Words on the Word
Consecration
We normally mark the Day of Consecrated Life at Candlemas, but on that day this year, many of us were in Rome on pilgrimage. So we keep the day today instead, with all our religious gathered in the cathedral. The readings are of the day: the Saturday of Week 7.
Sirach 17.1-14: He gave them a heart to think with.
Mark 10.13-16: Anyone who does not welcome the kingdom of God like a little child.
Dom Gabriel Sortais, abbot general of our order 1951-61, used to say that monks and nuns are exposed to two destructive tendencies. The first is overwork, which causes the purpose of consecrated life to drown in activism, self-realisation, and stress. The second is infantilism. What did he mean by that? Primarily the relinquishing of responsibility that can occur in any form of institutional living. I think of a friend who for some years was superior of his religious community. He once told me: ‘You wouldn’t know how many toasters the brethren are able to ruin in a year!’ Anyone who has lived in community can imagine the scenario: we’re about to have breakfast; we put a slice of bread in the toaster; it gets stuck; we impatiently shake the toaster, and perhaps insert a good, sharp knife; only to discover that the thing has stopped working. We think, ‘Bother!’, put the toaster down, and slap on a post-it sticker with the inscription, ‘Broken’, expecting that somebody else, a grown-up, will ensure that next morning I find a usable toaster in its proper place. For surely no one can expect me to go about my business without toast! Is the toaster not there, I get upset.
The example is banal, a little silly; but it does touch a nerve. We easily assume we deserve to be taken care of. We think that others must get their act together; that I (so busy!) must be provided with what I need, if not on a silver platter, then at least on a platter of tin. This kind of expectation lay at the root of the Israelites’ fundamental sin on their way out of Egypt — the boring, monotonous, childish murmuring St Benedict warns against insistently in his Rule, reminding us that murmuring may poison not merely an individual’s life, but the life of a whole community.
To become an adult is about, first of all, assuming responsibility for oneself; then to take responsibility for the good of others. In the normal course of a life, this happens when we become mothers and fathers. To know oneself able and obliged to pour oneself out that others may live and thrive: this is what makes people, men or women, reach their full measure. We who are consecrated, like other folk not biologically parents, must go through this maturing in our own way. But all of us, without exception, are called to become mothers and fathers, be it spiritually and figuratively.
In a former age, a professed nun was called ‘Mother’, a monk, ‘Father’. Perhaps that wasn’t so daft. That way one was reminded of an expectation, and spurred on to expect something of oneself. It isn’t much of an alternative to remain a child or an adolescent in increasingly worn packaging, embodiments of growth that never happened.
How, then, can we follow the Lord’s exhortation to be like children without becoming infantile?
Note: the Gospel does not ask us to revert to childhood. To be a disciple of Jesus is to heed the commandment, ‘Follow me!’, conscious where it leads: ‘Up to Jerusalem’. That’s no child’s play. Adult resolve and courage are called for. What Jesus says is that we should receive the kingdom of God like children. Receptivity is at stake, so that the kingdom of God can bear fruit in us and, through us, for others.
Thomas Aquinas liked to stress the principle, Quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur. Which is to say: Anything at all that is received, is received according to the general state of the recipient. This may sound abstract, so let’s consider a couple of examples. If I am told I have won the lottery while I’ve terrible stomach ache, my joy in such luck will be distracted; if I am fined for speeding on the evening Norway finally wins the Eurovision Song Contest, the penalty is less bitter. If I am an angry, complex-ridden or very ambitious person, the Gospel of God’s kingdom will leave me largely indifferent: I’ll be too shut up in myself. We must, then, practice the ability to receive it like children, in other words, with wonder, open expectation, and clear-sighted trust, qualities we do not acquire once for all. They must constantly be developed anew, at each stage of life, until they are tested definitively in the hour of our death, when we are invited to surrender ourselves freely into the Father’s hands. 
These last few days I have been reading a book about Bernadette Soubirous, the visionary of Lourdes. The book is about her adult life as a Sister of Charity. It has reminded me of what it takes to realise a consecrated existence. Let me share with you three aspects. First, Bernadette, a gifted person who had glimpsed God’s kingdom with her eyes of flesh, was supremely free with regard to her own giftedness. When others praised or flattered her, she simply said, ‘Oh, it might just as well have been someone else’. And that was that. As a result it was liberating to be in her presence. Secondly, she peacefully embraced her own limitations. She had poor health, walked with a stick already as a young woman. This bothered her not at all. She saw it as part of her calling. ‘What do you do with a broom’, she once asked a sister, ‘when you have finished sweeping the floor?’ The sister answered, ‘I put it behind the door.’ Bernadette exclaimed, ‘Exactly! The blessed Virgin used me as a broom. When she no longer had use for me, she put me in my place, behind the door. Here I am. And here I shall remain.’ A hidden life can represent an essential task. Thirdly, Bernadette was able to see life in a transcendent perspective. Practically minded, she was illumined by the Light she had seen in the grotto at Massabielle. Quite naturally she lived supernaturally, a contemplative life marked by charity, reverence, the fear of God, and mellow self-irony. In peace she passed from time into eternity, 35 years old. She shows us what it is to live in a way at once mature and child-like, a dignified, fruitful life. May ours be such. Amen.