Benedicamus Domino!
In my last entry, I spoke about how a eucharistic lifestyle, if lived as fully as possible in this fallen world, would manifest itself as a kind of countercultural movement in this age of rampant individualism and competitiveness. We all seek to possess more, to one-up our fellow in some way, whether we want to admit this or not. I, for instance, have always been one to state that I am not ambitious for power or money as our world defines those things, but I'd be deluding myself if I said that I never felt jealous or envious of something that another person has. It's simply a part of who we are, and it takes a very hard struggle to overcome this need to be 'me' at all costs.
If we are to live Eucharistically, this involves first acknowledging that there is a God to whom we are grateful for our lives and everything we are. Then, we must acknowledge that He can do for us an infinitely greater amount than we can do for Him. In this acknowledgement, there must be a cognisance of our fallenness and our need for His aid, and then there must be a realization that He is always with us, and in a way, that everything we do is a holy thing, a sacrament or a mystery to be performed for His glory and in His praise. This is what Christian monastics seek to do. The Benedictines have very specific teachings on the subject, so that even the careless breaking of a dish becomes something for the monastic to be mindful of, as that dish, be it the humblest plate, ought to be treated with the greatest of care as though it were the chalice of Communion itself. It is this attitude that the monastic seeks to find amid the silences and the orderly progression of each day, and it is this, I submit, that any Christian should attempt to cultivate. It is, quite simply, a state of prayerfulness: a state in which God is thought of as always interacting with us on a real and objective level.
In all of this, there is something which runs directly counter to much of what our culture dictates for us, and that is this; as we become more prayerful, we feel less and less entitled to our own personal rights and more and more concerned with the welfare of others and of humankind as a whole. We become more communally-minded. Of course, as with anything in this life, this becoming more communally-minded may need several tries before it really gets going, but once it does, it fundamentally changes a person. There are stories of Christians who began as rich and ambitious people and ended by donating all of their money to charities and giving up the power which they previously held. Is this what every Christian needs to do? Perhaps not outwardly, but inwardly, the change must be accomplished.
The great thing about all this is that it is not all on our side to do the changing. It is true that we should be making efforts, but we have to keep in mind one of the prerequisites for living Eucharistically, and that is that God can do for us more than we can even imagine. If we simply offer Him ourselves, our flawed and world-weary selves, He will take them and transform them. The catch is that this must be a daily, an hourly, a minute-by-minute offering, because we are forever letting ourselves fall pray to that ego which I talk about so much here. We can't bust through this ego on our own, but we can learn to be more aware of its presence and try to starve it, to set it aside as much as possible, and God will be able to help us more freely if we are helping to keep the connection open, as it were.
Deo Gratias!
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