Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Thomas Moore, not the nineteenth century Irish poet Thomas Moore, but the contemporary author and speaker who is best known for his book Care of the Soul, wrote a book in 1994 which I read the following year. It was a memorable gift in those years. Meditations: On the Monk Who Dwells in Daily Life, is a series of short thoughts, memories, parables, and experiences mainly focused on Moore’s time as a monk in his twenties. One memorable parable has lingered in my mind for years:
“Three monks knelt in the chapel in the dark morning hours before dawn. The first thought he saw the figure of Jesus come down from the cross and rest before him in midair. Finally, he said to himself, I know what contemplation is. The second felt himself rise out of his place in the chair. He soared over his brother monks and surveyed the timber-vaulted ceiling of the church, and then landed back in his place in the choir. I’ve been blessed, he thought, with a minor miracle, but in humility I must keep it to myself. The third felt his knees growing sore and his legs tired. His mind wandered until it came to a stop on the image of a luscious hamburger laden with onions and pickles. ‘No matter how hard I try’, said the devil’s helper to his master, ‘I can’t seem to tempt this third monk.’”
I remember being baffled by this story when I first read it almost thirty years ago. I wanted contemplation, I wanted the miracle - or at least my image of them. Hamburgers do not belong in prayer - they are for eating, not praying.
It is somewhat ironic, then, that the longer I ponder and live the Rule of Benedict, the more the hamburger appears in prayer. Does Moore have a point about the third monk? Is the third monk onto something?
St. Gregory the Great in his biography of St. Benedict is generally believed to be at least embellishing if not inventing miracle stories and pious legends about St. Benedict’s own miraculous powers and mystical experiences. St. Benedict seemed to have had more than the average number of visions and miracles. At the time, those were signs of spiritual importance and power. The Rule itself, curiously, does not put much energy into knowing secrets and floating around. The Rule is not even that interested in a thorough discourse of what prayer even is other than prayer should be sincere and short. He is interested in a deeper reorientation. The whole Rule is the living of prayer. Our every thought, word, and deed is formative for relationship with God. And the whole Rule is prayer because the Rule describes life and life is prayer. And life is prayer because humans live life and to be human is to be being-in-communion. St. Benedict takes as given that as creatures made in God’s image and crowned with glory and honor this is as obvious and as natural as breathing. Life is the divine office and the world is the oratory. Benedict’s gift and power is in unveiling before our distorted and blurry vision the sacredness of all of life, especially those activities which in their ordinariness reflect no obvious sign of God’s presence. We may receive the gift of more immediate or direct encounters with God if God so chooses, but those experiences are the effect of daily faithfulness, not ends in themselves; they are opportunities for humility, not possessions to be held over the heads of those not so gifted. The ultimate unfaithfulness for St. Benedict is to go about filling a cabinet full of trophies to my deep spirituality and profound maturity. Rather, I can hear St. Benedict saying to the first and second monks in the parable, “You have had insight into some great mystery? Great, now go work in the fields.” “You have received a minor miracle? Be thankful and go wash the dishes.” “So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions."
What makes the third monk different (and I believe for St. Benedict truly holy) is an honest, earthy acceptance of his creatureliness as the ground of humility. Moore’s language is quite precise on this point: the first monk knew something mysterious after a long search; the second monk received a miracle. But the third monk is different in that Moore says his mind wandered and came to stop on the image of the hamburger. The third monk is simply noticing, not grasping at or seeking to possess the hamburger, but noting the presence of the thought in a detached manner. It is not that he is beyond temptation entirely, that would mean he was dead, but that he is conscious that everything belongs, he is not seeking to defend, perform, possess, or compete for or against anyone or anything in his praying. He hears in Jesus’ admonish to give up possessions the wisdom that possession is impossible, so the deepest giving up is the illusion that I can possess in the first place. The home toward which we are hastening is that human life where everything is received as a gift, where we are stewards of blessings not to be grasped or owned, but participated in and enjoyed.
In the Gospel reading the Lord is prodding us to take stock - estimate, consider. If builders are thoughtful about their building supplies and kings about their troop strength, then how much more ought we to bring honest scrutiny to the realities which inform and shape our whole lives? A conscious choice requires that our feet are planted on the ground, our ears are listening for the truth, our hearts are attuned to love.
The greatest obstacle to conversion is my own fantasy land image of conversion. St. Benedict is allergic to any image of self or God which leads to escaping reality, rising above others, or enlisting God in my project of having the final, absolute answer to the mysteries of the divine. As we estimate, consider, and then give up the illusions that get revealed in our honest assessment of ourselves, we find freedom - the freedom to unlearn habits of thought and action which are familiar, but which stifle our true selves. Into our empty hands Christ places the gift of our incarnation to be celebrated and enjoyed in the abundance of the kingdom of heaven. Eugene Peterson is channeling the spirit of St. Benedict in his paraphrase of the beginning of Romans 12 in the Message Bible: “So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life - your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking around life - and place it before God as an offering.” Amen.
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