The "thirst for God" that accidentally built a civilisation
A Benedictine response: what is it for?
What happens when a journalist meets a true monk?
Dom Gerard Calvet was one of the great figures of the 20th-century monastic revival. Today we’re going to see what he said when asked by a secular journalist what the monastic life is for.
In this guest post, written by our good friend Mother Marie, we look at the meaning of the monastic life itself, and its “usefulness” in a world that has abandoned God and is destroying itself at an alarmingly increasing pace. Monasticism is something utilitarian Modernia is probably incapable of understanding.
The vocation to contemplative life cannot be understood in the modern utilitarian calculus. It is an interior orientation, driven by a thirst that even the monk himself often doesn’t understand, the search for the immediate, personal encounter with God.
I’m so happy to be able to present another reflection from Mother Marie for our paid subscribers. She is the superior of a small traditional community of Benedictines - in formation - in the north of Italy (information and links below the fold).
Today she’s sharing a reflection on an article that was an interview between a secular journalist and a very special monk. She asks the same question the journalist did: what monastic life truly is and is for… this thirst the modern world neither understands nor encourages.
“How did we get where we are today, almost (almost) incapable of understanding what our faith tells us we must do to attain this sanctity, for lack of proper means?
“The solution is simple: we must do as our forefathers did if we want to attain what they attained. We must give primacy to the supernatural realities, to prayer, and to contemplation.”
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