• from the vocation director

  
  I knew that I wanted to be a monk before I knew I wanted to be a Catholic, and it was attraction to monastic life that led me to learn more about the Church. When I cut short my studies (literature and philosophy) and entered the Church it was with a view to becoming a monk. That may seem a strange course but it was the same for St. Augustine. For years he lived in experimental communities and read deeply in philosophy, but only when he learned of monastic life did he find strength to cut his last attachments and be baptized. Like Augustine, I knew my weakness, and knew that if I were to embrace the gospel fully I would need a strong support, a framework that would keep me focused.
  
  Monks live according to a “rule,” a set program and schedule, a series of practices that like a trellis, allows the sprawling tangle of their inner life to reach up and out into full articulation. It’s something like living inside a sonnet: all the compression and limits of the form paradoxically serve a feeling of release and freedom.
  
  My own community, the Abbey of the Genesee, is quite diverse: we have monks from India, Hong Kong, and Canada (me!), with very different backgrounds, education levels and personalities. When I reflect on what it is we share, I think it is a basic experience of grace. Something, guilt, mortality, some root disillusionment or loss leads us to see our own weakness in a startling new way, and in the same moment of stark and bitter truth, we discover we are utterly, unconditionally loved and accepted as we are. The first Cistercians spoke of this as discovering divine mercy (misericordia) in our misery (miseria). This kind of insight puts everything else into perspective; it’s a new level or depth of experience alongside which other concerns are seen as relative. Many of us have undergone such moments but often they fail to register. They awaken a longing for communion and new life, but so quickly seem to pass. The monk knows he needs help if he is going to keep the reality tasted in these moments front row center in his life. He knows that such touches of grace are not ends in themselves but seeds that need to be tended and developed.
  
  The monastic practices—rising early for vigils, fasting, silence, solitary prayer, fraternal life in poverty, absorption in the scriptures—all of these are meant to keep alive and cultivate the memory of God’s touch in our lives, to keep us plugged in to our deepest heart’s desire.
  For my part I realized at a certain point that what I most needed to learn was how to love. My own attempts, not without a measure of goodness and real affection, had so often ended in shipwreck and self-destruction. Cistercian monastic life was a “schola caritatis,” a school of love. Long before I was living anything resembling an ascetical life (just the opposite!), I went on a silent retreat with my father at a Jesuit retreat center. The weekend in silence made a lasting impact. I still remember something one of the retreat masters said: “You know you’ve found your vocation when you’ve found the way of life in which it’s easiest for you to love.” What about the cross? Isn’t it supposed to be hard? But I would learn in time that when we love from the heart we gladly take on more than we ever could by willpower, or from a mere sense of duty. It is similar to St. Teresa of Avila’s superb advice on prayer: “Pray in whatever way most kindles love.” The way of life that best supports and sets us free to love: that’s what we’re looking for. When we find it we’ll know; it’s like falling in love—all sorts of hidden gifts and energies spring to the surface and bloom in response.
  
  When she was discerning her vocation St. Therese of Lisieux found she was attracted to all of them. She wanted to be a nurse, a teacher, an evangelist, a contemplative… she found that in this last call, in the hidden life of prayer, she could be all of these at once: she could “be love in the heart of the Church,” bringing God’s peace and mercy into the world, pumping the blood of grace to all the members of the Body, in their various ways of life. The contemplative, she wrote, is like the woman who shattered the vessel of costly ointment to anoint the feet of Jesus. The fragrance “filled the entire house.” At a certain point I realized that I wanted my life to be such a lavish offering of praise and thanksgiving. Seven times a day a bell rings, monks drop what they’re doing and assemble in church to praise the Lord for his goodness. I had squandered my life like the prodigal son; now I wanted to squander it even more radically, in a methodical but ultimately wild and gratuitous act of lifelong worship.
  
  St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) wrote of how in contemplation of the Crucified one can be “on all fronts at once,” radiating the healing power of divine love to those who are suffering. For my part, when I considered the immense injustice and misery in the world, and that I had only one life to spend, the contemplative life, which relies so totally on divine strength, and requires from me only the surrender of my weakness, seemed to make the best contribution. On my first retreat at a Cistercian monastery, wondering if I was on the right track, I was deeply confirmed and consoled by these words of St. Isaac of Nineveh:
  
  One who knows his sins is greater than he who raises a corpse to life. One who weeps over himself for an entire hour is greater than he who furnishes information to the whole world… One who knows his weakness is greater than he who sees the angels… The solitary and repentant follower of Christ is greater than he who enjoys popular favor in the churches.
  
  (I eventually took the name “Isaac” in honor of this saint whose words so often spoke straight to my heart). While solitary, the monastic life is also intensely social and there are daily opportunities to be stretched in more “active” expressions of love: restraining a harsh word or glance, caring for the elderly brothers, working to support the community, and extending hospitality to the many guests and retreatants who come to visit.
  
  I entered the monastery on December 31, 1999. I’d been reading about the Jubilee and wanted to be the first monk of the new millennium. It’s proved a more challenging, healing, and beautiful life than I could have hoped for, one that has set me free. At the center there is a deep intimacy with the Lord, the chance to live in closeness to him that would be more difficult in other ways of life. The atmosphere of leisure and peace, the surroundings and regular practices (vigils, reading, silence, solitude, manual work) all serve to keep one true to his deepest heart’s desire: to grow in union with the Lord Jesus, and to radiate his love and mercy to a suffering world.
  
  Fr. Isaac Slater
  Abbey of the Genesee
  
  [email protected]