Seeking hiddeness

“Live by that pattern,” says Saint Paul, “and make more of it than ever.”

1 Thessalonians 4:1

 

 

Mr Arek Lipowski, Oblate of Silverstream, in Prayer

 

"The Host is fragile; so are we.  The Host is disarmingly humble; so would we be. The Host is the living icon of the poverty of God made man; so we would become poor with Him.  The Host is silent; so do we find ourselves cherishing silence over words. The Host is the sacrament of the Divine Hiddenness; so too must we choose hiddenness over ostentation, and obscurity over acclaim. The Host is obedient, remaining where it is placed, not moving of Itself or by Itself, but waiting to be moved; and that is, I think, the very pattern of how we ought to live so as to please God. “Live by that pattern,” says Saint Paul, “and make more of it than ever” (1 Thessalonians 4:1).

My personal preference would be to retreat into an utterly hidden existence, to imitate the life of the Sacred Host hidden away in the tabernacle. Withdrawn from the tabernacle, the Sacred Host disappears into the mouth of the communicant and, being absorbed into the communicant’s body, absorbs the communicant into the life of the Three Divine Persons, where the Son ceaselessly offers Himself, in love, to the Father. The Host, while disappearing, is divinely active, bringing about a transforming union with Christ the Head and with the members of His Body, the Church. The monk too is called to disappear and, paradoxically, it is in disappearing that the monk becomes most efficacious and fruitful. Was this not the great discovery of Saint Thérèse?  “Yes,” she writes, “I have found my place in the Church and it is You, O my God, who have given me this place; in the heart of the Church, my Mother, I shall be Love. Thus I shall be everything, and thus my dream will be realized.”

  

Dom Mark Daniel Kirby

Abbott, Silverstream Priory

Stamullen, County Meath, Ireland

Click here: An Urgent Appeal | Vultus Christi (full text -March 16, 2014)  From time to time over the past several years I have shared the writings of Dom Mark Daniel Kirby.  Visit his blog today. You will leave the richer for it!