14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Mt 11:25-30

I am a hydrologist, a hydraulics engineer. This sounds like a good title. It satisfies my ego. In fact, what I do here at the monastery this summer, as I did last summer, is move water. I dig ditches, haul heavy rocks and shovel dirt and mud to build and tear down dams, as I irrigate my field to provide grass for cows and horses. But I have learned a lot from my field. When I first started on it last year, the ranch monk told me that all the canals and ditches that I see are interconnected. I took it on faith. I had no experience. As I worked on and explored the field, I found the intricate connections. Over the years past, others had started and added to these ditches until much of the field could be watered. I then added on my small contribution, the latest in a long line of ditch diggers.

I find that the church is the same way. It is a series of canals of grace that are brought over the centuries to the field of the human condition. The canals are all interconnected started from the time of Jesus and his Apostles. A child takes this all on faith, and then explores for itself to learn the connections. Some canals are well traveled, such as catechism for First Holy Communion and Confirmation. But over the centuries new canals of grace are added in art, theatre, music and dance. Religion and science find ways to bring God's grace to a person. I don't so much reinvent the Church as I discover it in my own lifetime. When I try to teach someone, I am adding my own little canal of grace in the modern world in which I live.

Some people try and climb out of the canals of grace and do it on their own. Their lives become laborious and burdensome. They grow weary in search of rest. This monastery works especially in that part of the field devoted to contemplative prayer. The monastic world is connected to all other parts of the church, but devotes a lot of time to silence and solitude. It is God's meek and hmble way to draw close to us in our search. Some discover this prayer through the monastery, or maybe some other way. Some see in silence and solitude only boredom and prefer to go back to their gadgets to stay occupied and distracted.

We at the monastery believe that the field of the human condition is called union with God, a union so deep that it transforms us. The lack of this union is what makes us so weary and restless in our search to lift the burdens of our life. What is burdensome is to try and live our lives without spirit in our bodies. To take upon ourselves the discipline of solitude and silence in prayer each day, is to wear the yoke of Christ and to let Christ gently lead us to fullness of life.