Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - Everyone admires the beauty of a splendid rose bush or the sumptuous majesty of a great oak tree, but how many think of the root below these wonders of nature? Everyone knows the root is indispensable - even for hydroponic plants which, almost paradoxically, manage without soil - but few think of the authentic function of the hidden organ which, in fact, elaborating and supplying nutritive substances present naturally in the soil or added by man, guarantees vegetal organisms life and growth and, in ordinary plantations, ensures adequate stability anchoring them to the element which allows existence.
In a sense from the human point of view enclosed monastic life could be considered the root for the world of today. If in the past when people were conscious of the transcendence and holiness of God, all powerful Creator and Preserver, of His redeeming and sanctifying love, it was easier to recognise the value of a life removed from all exterior activity, hover good, and dedicated completely to praise and adoration of God and his glory, and intercession on behalf of the whole Church, today the testimony offered by enclosed monastic life runs perhaps along another track: it challenges and astonishes, poses questions, at the same time throws a life line to reach a safe haven.
Men and women of today bear a heavy burden of insecurity, few points of support, actual or latent war, violence, disease. People often live in a spiral of the absence of values, of uncertainty for tomorrow and at the same time unbridled desire for possession and pleasure, aware that man can now at will regulate and change even the laws of nature, although he is unprepared to suffer the consequences. In brief, people question the existence of God, and which God, since man can or at least claims he can do without God.
However precisely in this situation men and women born in this same world but who have the courage to resist the dominant system, impulse of instinct, whims and fancy, who have the courage to give a definitive direction to life, to take on a lasting commitment, to leave the external world for a enclosed place in order to open to the Infinite, to bind themselves to a routine rule of life to be capable of contemplation, to make vows of poverty, chastity, obedience in order to be truly free to experience the fullness of life and happiness, precisely these people can be witnesses for men and women of today little inclined to hear about God They can sow seeds of truly salubrious doubt which is already an answer: then God does exist and so does eternal life and happiness!
Religious men and women living the enclosed monastic life can show people of today the root of their beginning and their end, and the “humus” from which all life springs. With their prayers, sacrifices, total gift of self, enclosed religious are like the hidden root which absorbs, restores, elaborates and diffuses all those elements of grace and holiness which belong to God and are enriched by the contribution of the whole Mystical Body of Christ, to enable every human person to live fullness of life in God in justice, love and peace. Benedictine Mother Maria Stefania, Abbess S. Maria di Rosano (Florence) (Agenzia Fides 20/11/2006 - Righe 41, parole 598)
