Saints As They Really Are: Voices of Holiness in Our Time

Chapter Five: “You want to be happy?”: My Carmelite Years

105 c ha pter five “You want to be happy?” My Carmelite Years Interspersed with a memoir of my own experience in religious life is the rule of the Carmelites, the order to which I belonged. It is the shortest of the rules of religious communities, but its brevity does not obscure the balance of life among prayer, study, and work that I was gifted with in these Carmelite years.1 So, the rule, though ancient, has a great deal to do with how I did learn how to be happy, not just in my Carmelite days but throughout the rest of my life—something Father Vincent McDonald, as you will hear, was concerned for me to understand and make my own. [1] Albert, called by God’s favor to be patriarch of the church of Jerusalem, bids health in the Lord and the blessing of the Holy Spirit to his beloved sons in Christ, B. and the other hermits under obedience to him, who live near the spring on Mount Carmel. [2] Many and varied are the ways in which our saintly forefathers laid down how everyone, whatever his station or the kind of religious observance he has chosen, should live a life in allegiance to Jesus Christ— how, pure in heart and stout in conscience, he must be unswerving in the service of the Master. 106 å S a i n t s a s T h e y R e a l l y A r e [3] It is to me, however, that you have come for a rule of life in keeping with your avowed purpose, a rule you may hold fast to henceforward; and therefore: [4] The first thing I require is for you to have a prior, one of yourselves, who is to be chosen for the office by common consent, or that of the greater and more mature part of you; each of the others must promise him obedience—of which, once promised, he must try to make his deeds the true reflection—and also chastity and the renunciation of ownership. The Rule of St. Albert2 Following a “Vocation” Like many of my age, in the late 1950s and early 1960s I was encouraged to pursue “a vocation.” Later, the Second Vatican Council, with its rediscovery of the priesthood of all the baptized and of the church as “the people of God,” made it clear that every person had, through baptism, a vocation to serve God and the neighbor. But in those days, though, “vocations” were to the ordained ministry and, in churches that had it, the religious life of brothers and sisters. The churches needed such “vocations.” Then, it was difficult to imagine other professions or careers that measured up to the sacrifice and good that these servants of the church could do. Thus families were usually strong in support of a son or daughter who felt so called. Even in the rigorous Trappist observance, Thomas Merton wrote of the flooding of Gethsemani Monastery with applicants in the post– World War II years. There were so many aspiring to monastic life that several new monasteries were established within a decade to disperse the influx of all these candidates. Once his first infatuation for monasticism faded, Merton saw many areas in which reform and renewal were necessary. He saw the flood of candidates as unsustainable. He was right on both counts. Religious life had become insulated and isolated from the rest of the church and the world. Rigorous intellec- “Y o u w a n t t o b e h a p p y ?” M y C a r m e l i t e Y e a r s å 107 tual development needed to return, as well as a more humane style of life. Those pursuing the life of the vows should be able to mature not only through studies but also human relationships, in community life. Often what passed for community was a formal schedule of events done in common. The atmosphere was one of many rules and authoritarian oversight.3 By the end of the 1960s, though, the trend of increased application for entrance to religious life had stopped. The number of applicants dropped, and many in religious life discerned it was not a life commitment for them and left. Eventually the ranks of the religious communities and the priesthood were dramatically reduced. As I look at...