The question this column purports to answer is a clear one: Will religious life rise again? Yes? But is it sensible in this day and age to even think of such a thing? The answer is actually a simple one but a potentially life-changing one at the same time. Several ancient stories long ago illuminated both the purpose and the spirituality of what it means to be a religious. Even now, even here.
The first of those stories is from the tales of the desert monastics.
One day, Abbot Arsenius was asking an old Egyptian man for advice on something.
Someone who saw this said to him: “Abba Arsenius, why is a person like you, who has such great knowledge of Greek and Latin, asking a peasant like this for advice?” And Arsenius replied, “Indeed, I have learned the knowledge of Latin and Greek, yet I have not learned even the alphabet of this peasant.”
The Zen masters, too, tell a story about the nature of real religious commitment.
The monk Tetsugen made the goal of his life the printing of the Buddha’s sutras onto Japanese woodblocks. It was an enormous and expensive undertaking and just as he collected the last of the funds he needed, the Uji River overflowed and left thousands homeless.
So Tetsugen spent all the money he’d collected on the homeless and began his fundraising again.
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With thanks to the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) and Joan Chittister, where this article originally appeared.
