Our Xeniteia of Song

Amy Carmichael said:

The reason why singing is such a splendid shield against the fiery darts of the devil is that it greatly helps us to forget him, and he cannot endure being forgotten. He likes us to be occupied with him, what he is doing (our temptations), with his victories (our falls), with anything but our glorious Lord. So sing. Never be afraid of singing too much. We are much more likely to sing too little.

There is incredible wisdom to be found in the monastic tradition. In fact, I believe that if we as a community of believers were able to receive, grasp, and truly understand the essence of monasticism, so much of the polemic and struggle and fragmentation in our ecclesial culture would begin to heal. But it is also important to realize that monasticism has never understood itself as a “special” way in the Church or as a particular “brand” of Christian life, or even as a unique charism from the Holy Spirit like the other charisms of the more recent religious institutes (such as teaching, service of the poor, etc.). Rather, monasticism has understood itself, and still does, as simply giving voice to the universal and central human longing, to the ceaseless conversion asked of each on of us in the following of Christ. All that is necessary is to seek God unconditionally with a humble heart, and in this way to enter into life. Thus we can look beyond the external observances of the monastic way (though recognizing and learning from the wisdom of these as well) and touch that deeper reality that unites us all, beyond the distinction of vocations: the longing to behold the face of God and to enter into intimacy with him, indeed, to let his light and love so permeate and possess us that we may become a living eucharist in Christ for the praise of God and the salvation of all, and do so in deep communion with our brothers and sister, with whom we journey together.

Monasticism, thus, is simply a way of pilgrimage, by which we seek God and the fullness of life, embracing the xeniteia (the pilgrim exile) inherent in the life of each one of us and committing ourselves to yielding in a process of continual conversion to God’s grace, indeed to tapping into the gratuity, the playfulness, and the sheer, wonder-filled contemplation deeper than all things, that we may experience already in our pilgrimage the mystery of the homecoming that awaits, where we shall share endlessly and fully in the eternal play and ecstatic intimacy of the Trinity himself. This journey, cradled by gratuity and play and experienced thus as a true adventure of love, is to live to the full our own graced, baptismal participation in the “exodus” of Christ from this world to his Father, his Paschal Mystery by which he both descends into the depths of the poverty and need, longing and pain, darkness and misery of this world, bringing therein the light of God’s redeeming love, and also ascends, carrying all that God has made, and each and every human heart into the healing and reconciling embrace of the Trinity, where all is consummated in an everlasting embrace of perfect intimacy in reciprocal knowledge and love.

What does all of this have to do with the quote at the beginning of this fragment? A lot, actually. We know that the life of monks is marked by a struggle with the spirits of evil, with the world, the flesh, and the devil, indeed against “the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph 6:12). And yet even more deeply, the monastic life is marked by singing. By ceaseless play in the presence of God. Monks truly worthy of the name sing a lot. Of course, none of us are ever really worthy; yet, like Saint Anthony, we begin anew each day as if it were the first, born anew through grace and mercy: “Today, I begin.” The entire life of the monastic is meant to be one ceaseless song of praise, and thus in truth their entire life consists in singing, whether in the long hours in the choir among their brethren as they intone the Psalms and readings and prayers of the Divine Office, or in their humble and silent labor in workshop or field or cell, or in their frequent and prolonged engagement with the Word of God and its most enduring proponents in the Church’s living tradition, or in their silent prayer and contemplation in which heart speaks to heart without need for words, or in their moments of fraternal community and sharing, in which they love and encourage one another, tasting the unity that is “like precious oil upon the head” (Ps 133:2).
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Nothing is to be preferred to the Work of God, says Saint Benedict. In fact, this is equivalent to saying, “We have come to the monastery so that our entire life, in all of its facets, through the obedience that makes it an oblation of love, may become a ceaseless liturgy for the praise of God and for the salvation of ourselves and of the whole world.” And is not this but a microcosm of the calling of the universal Church, the Bride and Body of Christ? Is it not the call of each one of us, who indeed should not consider ourselves second-class or in unfitting circumstances to be a ceaseless hymn of love and praise of God, unfitting circumstances to shine like a radiant light and to burst forth like a holy eucharist received and given in Jesus in all the beauty and intimacy of love? Let us therefore look beyond the externals of particular callings, monastic or otherwise, beyond those things that are not proper to us in God’s unique call, and instead discern at the heart of our own life—in the sacred grace present in the here and now—the song that God desires us uniquely to sing. And in precisely this way we shall discover not only what is most uniquely our own and entrusted to us by God, but also the very heartbeat of the holy Church. For this is precisely the mystery that she lives on her sojourn through a strange yet beautiful land, her own xeniteia, her own anticipation of the eternal play of heaven in the very midst of her pilgrim journey, as she walks in union with Christ her Bridegroom, letting her life be continually conformed to his Pasch, to his Eucharist, Passion, and Resurrection, sharing fully in the mystery of his life and mediating its grace and salvation to all.