WAKE UP THE WORLD
A reminder of what we most desire
When I a m in vited to present
to theology classes at Benedictine College, I routinely begin my words about monastic life by recounting a movie in which four individuals ruin their lives with drugs. This beginning, which serves as a jumping-off point for the rest of the talk, is often so unexpected for the students, such a startling sucker-punch, that they actually listen to what I say about religious life! By surprising them, I help them suspend their preconceived notions and cast aside their textbook answers about the religious vocation. Pope Francis is asking something similar in this Year of Consecrated Life, to examine again, anew, what is at the heart of consecrated life as a vocational path in the Church and why it is such a gift! By designating an entire year to meditating on this aspect of our lives as Catholics, the Pope is making a statement that religious life is a topic for everyone’s consideration. But why is it important for a layperson to reflect on consecrated life? What good is promised thereby? The movie does a remarkable job of showing the devastating effects of suffering an addiction to narcotics. If this movie demonstrates the horrifying level of destruction that drug addiction can generate, it also shows the viewer the tremendous motivation that impels the characters of the movie to begin using drugs. Each of the characters and their various motives for using (boredom, loneliness, pain, etc.) point toward a basic quality of our humanity: that we live expecting something from life, seeking a real satisfaction! When these characters’ various situations fail to meet their expectations, fail to bring them joy, they (tragically) settle for the escape of drugs. So disappointed are they with what they believe life offers that they choose to live as 8
Kansas Monks
b y B r. L e v e n H a r t o n
Ab b e y Vo c a t i o n s D i r e c t o r
much of their time as possible in a state of alienation from reality. What they are really trying to escape, however, is the cry of the human heart to meet its Creator! Numbing this desire, these characters become ever-more deformed as they race to destruction. The consecrated life, by contrast, exists to draw the religious into an ever-deeper awareness of this expectation that marks our human experience. It is a calling to live, in a sense, “haunted” by our deep need, unwilling to compromise our tremendous hope by numbing it with substitutes. By taking on the regiment of a rule, the obligation of obedience, the sacrifice of celibacy, and the detachment of poverty, the religious agitates his/her deepest expectation: the desire for God! The various aspects of our lives as consecrated men and women that make it different from the lay state serve to remind us of Jesus’ nearness to us, and his desire to answer our expectation. So whatever works or apostolates that might be maintained by a religious community, the center of life is the seeking of Christ. We seek to find a correspondence to our deep hope by the encounter with Jesus! Of course, religious are not the only persons who seek Christ; nor are they the only ones who find Him! The desire for God is felt by everyone. Pope Francis has expressed this in a beautiful, simple manner: “despite our imperfections [Jesus] offers us his closeness. . . In your hearts you
