyes ever fixed upon Jesus, may we all find true happiness and fulfilment on the journey, the pilgrimage we make together as monks of Belmont and the Incarnation. May we remain faithful to our calling and so, our hearts filled with gratitude and enthusiasm, keep firmly to the way that God has chosen for us and that St Benedict writes about so eloquently in the Holy Rule.

We also pray for your parents and all the members of your family. May they come to appreciate the beauty of your life and vocation and may you support them always with your prayers. Amen

Being Fully Alive

Clothing Conference 28th June 2009
We all know that today is really the feast of St Irenaeus, a native of Smyrna, whose bishop, Polycarp, he had heard preach when a young man. Now Polycarp had been a disciple of St John the Apostle. So Irenaeus is one of those key links with the apostolic age. He studied in Rome, became a priest at Lyons and eventually bishop of that see for twenty three years until his death in the year 200. His most famous writing is the Treatise “Against the Heresies.” In it he wrote, “For the glory of God is a human being fully alive, and the life of humanity consists in the vision of God.” That short sentence describes in a nutshell what the Christian faith and the Christian life are all about. It is also the best description I know of the monastic life and vocation.

I have often thought it would be a good idea to write, I mean for someone else to write, a catechism of the monastic life in question and answer from. Of what does the call to the monastic life consist? What does it take to be a monk? What is the goal and how is this achieved? In addition to St Benedict, you could throw in bits of Cassian and Basil, and other fathers of the Church, such as Cyprian, Jerome and Bede. You could bring it up to date with Anselm and Aelred, with Augustine Baker and John Chapman. There’s so much to read, so much to learn and so much to assimilate and put into practice. That’s why silence, reading and study are so essential to the formation and on-going life of a monk and why you, Stanislaus and Jonathan, will spend so much time over the next year reading the monastic fathers. Chose one of them to be your special adoptive father, get to know his words and thoughts really well and stick close to him throughout your monastic life. He will be your patron, your godfather, and you will be a real son to him.
But to return to Irenaeus: “the glory of God is a man fully alive and the life of man consists in the vision of God.” God has called you to the monastic life, specifically to be monks of Belmont, in order to share his glory with you, in order that you might become fully alive. That is the purpose, the goal and the meaning of the monastic life. The vows, the prayer, the work, the reading and the study, the community life, with all its sacrifices, joys and sorrows, should lead you under the guidance of the Gospel, living as you do under a Rule and an abbot, to just one thing and that is to become truly and fully alive, real, human. I am convinced that this is what the monastic life is all about: becoming whole again, putting together all the pieces of the jigsaw. As we come to know God more and more, as we come to experience his love and forgiveness, his patience and understanding, so the chaos and muddle that each one of us is under the influence of original and actual sin, begin to come together, make sense and function under the all-seeing eye of God.

St Benedict invites us to remember that God is always present, even when we feel his absence most. He is here in our midst and he is here deep inside each one of us. And he sees everything. He alone knows my inmost thoughts, desires and needs and he is far more aware of my weaknesses, failures and sins, not to mention my good points, than I am. But in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, God has taken us to himself, the good and the bad, the lot, and his one desire is that we should live, that we should become fully alive, that we should live in him as he already lives in us. For us simply to recognise the divine life within us is to become fully alive, truly sons of the Father in the divine Son and through the Holy Spirit. Irenaeus continues, ”Thus if the revelation of God in this world gives life to every living thing, how much more will the revelation of the Father by the Word give life to those who see God.”

The monastic life should be that lifting of the veil which gradually allows us to see God in all things, in all people, in every situation and, ultimately, in himself. No matter how “active” our life at Belmont turns out to be at times, our one desire and ultimate goal remains unchanged: simply to see God. The contemplative life lies and remains at the heart of a monastic vocation. In the long course of monastic history, Christian monks and nuns have accomplished great things in the missionary activity of the Church as well as in the world of science, art, music, literature, architecture, farming and education. All that is good and to be recognised and celebrated, but what value would all those good works have were they not the fruit of prayer and contemplation, the fruit of faith? And how would they have been accomplished without the grace of perseverance and fidelity to the traditional monastic vows of obedience, conversation morum and stability?

I’ll end with just a word of advice. I remember on the night before going up to university my father said to me, “Now be good and remember what your mother and I have taught you, but if you can’t be good, then at least be careful.” He was certainly right about remembering those Christian virtues I had been taught at home. I realise now how important they are. But my advice to you is this, “Stanislaus and Jonathan, be good, keep to the Rule and the Constitutions, but if you can’t be good, at least be humble.”
It is a great pleasure to clothe you both in the habit of our Congregation. I pray that you may live in such a way as to die in it one day. May you come to find God, know him and love him in the monastic life. Amen.