Several years ago I took a vacation trip to Oklahoma to visit an old school friend. His name is Brother Damian and he lives in a Benedictine abbey. He ran out to the parking lot to welcome us, then took us indoors.
The heavy doors of the abbey closed behind us with the echoing sound of a bank vault. Inside everything was polished and scrubbed, shadowed and silent, gilded with rainbow hues that fell through stained-glass windows and bearing the faint scent of incense. For a week we lived there with the brothers and fathers--a very special world indeed, nearly howling with the breath of the holy Spirit. Needless to say, I felt out of my element.
Coming back home to Phoenix after a week inside the abbey was like falling into a cacophony of sound, movement, action and strain. We live in a noisy, busy world where it can be very hard to hear or even find God. I can't say abbey life is easier, because the brothers, like old sailors, learn over the years how to walk, eat, pray and live in the shifting and changing wind of grace. I've seen this in other places and other ways. Elijah experienced it (1Kings, 19) Just because on the outside people (and places) look quiet, serene and well-grounded doesn't mean God isn't working with great fierceness for the salvation of souls. If you want an image of a monk (brother, sister, priest, servant-of-the-Lord) think of sailors who roll with the pitching deck in the heart of the sea's great storms, or fire-keepers tending the furnaces of the universe...
It took a long time for me to understand what was going on. The difference between my friend's life and my own was stark. In the world his life is very humble and simple, but in the Kingdom he is a dedicated, brilliant worker, skilled in the boundary-world of faith. In my secular world I often feel pummeled and torn by fierce external storms, but inside I seem to always be searching for the slightest sound and sign of God.
Neither of us is wrong. We are each living the life God chose for us, both seeking most heartfully to do His will. And in each of our journeys God is present, completely and entirely. We struggle to see and hear Him, but he never fails. He is never absent. This is the Great Sign of faith, fulfilling the promise of Christ: "Lo! I will be with you always, even to the end of the age!"
Don't judge between vocations or seek outside yourself what is yours to do. Live the life God offers you, but live it in Christ, who makes all things one in himself. Then we can enter into the life to come rejoicing at the great reunion of all who seek Him.
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