A Serpent in the Second Garden
The Plight of Cloistered, Contemplative,
and Consecrated
Nuns
The Prologue:
Some
still hear the ancient whisper, even
in the lingering, the serpentine shadows
of their lengthening years. And to those
who give heed in a withering night, it deceives,
even now in the end as it did in the beginning
– and this is the lie:
“The Second Garden,
the Cloister Wall, is a
dangerous fiction as was
the first promise of God,
seducing men and women to
believe that the call to
prayer and not the clarion
to social reform is the
remedy of the world; that
strident voices, and not
sacrificial lives, redeem
the world of its evil; that
unbridled self-assertion,
not humility and silence,
assuage the suffering of
man.
Tear down the Garden
walls! Pull down the Cloister
and make the Vineyard of
God a brothel of men; predate
the Vine and prepare the
winepress. Self-fulfillment
… not sacrifice! This is
what the world craves for,
although it is not what
the world needs. Like Joseph
in the desert, let the dreamers
all die. It is the workers
who have built the great
marvels in Egypt and at
so paltry a price as slavery
to sin!”
Of what possible use
are these dreamers of prayers?
What have they accorded
you? Better to prevail in
suits on the courts of men,
than in prayers before the
Courts of God.
Poverty? It is your
curse. Chastity? It is your
bane. Obedience? It is your
abasement!”
|
In an age of unbridled self-esteem and self-assertion,
there is no room for Cloisters that hem
in the hubris of women and the madness of
men.
… or is there?
We have heard the voice of the world and
the worldly, and darker voices still … but
what is your voice? What say you?
Who and what are these women to you, to
the Church, to the world?
Before you answer, we strongly encourage
you carefully consider the following.
It is not the voice of the world
… but the immutable voice of Holy Mother
Church herself:
The following excerpts come from “Verbi
Sponsa, Instruction on the Contemplative
Life and on the Enclosure of Nuns”
issued on 13 May 1999, and poignantly, beautifully,
describe the value, the contribution, of
women's lives lived contemplatively in Christ.
What you are about to read is not just a
document; it is a Divine summons, a summons
calling us ... each of us ... to awaken
to a realization of the ways that our lives
have been touched by simple, humble, Consecrated
and Cloistered Nuns throughout the world.
“Verbi
Sponsa”
Instruction
on the Contemplative Life and on the
Enclosure of Nuns
-
“The Church's journey is entrusted to
the loving heart and praying hands of
cloistered nuns.” (Verbi
Sponsa 1.4)
-
“The monastery is the place guarded
by God (cf. Zach 2:9); it is the dwelling-place
of his unique presence, like the Tent
of Meeting where he is met day after
day, where the thrice-Holy God fills
the entire space and is recognized and
honoured as the only Lord. 1.7
-
“With the tenderness of Christ”, (52)
nuns bear in their hearts the sufferings
and anxieties of all those who seek
their help, and indeed of all men and
women.” 1.7
-
“The vital renewal of monasteries
is essentially linked to the authenticity
of the search for God.” 2.9
-
“The Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation
Vita Consecrata presents the
vocation and mission of cloistered nuns
as “a sign of the exclusive union of
the Church as Bride with her Lord, whom
she loves above all things”, (1) showing
how they are a unique grace and precious
gift within the mystery of the Church's
holiness.”
-
“The ancient spiritual tradition of
the Church, taken up by the Second Vatican
Council, explicitly connects the contemplative
life to the prayer of Jesus “on the
mountain”, (11) or solitary place not
accessible to all but only to those
whom he calls to be with him, apart
from the others” (cf. Mt 17:1-9; Lk
6:12-13; Mk 6:30-31; 2 Pt 1:16-18).
-
“Nuns, in living the whole of their
life as “hidden with Christ in God”
(Col 3:3), realize in a supreme way
the contemplative vocation of the entire
Christian people, (6) and thus they
become a luminous sign of the Kingdom
of God (cf. Rom 14:17), “glory of the
Church and wellspring of heavenly graces”.
(7)
-
“Nuns moreover, by their very nature
as women, show forth more powerfully
the mystery of the Church as “the Spotless
Bride of the Spotless Lamb” ... was
it not in a woman, the Virgin Mary,
that the heavenly mystery of the Church
was accomplished?” (22)
-
“By means of the cloister, nuns embody
the exodus from the world in order to
encounter God in the solitude of “cloistered
desert”, a desert which includes inner
solitude, the trials of the spirit and
the daily toil of life in community
(cf. Eph 4:15-16), as the Bride's sharing
in the solitude of Jesus in Gethsemane
and in his redemptive suffering on the
Cross” (cf. Gal 6:14).
-
“Through prayer, especially the celebration
of the liturgy, and their daily self-offering,
they intercede for the whole people
of God and unite themselves to
Jesus Christ's thanksgiving to the Father”
(cf. 2 Cor 1:20; Eph 5:19-20).
-
“Therefore
the contemplative life is the nun's
particular way of being the
Church, of building
the communion of the Church, of fulfilling
a mission for the good of the whole
Church. (33) Cloistered contemplatives
therefore are not asked to be involved
in new forms of active presence, but
to remain at the wellspring of Trinitarian
communion,
dwelling at the very heart of the
Church.” (34) V.S.
1.6
-
“By force of
their vocation, which sets them at the
heart of the Church,
nuns undertake in a special way to have
“the mind of the Church (sentire cum
Ecclesia)”, with sincere adherence to
the Magisterium and unreserved obedience
to the Pope.” 1.6
-
“Their life thus becomes a mysterious
source of apostolic fruitfulness (39)
and blessing for the Christian community
and for the whole world.” 1.7
-
“The specific contribution of nuns to
evangelization, to ecumenism, to the
growth of the Kingdom of God in the
different cultures, is eminently spiritual.
It is the soul and leaven of apostolic
ventures, leaving the practical implementation
of them to those whose vocation it is”
(44) 1.7
-
“And since those who become the
absolute property of God become God's
gift to all, the life of nuns “is truly
a gift set at the heart of the mystery
of ecclesial communion ...”
1.7
-
“Nuns are a particular foreshadowing
of the eschatological Church immutable
in its possession and contemplation
of God;” 1.7
-
“It is important that the faithful learn
to honor the charism and the specific
role of contemplatives, their discreet
but crucial presence, and their
silent witness which constitutes a call
to prayer and a reminder of the truth
of God's existence.” 1.7
-
“As pastors and guides of all of God’s
flock, (50)
the Bishops are the chief guardians
of the contemplative charism. Therefore,
they must nurture contemplative communities
with the bread of the Word and the Eucharist,
offering where necessary the spiritual
assistance of properly trained priests.
At the same time they share with the
community the task of keeping watch
so that, in today's society marked by
dispersion, a lack of silence and illusory
values, the life of monasteries, nourished
by the Holy Spirit, may remain genuinely
and wholly directed towards the contemplation
of God.” 1.7
-
“The
vital renewal of monasteries is essentially
linked to the authenticity of the search
for God”
2.9
The
Plight:
Clearly, our Church is not addressing the
“Sisters” who heaped their habits in the
same conflagration that consumed our society
in the “Days of Rage”, and who, with astounding
celerity, attired themselves in suits of
business more proper to Wall Street than
to the Convents that fell into ruin as they
abandoned vows, veils, and religious life
for something more “progressive” in that
chimerical, albeit “currently correct” pursuit
of the rehabilitation of man as a social
species and not as possessed of an immortal
soul; of man configured to the parameters
of politics, and not as a being created
in the image of God. "Redeem the soul through
rehabilitating society.” How quickly, how
predictably, Jesus Christ subsequently became
a footnote to the issue, a “patriarchal”
anomaly, a cultural gloss, much more a solecism
than a Savior. They set out to redeem the
world themselves, unfettered by robes, veils,
the continuity of the Saints, and even Christ
Himself.
Look around you ...it is not a wasteland.
It is no man's land. Words cannot
verge on something remotely descriptive
in the wake of this mass defection. The
winepress verges on ruin and the vineyard
is laid waste. In stupefaction we stand,
speechless at the ruin. So an entirely new
lexicon has subsequently, necessarily, evolved
around the self that has become the axis
of the universe. We are now called to empowerment,
not poverty, to aggressive pride instead
of Marian and holy humility, to self-affirmation
instead of self effacement, to self-fulfillment,
instead of self-abnegation. We feast on
ourselves and know nothing of fast. In short,
we are impelled by a centripetal social
evangel to a frenetic pursuit of the self
in place of the holy pursuit of God.
Seeking “justice” they abandoned sanctity,
failing to see that justice follows from
sanctity. Seeking “relevance”, they abandoned
the holy for the profane, failing to see
the utter irrelevance of everything profane
in light of the holy. It was, it remains,
nothing less than a ramiform fulfillment
of Nietzsche's vaunted “Transvaluation of
Values”. Setting out to free the world,
they have subdued it ... by having succumbed
to it.
These strident voices ... have they saved
your child, kept your sanity, delivered
you from peril? Have their voices at the
Houses of State redeemed your brother’s,
your sister’s, your husband’s lives ...
rather than the quiet voices in prayer rising
up as holy incense borne by angels to the
Altar of God at Matins in a Monastery in
the dark watches of the night? Ask yourself!
Have these holy women touched your life?
All the men fled Christ, save John ... and
even John fled the Garden. It was the holy
woman who stayed ... unto the foot of the
Cross, unto the last drop of Blood. Were
they adroitly petitioning the Sanhedrin?
Cleverly lobbying the halls of the Temple?
When your child was sick, when you were
despairing, were you delivered by clever
legislation, or by soft words prayed from
the lips of a Nun hidden from the world,
lips blazing with love at the very lintels
of the portals of Paradise?
What is your your hidden debt?
Who is it that you cannot
possibly repay ... who never sought
repayment, even through the just currency
of love that to this day you have withheld
... and which in justice was her due?
Who has borne your suffering? Who has shared
in your secret pain? Who has grieved with
you for your sins? Consoled you in your
sorrow? Who has sought absolutely nothing
... but to bring you to God, with those
you love? Who kept faith with you, loved
you, bore you when you were forsaken by
the world? In whom have you found Mary,
Mother of God and Refuge of Men? Who revealed
to you the face of Christ?
The Cloistered Nun. Hidden
to man. Intimate with God. A bridge of grace
over which you have passed in your suffering
to a place that no man, that no woman, in
and of this world could bear you. And she
brought you there with unspeakable love.
Unfeigned love. Genuine love. Sacrificial
love. Love that has known the sting of your
own tears upon her gentle cheek. She is
the Bride of the Lamb, the Spouse of the
King. She has His ear ... for
she has His heart. Cleave
to her who cleaves only to God!
It does not bode well for the man, for the
woman, who imprecates Cloistered Nuns and
disdains the call of Jesus Christ to His
Brides to meet Him in the second Garden
of innocence regained ... a Garden which
He Himself hedges and around which He Himself
sets Holy Enclosure as to the Bridal Chamber
of perfect union through a perfect embrace
made perfect in love. To disdain the Bride
is to dishonor the Groom. And to dishonor
the Groom is to despise His predilection
for His Chosen, His beloved – and who denies
the signal love of God denies God Himself.
For God is Love.
Geoffrey Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
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