On June 10th, Abbot Timothy Kelly, OSB, former Abbot of St John\u2019s Abbey in Collegeville MN gave the fourth in the series of lectures celebrating our 50th Anniversary Year.\u00a0 His topic was The Art of Christian and Monastic Life.\u00a0 Hopefully these lectures will be published in book form since it is impossible to do justice to them in a short essay.\u00a0 He spoke as a Benedictine monk whose vocation has involved him as student, priest, teacher, missionary, pastor, prison chaplain, convent chaplain, director of novices and an Abbot among other things, and one who has pondered the meaning of monastic life as an expression of Christian life.<\/p>\n
Abbot Timothy\u2019s focus was not on the lofty and abstract, but on the profound yet simple signs that God uses to speak to us.\u00a0 Humanity itself is such a sign for we are made in the image and after the likeness of God.\u00a0 Image and likeness is clearly not in physical appearance, gender, color size, language or the like. Yet in simply living in accord with the truth of our being we are living revelations of who God is.\u00a0 Using Col. 1:15-20 as a summary of God\u2019s plan for us in Christ, Abbot Timothy went on to explain what was torn apart by sin, what lessened the effectiveness of the sign of humanity as the image and likeness of God, is now reconciled in Christ who is the head of the reconciled body of humanity. In him who is \u201cthe image of the unseen God\u201d we, in our reconciled unity, might become that people who reveal God with us by our love for one another as members of the Body of Christ, the church.\u00a0 Or in other words, we are God\u2019s art, God\u2019s living art.<\/p>\n
As Christians, whether monk, married, single or whatever, we have a common goal built on our relationship to Christ Jesus.\u00a0 The love of God for us even precedes creation and creation itself is the first manifestation and even contains the love of God for all people.
\nWe are to look at God\u2019s plan established prior to creation so that we might understand the purpose of creation and in our hearts accept one another and all people because God excludes no one.\u00a0 The separation from one another that sin produces is overcome in God\u2019s plan that God \u201cwould bring everything together under Christ, as head, everything in the heavens and everything on earth\u201d (Eph. 1:10).\u00a0 This, of course, describes Paschal (Easter) spirituality. It takes effort to apply paschal spirituality to all areas of life and yet it is the only spirituality that can help us to make sense out of life.\u00a0 We are on a journey with Christ to the accomplishment of God\u2019s purpose in us.<\/p>\n
A monastic community is meant to be a sign to the whole Church and to all creation of the reconciliation Christ has accomplished.\u00a0 One could say there is a \u2018sacrament of monastic life\u201d analogous to marriage which is a sign or living revelation of the faithful union between Christ and the Church.<\/p>\n
Abbot Timothy developed the sign value of the various aspects of Christian and monastic life in a wonderful and convincing way and reminding us also:\u00a0 \u201cMonks are no better and no worst than anyone else.\u00a0 Their way of life is an alternative way of saying Christ to the world, just as marriage is a way of saying Christ to the world.\u00a0 Following what Saint Paul describes in 1 Corinthians about the gifts of the Spirit, we can say that there are communal charisms as well as individual charisms.\u00a0 Monastic life is one of the wonderful ways God has given us to be witnesses to his life, death and resurrection, signs of the Paschal mystery that gives meaning to the Christian life\u201d.<\/p>\n
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