As Our Lord approached Jerusalem he wept over it because he foresaw its destruction, and the fearful suffering that was to result. He loved the city where his Father was worshipped: he loved the people to whom he preached and whom he wished to gather as a hen gathers her brood. Like every human institution, Jerusalem had its day as the city of God. It was a sign of the heavenly city, but the signs with which we learn to understand spiritual realities are all passing. We have only to think of the grain of wheat that Jesus spoke of. It fell into the earth and in dying sent a root down and a sprout up, that in due time produced an ear. Without the stalk and the ear there would be no crop of grain. The ear fills and ripens. When it is ripe the combine goes in and the grain, the chaff and the straw are separated. All the labour was aimed at producing as much grain as possible. It is the grain that is of value: straw is for bedding cattle, and the chaff used to be burnt and now just gets ploughed in. A field of corn is beautiful as it sways and ripples in the summer breeze, but it is a passing beauty. So, too, the beauty of our human works, our churches, our monasteries, our public buildings, our homes: among these we live and work and attain our full human stature. So it was that St Benedict spent the latter part of his life building the first monastery on Monte Casino, which was to be destroyed some fifty years after his death.
I have found it helpful to be reading the letters and meditations of St Raphael Arnaiz Baron. He was a young student of architecture in Madrid in the 1930s who discovered his vocation to be a Cistercian monk. He entered the monastery and gave himself wholeheartedly to the life, which he found tough as his family was well off. He was passionate about Cistercian life, and particularly about San Isidro, his monastery. To his sorrow and consternation, after only a few months his health failed, and he was obliged to return home. For a time, he was at a loss about how he should react to his position. He gradually realized that he had set far too much store on life at San Isidro, and that it was not some particular form of life for which he was thirsting, but for God. Whether it be Jerusalem, Cassino, or San Isidro, we are all inclined to cling unduly to passing things because we have to live our life of faith among them. It is faith that enables us to commit ourselves to building up the church and the monastery in the earthly city. In doing this we attain our full human stature, living as if everything depended on us, in the certainty that everything depends on God. Our work has its value because our hearts are set on God. God alone suffices. While we fulfil God’s will for ourselves in obedience to our vows, we cannot know God’s plan: whether our work is to endure for centuries or only briefly.
By prayer and generous service of his family in the time of Spain’s long agony, Saint Raphael discovered God’s will for himself at home, after his first period of monastic life. He realised that, while he had not exactly made an idol of San Isidro, his intentions needed purification. Once he had achieved that purification he lived in unbounded joy, whether amid the privation of silence at home, or amid the brethren in the bracing air of the monastery, as his health dictated. After recurrent bouts of illness, he was welcomed back to San Isidro in December 1937 to die there in the following April. May his example inspire us, and his prayer support us, as we work in our humble way to build up our community, our family, our monastery.