The lamps that are lit

Many people have at least heard the name of the great Swiss theologian von Balthasar; few, I suppose, have read his works that require a considerable cultural preparation to be understood and properly appreciated.In his genius, however, the theologian, just because he was great, was able to identify examples or metaphors (how can we fail to recall Neruda and the postman Mario?) that enabled his readers to enter into a demanding discourse, and understand it.The question under discussion is monasticism. Does there exist anything more remote from the current climate of European life and culture? Can one think of young people today who resolve to enter a monastery and who, more often than not, never leave it again? Let us place ourselves in the hands of some witnesses. And the hand is important…Von Balthasar invites us to look at a castle, to let our eye rove over its machicolations, its towers, its drawbridge, and then to raise our gaze to the flagpole where flutters the banner with the motto of its fortunate owner. It reads: “God exists. I’ve met him”. That is the monk and that is monasticism.Only the personal and profound meeting with God enables us to cross the drawbridge and open the door. Everything else remains outside. What is inside the walls of the castle, on the other hand, is only the territory of God and of the history with God and in God, for oneself and for one’s brothers. It’s a real immersion in history but with a particular focus: that of travelling through one’s own existence with the One we have met, because He is the meaning of life. Europe is dotted with the castles of feudal lords, of aristocratic families, but it is also dotted with monastic buildings, whether artistic or modest, farmsteads and simple cottages of little value, over which flutters the motto that changes our life. Tourist guidebooks offer no end of them. But what they lack is the target, the genuine goal, because they encourage us travel, undoubtedly in the search for beauty, but they don’t enable us to encounter the ultimate Beauty. We need to embark on a far more demanding and personal journey to enter, even if only as a temporary guest, into the climate of Beauty, of the monastery, in the prayer that provides the rhythm of our day, and in the silence that embraces and leads us. If only all the lights that illuminate our European nights could be turned off for only a few minutes, leaving only the perennial lamps of those who pray lit up, the surprise would be enormous: lamps that are silent and poor, and not of course phosphorescent, but always alive. Europe would then understand the face that wants to forget itself, that of European man who knows he is in transit, a guest on this earth, but with a precise goal that leads him to the garden where Christ shall await him in glory. I have written ‘those who pray’, because the lamps lit up are those of the Jews who pore, with bowed head, over the Torah by night; those of the Muslims who sing the verses of the Koran; those of the monks and nuns recently revived among the Christians of the Reformed Churches, together with the monks of Orthodoxy and Catholicism.Let us be led by the hand of Augustine, Benedict, Francis and Clare, Teresa of the Child Jesus and John of the Cross, Roger Schütz and the founders of the present-day movements who have understood the importance of prayer: who have understood that, if persons who spend all their time in the presence of God are lacking, all our action (however great and well-merited) risks being reduced to dust.Recently, a group of nuns decided to “stay” amid the snows of Finland, just as their sisters and brothers “stay” in an island in the Mediterranean. Climatic extremes, linguistic extremes, penetrated, and hence united, by the meeting with Him who gives a meaning to life and who – an even greater miracle – can restore meaning to life.Everything is invisible, not by some form of magic, but because ostentation does not nourish silence and only silence nourishes the loving communion, the listening to the Word and the dialogue with the Friend, the Father, the Bridegroom.In Western films, at a particularly dramatic point in the story, a Red Indian pressed his ear to the ground to understand from what direction the enemy was approaching and thus be able to lead his tribe to safety.If only we were to train our European ear to hear and tune into the sound wave of the silence of prayer that runs through a Europe that everyone says is old and ageing, but that I say is young and strong if I look at the faces of her young nuns and monks! So they are small in number? And their number is falling? As is the birth rate as a whole today, and yet they are alive and living.