A Thousand Years of Hope

Transitus of St.Romuald 1,000 years 1027 A.D.

Today we recall 1,000 years of the manifestation of Hope, incarnated in the men and woman of the over the course of our monastic heritage. The central experience of Hope within their hearts was stimulated and sustained by the Holy Spirit. The Jewish mystic Etty Hillesum who died in Auschwitz wrote: “A desire to kneel down sometimes pulses through my body, or rather it is as if my body has been meant and made. for the act of kneeling. Sometimes in moments of deep gratitude, kneeling down becomes an overwhelming urge, head deeply bowed, hands before my face. It has become a gesture embedded in my body.”

Perhaps this self-observation is in part an explanation of what Saint Romuald and all who have embraced the Camaldolese’ charism continues to reveal to the world and the church? In life’s sojourn there is the embodiment of posture we take towards others, indeed creation. We create structures, such as hermitages, churches, altars, chairs, psalters, clothing that are adaptations that relate our stance or purpose in life and in death. We give bequests of our embodied values within these heirlooms of our personal and collective histories to other generations, so that they like us may be encouraged in their reverence for the images of God within them as Jesus the Word had created and recreated us. Having the Hope that it will be weave the new creation our spiritual ancestors like Saint Romuald has taught us.

Mysterium Vita et Mysterium Mortis, the two great human mysteries we are by design birthed into are at the root of Camaldolese mysticism of Saint Romuald. Like sacraments that not only render presence of God, but can suggest how much more is rendered in surplus behind the sign or form. Sacraments and sacramentals suggested by the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins : “the world is charged with the grandeur of God!”. . . as is observed by Christopher Nugent in his book Mysticism,Death & Dying. It is to this grandeur which engaged the spiritual imagination of Saint Romuald I believe inspired him to write with great Hope in his Rule, “Sit in your cell as in Paradise. . . the path you must follow is the Psalms, never leave it. . . content with the grace of God, like a chick who tastes nothing and eats nothing but what his mother brings him.” This an experience of engagement not that of delusion or escapism. For as Thomas Merton the Trappist monk observed in his book, Contemplation In A World Of Action, the hermit/monastic is not one who goes into solitude to escape but rather to engage the heart of longing, desire and incompleteness every human being wrestles with in this life. This on the part of the monk or nun, or anyone is borne in their spiritual imagination a desires to connect with all others in God. Thus a flame of divine origins sacramentalize within consciousness an active participation amid the lives of others and indeed all living things great or small. Hope embraced by their faith gives purpose to the action of Self-donation to others in what as we Camaldolese have come to experience as the 3-fold Good, life in community, solitude and evangelization.