On the celebration of our independence, Frater Graham Golden, O. Praem., gave an address on the future of the community on behalf of the men information.
When Jaime, Stephen and I professed our vows many peopled asked “Do you feel any different?” Honestly, my answer was, “no, not really.” This made me a little uncomfortable. I wondered how it was that I believed I was called to this way of life and yet didn’t seem to experience what everyone assumed I should…namely, “a sense of change.”
I believe this was because, for me, taking vows was a solidification of the life I had already been striving to live for the previous two years as a novice. In my experience there is a distinction, however. Life as a novice was a commitment made day-to-day. Taking vows, on the other hand, became a promise to live in the moment with hope toward the future.
As a community, this occasion marks a similar reality. As we think of what, or rather who we may be in the future I believe we will be who we are today, at least the essence of who we strive to be. The primary difference is the depth with which we may live and experience our Norbertine life and commitment here. Now we are committed to each other, this place, this Archdiocese, and the people of good will who surround us in such a way that allows us to move forward toward a new day. Today we mark collectively our own promise of hope toward the future.
This act of deeper commitment to remain here in this place as this community grows and matures from early adulthood to the prime of its life (to quote our own Br. James), is itself a symbolic witness to Jesus’ words in the Gospel of John:
May our witness of “remaining” here, of committed stability be seen, then, as a sign of Christ’s committed presence in our world, a world increasingly distracted, noisy, and relative. As Pope Benedict XVI notes in his Encyclical Letter Caritas in Veritate
“As society becomes ever more globalized, it makes us neighbours but does not make us brothers…[Fraternity] originates in a transcendent vocation from God the Father, who loved us first, teaching us through the Son what fraternal charity is.”
It can be said that never before in the history of our Church has a life of stability, of ever present and vigilant solidarity within a society and place, held such prophetic possibility. Now, more than ever, our own community and society require a witness of contemplation, silence, patience, and intentional commitment to fraternal charity. I pray that we can hope in a vision of open and humble vulnerability to promise the presence of love to a future yet unknown. It is in this that I find prophetic creativity and hope.
Jesus tells us in the Gospel of Matthew:
“You are the light of the world…your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father” (5:14-16)
May we shine forth as a beacon of hope and salvation for others. May we grow in our reflection of the Mission of the Church as affirmed by the Second Vatican Council inGaudium et Spes.
“[For]…The expectation of a new earth must not weaken but rather stimulate our concern for cultivating this one. For here grows the body of a new human family, a body which even now is able to give some kind of foreshadowing of the new age…. “a kingdom eternal and universal, a kingdom of truth and life, of holiness and grace, of justice, love and peace.” On this earth that Kingdom is already present in mystery. When the Lord returns it will be brought into full flower.”
How may we be a foreshadowing of the new age? My classmate Stephen coined a phrase to describe us “a community serving community”. It is simple, but quite telling of who we are and who we hope to be.
My classmate Jaime expressed to me:
“In my vision of the future, Santa María de la vid will continue always walking toward being a loving community in which brethren strive together to perfect community life embodying the love of Christ for one another in total trust, total respect and total encouragement of each other.”
James, our second year novice, hopes that:
“to each other we give our honest best, unburdened with the constriction of any one great outcome other than the one that God ordains for us all”
We hope to grow in our ability to exhibit the vulnerability to share something of ourselves with one another and the humility to accept something of God from each other. When we strive toward fraternal friendship the prophetic value of the life we live and this place where we abide become themselves ministry, a source of life to be nurtured toward the future.
In religious life, such statements may become cliché. But, I believe our future rests on our search for the mystical newness of each opportunity, interaction and experience within community life.
Pope Benedict XVI writes in his Encyclical Letter Spe Salve:
“To come to know God—the true God—means to receive hope. We who have always lived with the Christian concept of God, and have grown accustomed to it, have almost ceased to notice that we possess the hope that ensues from a real encounter with this God.“
I have often been blind to the power the spirit can exercise through the witness of our way of life. This time last year I received a hand-written letter from a friend who stayed with our community while on a road trip with his brother. He writes:
“I’ve found that my greatest boon of late has been the marked improvement of my spiritual life. The turning point for me was mass with you that morning. For a year I was uncomfortable with Catholicism and did my best to reject it…Each mass felt like a burden of hyper self-consciousness and self-doubt. Until that Friday morning with all ya’ll norbertines. Maybe I was just too tired to keep up the front i’d been maintaining. But I felt like I was in a special place where everything was different Without judgment or expectation. Surrounded by people who truly live their faith. And I felt God’s peace. Which I desperately needed. Thank you for helping me find it.”
Here people of all denominations and faith come for spiritual encounter, conversation and to “seek wisdom side by side”.
May we become a place where those from all parts of our increasingly fragmented and polarized Church come to find friendship, dialogue, peace, and hope. May we become a place where not only the intellectual and the wealthy are welcomed, but where the poor and the marginalized can find spiritual refuge, nourishment and consolation. May we continue to build bridges across all divisions in our society through the witness of who we strive to be. May we grow in friendship with the least, the last and the lost in true solidarity. May we continue to move from relationships characterized by the interaction of instructions to institutions, to relationships characterized by communities in solidarity communities, to relationships characterized by individual persons sharing life with other beings made in the image and likeness of God.
To grow in friendship with those who surround us requires a renewed dedication to become one with the larger community, to foster more deeply our work of inculturation, to develop our own identity continuing to evolve from Norbertines in New Mexico to Norbertines of New Mexico. As we deepen our roots in this place, the value of our life and mission should not be measured on the breadth of our service, the size of our facilities, the number of our vocations or the scale of our endowments but on the depth of relationships we share with each other and those beyond the borders of our priory and the authenticity with which we follow Christ in this life, worts and all.
Through these many interconnecting lines of dialogue, relationship and human exchange may we more visibly hold up the unique and beautiful Truth of our own faith journey within the Heart of Jesus Christ as our “way, truth and life” (John 14:6).
As the Holy Father notes:
“Our Christian life, nourished by the Eucharist, gives us a glimpse of that new world – new heavens and a new earth…” (Sacomentum Caritatis 92)
The renewal of our vision and imagination flows from the liturgical core of our life and thus we must continue to deepen our commitment to our liturgical life. May our shared prayer give us the courage and humility to stand between our past and our future, creating for each new day a manifestation of our faith in ways that are both ever ancient and ever new. May we become not so much traditional men, but rather a “traditioning” community.
Through our ongoing evolution our future may see symbols of the past finding new meaning and symbols of the present finding old significance. In response to real movements in our world, the renewal of old practices and symbols does not mean a revision or retraction of what we are today nor do new and imaginative expressions of our faith necessarily equate to a betrayal of our tradition. A new generation cannot move backward, but must respond to the realities, the signs of our times as we come to experience them.
As we move toward the future we are called to stand in the tension of our own ambiguity and enter into realms of our own discomfort…then will our lives be beacons of hope. Then can we faithfully live out the prayer of Christ:
“that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me.” (John 17:21)
May our promise of hope toward the future continue to grow into a reflection of the words of Gaudium et Spes:
“United in Christ, they are led by the Holy Spirit in their journey to the Kingdom of their Father and they have welcomed the news of salvation which is meant for everyone. That is why this community realizes that it is truly linked with humanity and its history by the deepest of bonds.”
May those who surround us say:
“A voice cries out in the wilderness: prepare the way of the LORD!”
May we declare this good news, may we be the prophets who exclaim:
“Behold the Lamb of God, he who takes away the sins of the world” (john 1:29) and may the many go and follow Him.
May the One who has begun the good work in us bring it to fulfillment before the day of Christ Jesus.
