The Communities of New Skete

Scripture Reading: Is 49:13-18,22-3; Gal 2:15-20; Mk 8:34-9:1

Reflections from a Monk

During our summer retreat period I read a collection of short stories entitled Stained Glass Elegies¹, by the Japanese writer Shusaku Endo. Known especially for his two great novels: Silence and The Samurai, Endo has also written a biography of Jesus² and the preoccupation of much of his writing is about the struggle to maintain the Christian faith in a Japanese context. One story in particular in this collection caught my attention. Its entitled “Fuda-no-Tsuji”³. It is never clear how much of what Endo creates in his fiction is based on real incidents or simply crafted out of the context of the times. The heart of this story takes place in Japan during the Second World War and one of the main characters is a monk from Germany working at a Catholic University in Japan. So, this story confronts us with images and perspectives that are seldom if ever treated in American literature. Yet, even though it is a ride through very unfamiliar territory, the story presents a powerful underlying message that applies far beyond Japan’s borders.

The story begins with a man heading off to his class reunion. He is taking a train on a cold rainy day to the town of Fuda-no-Tsuji and as the train approaches the town the story slips back 21 years to the time of the Second World War on a similarly cold rainy day. The man is walking along in the company of a foreign monk they call Mouse. They were near a bluff overlooking Kodenma-chō, the prison camp where Christians had been executed during past persecutions. The narration now flashes back to the time of an execution of Christians in the 17th century which is described in vivid detail. We then return back to Mouse who, while surveying the sight of past horrors is comparing his own cowardly disposition to the determination of these Japanese martyrs. Mouse, after all, did not get that name as a compliment. As the story proceeds, we learn that Mouse is described in most unflattering terms: small, slight, hunched over, with fidgety movements like a rodent’s. The priests taught at the university while the monks did primarily office work and other odd jobs. Throughout the tale this monk is the object of laughter and derision. As the war effort intensifies, foreigners, even Germans who were allies, were viewed with increasing suspicion. The military overseer of the university, just back from the Northern China front, was busy intimidating students and foreign staff alike. At one point this lieutenant-colonel confronted the man in a hall-way and demanded that he be saluted and that he recite a particular Imperial text everyone was to have memorized. The man had forgotten it. He was cuffed around by the officer, who might have done more except that Mouse appeared and became the object of the officer’s rage. Once the officer had left, Mouse stood frozen as the other man spit out blood and skulked away. Various tales of Mouse’s faint-heartedness and effeminacy circulated through the student body. He fainted at the sight of an injured student’s bloodied body. Once hospitalized Mouse kept crying out: “I don’t want to die!” “I’m afraid to die!” At first Mouse was laughed at, but as people came to know more about him laughter turned to scorn. Then as the war against Caucasians (as it was viewed in Japan) intensified and life became tougher for everyone, Mouse, seen as a Caucasian, was derided even more. Ultimately he is called back to Germany.

The story switches back to the class reunion and questions arise about what happened to former classmates and also to Mouse. It turns out that he was arrested upon his return because he was a Jew and sent Dachau. Another report said that when one of the Jews in the prison camp had been sentenced to death by starvation, a monk who had done missionary work in Japan had offered himself as a substitute. The man who had been with Mouse during that visit to the Christian execution site at Kodenma-chō now wonders how such a change could have taken place in Mouse to lead him to die for a friend in Dachau.

“Take up your cross and follow me.” Jesus doesn’t preface that challenge with any modifiers such as: you who are worthy, you who are strong, you who have never fainted, you who have never failed, you who have succeeded in all you’ve undertaken, you who have never shrunk before a threat or turned away from the sight of blood or worse. No, Jesus demands no background check! His call is for all of us and it doesn’t depend on us being heroes, or never having told a lie, or made a bad decision or mistake or forgotten to fulfill a commitment or even said or done something to hurt another. It is said with no conditions attached. The liberation it provides is from all we have ever done or failed to do. It says that it is never too late, and you are never unqualified, to make the change. Never! as Mouse in our story ultimately realized.

But to take up your cross is not just about walking eyes open into an ugly death. The message of the cross is not about death it is about love and faith. It is about life and what really gives life. God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten son. It is about giving, self giving. It is not about making personal calculations as to the benefits to be received for the action to be taken. Rather it is about leaving personal considerations behind and focusing on others.

It is also about our faith in the faith of Jesus Christ. This is St. Paul’s message to us today: to trust in the faith of Christ⁴. For when Jesus willingly submitted himself to be crucified, his faith in the ultimate outcome was rooted in his faith in God and God’s promises, as in Isaiah where God says “I will not forget you” [Is 49:15]. And when St Paul calls on us to put on Christ, we are putting on the faith of Christ to acquire the strength of his faith.

One of our texts for this feast says in part: “O Cross of Christ, be our strength and our protection… that we may honor you in faith and love.” So when that Cross is raised on high, as the banner foreshadowed by Isaiah [49:22], it is not calling us to death, but rather to the death of the ego and all its demands, so that we can be open to all the possibilities of life, life here and life eternal.

Christ is in our midst!
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Notes

1. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1987 [↩]
2. A Life of Jesus. Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1978 [↩]
3. Stained Glass Elegies, pp. 56-69. [↩]
4. Frank J. Matera, Galatians (Sacra pagina series, vol. 9), Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1991, pp. 92-104 on the distinction between faith “in” Christ and faith “of” Christ. [↩]

Scripture Reading: Is. 10:25-27, 11:10-12; 1 Cor. 1:17-28; Jn. 19:13-35

Reflections from a Monk

In the Gospels someone asks, “Who is this Jesus, that he says and does such things?” But even St. Paul, when he tries to speak of the Lord and of the Cross, does so only with great fear and trepidation, and so should we.

We do see that Jesus, as he grew in wisdom, age, and grace, went from being simply a carpenter’s son, to healer and a great preacher and then in fact Christos or Messiah. After his passion and death he became known to many simply as the one who was crucified, or Jesus who was crucified for us…

In a similar way, who we are in the depths of our souls and in the eternal mind of God truly emerges only in the journey that Jesus beckons us toward: “…Take up your cross and learn from me, for my yoke is easy and my burden light!”

The surface image of the cross, and for that matter of pain, is universal. Pain: we can’t allow it to push us into blame, self-pity, and victimhood, and yet how easily we end up there. “Whose fault is it?” we might yell out or stew over. I remember when we were raising cattle, each head was as placid as the next—but when they would simply turn or twist their heads, the ones with horns could very seriously harm you. Even a so-called “intended” or seemingly malicious injury or insult is, unfortunately, truly done out of a very human failing, as Jesus said from the cross “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.” Jesus himself really had nothing to be forgiven for, had done nothing wrong, so pure and clean was his spirit and his life. Yet he still asked for forgiveness for those who wrongly condemned him to death.

He obviously had resisted any trace of self-pity, shame, anger, or vengefulness during his lifetime; in the end he was strengthened enough to take up that cross—the ultimate, terrible, human burden, free from any ego-influence of self-concern, self-protection, or a drive for survival. “Weep not for me, daughters of Jerusalem; weep rather for yourselves and for your children…” “They offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he refused it.” Christ was supremely victorious, first of all, over himself, he broke through the hopelessness and despair of pain, and sin, and the power of evil: so finally, God shone forth in him and through him, from the cross to the resurrection. Jesus shows us the way to work through all of this to the crown of our lives—holiness and divine life.

And why should we doubt that the cross also affects us personally? —Because the cross is more than an inspiration for us; it’s not only a mighty shot against the onslaught of evil. It stands as the permanent new morning light, as we might picture it, the rising sun of merciful love and justice in the world, that pierces the darkness of fear and evil infinitely stronger than lighting a candle in the dark. So powerful is its energy that somehow every generation is kept from sinking into total annihilation, from degrading into nothing.

We can joke today that the flight of a butterfly affects what happens half-way around the world—how difficult is it to see the event of the cross as an indelible and saving influence?

Then to paraphrase St. Paul:
All this was madness to the philosophical-minded;
To the establishment—this was heresy;
To the powers that be—this was misguided;
To the worldly—it is meaningless and irresponsible;
To the humanist and seeker of spirituality—much too negative;
To the psychologist—unscientific and suicidal;
To the forces of armament, cynicism, and greed—a roadblock and weakness at the same time;
And to the injured and hurt—a misused and abused symbol.

…But how blind they are to the true powerfulness of the serenity and joy in those who have embraced the way of the cross! Thornton Wilder writes in The Bridge of San Luis Rey, “There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survivor, the only meaning.”
Through the cross and in deepest love Jesus came to those who are suffering or in pain or in some kind of hell-on-earth or after earth. The same Lord is present even here, still with pierced hands and feet and heart, accessible with a prayer like “O God!” or “Help me!” Then our souls are pierced to the core, and every superficial thought and matter is dissolved. In the same way, to see the cross is to be stone-cold sober and at the same time to be engaged with all the depths of our humanity and all the warmth of divine affection and mercy.

We also follow the cross in little things, even when we:
Refrain from giving our opinions unbidden;
Do the right thing even when no one sees;
Tell the whole truth and not just a version of the truth;
Trust yourself but listen to good counsel;
Trust your friend; get your hands dirty to help out;
Follow your discipline of life, whether monastic duties or married cares;
Accept criticism without being crushed and praise without swallowing it whole;
When we aren’t afraid to use our talents and don’t sell them short;
Take time to unwind and relax with friends;
Look at our own weaknesses instead of accusing others;
Remain faithful through thick and thin with friends and projects;
Get close to nature to find healing of soul and body.

Then joy and serenity unknown before begin to grow in us, for in this way we know that: Christ is in our midst!