2nd Saturday of Lent

Monks have a lot of company out there with the prodigal son, feeding the pigs. All of suffering and sinful humanity is there, and monks are the worst of the lot. The Russian monk Fr Zossima puts it this way in Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamázov. Addressing his monks, he said:

“We are not holier than the laity because we have come here and shut ourselves up within these walls, but, on the contrary, everyone who has come here has, by the very fact of his coming here, acknowledged that he is worse than all the worldly and than all people and all things on earth....And the longer the monk lives within the walls of his monastery, the more deeply must he be conscious of that, for otherwise he would have had no reason for coming here at all.

“But when he realizes that he is not only worse than all the worldly, but that he’s responsible to everyone for all people and all things, for all human sins, universal and individual - only then will the aim of our seclusion be achieved.

“For each one of us is responsible for everyone and everything on earth, not only because of the general transgressions of the world, but each one individually for everyone and every single person on earth. This realization is the crown of a monk’s way of life, and, indeed, of every person on earth. For a monk is not a different kind of human being, but merely such as everyone on earth ought to be.

“It is only then that our hearts will be moved to a love that is infinite and universal and that knows no limit. It is then that each of you will have the power to gain the world by love and wash away the sins of the world by his tears”.

Let each of us prodigal monks, then, go to God our Father without ceasing, on behalf of all our fellow sinners, of all who have no one to pray for them, and of those who do not want to pray. And let each of us say to God: “Father, we have sinned, being human beings; may you forgive, being God”.