Seven years ago, before my time in Miami learning Spanish, I took a week-long retreat at the Trappist Monastery of Gethsemane, down in Kentucky.
It was a wonderful time of silence and prayer, and a chance to do some of my favorite things: pray, read, and not talk to anyone. In fact, just knowing that there is a place out there where no one is permitted to talk brings joy to the cockles
of my heart. While I was there, I found myself fascinated by the life of the monks themselves. There are many aspects of their horarium that one might find interesting, but I think the simplest way to explain what captures the modern imagination about hermits and cloistered religious is that they are, in a word, weird.

It is a rare thing in the modern world to have almost any silence and dead time at all; but to live the vast majority of one’s life without any superfluous noise or conversation is downright bizarre. The lives of silent monks speak to both
the practical reality of how one can best focus their hearts and minds on prayer, and on the witness it gives to others that there is something beyond this world that should command our focus. Celibacy for the sake of the kingdom accomplishes the same goals. There is both the practical reality that it would be substantially more difficult to minister as a priest while still being a good husband and father, and the eschatological sign that it provides that points people to the next life. Priests and religious putting aside the good of marriage to demonstrate unwavering focus on the next life, when lived well, is a sign of service and inspiration to those who are called to the beautiful vocation of marriage. They are two sides of the same coin.

During the second week of Advent each year, the Church calls our attention to the witness of the great forerunner of Our Lord, St. John the Baptist. Even more than silent monks or celibate religious, St. John’s way of life would have seemed strange and unsettling to many. The strangeness of his ministry and the lives of his followers would have called people’s attention away from the day-to-day worries and  concerns and lift their minds to living life with one’s eyes on the afterlife. Even two thousand years after his life and death, we can still meditate on the same lessons that he sought to share with the world.
 
The pandemic has brought to the forefront of our minds many unspoken beliefs that our culture has about life and death. It is easy to focus on the negative because Lord knows there is plenty of that. But as a people of Faith, a people who are called to evangelize, we should see these things as opportunities to speak into the fears and concerns that people have about life and what comes after. Perhaps the challenge of John the Baptist in 2020 is to stay focused on the next life while still maintaining care and concern for others and prudent responsibility for our own wellbeing. We shouldn’t be reckless and put others at risk, but it would no doubt be seen as a strange thing nowadays to care more about how this time can be used to grow in holiness than this life itself. People may find it strange, but John the Baptist is a lesson in how strange can shake people out of complacency. May God grant us the grace to use every challenge and circumstance of this life to prepare for the life that is yet to come.
 
Prayers always,
Fr. McC