“Sit in your cell as in Paradise,” Romuald tells us, and adds: “put the whole world behind you, and let it go.” In the previous instalment of this little commentary on the Brief Rule of Saint Romuald I spoke of the “cell”, the inner room at the heart of creation, as the Holy of Holies, the “First Day”, the inner chamber of the Temple that “was” Paradise.
What Romuald tells us now is to draw the curtain of the material universe behind us as we enter that sacred place, the curtain of our usual distractions and attachments in this life, the veil that protects us from a glory and a love we are simply not ready for—at least, not all the time in its unmediated intensity.
Let’s face it: we are all God’s autistic children. There is just so much love that we can take from God. It overwhelms us. And God knows that better than we do. Which is why (I suspect) we are allowed our distractions and naps during meditation, our signs and symbols in liturgy, and our “consolations” in prayer. Like a truly loving parent of an autistic child, God gives us only as much as we are able to receive, and only when we are ready to accept it.
I once watched the mother of an autistic child place a plate with a biscuit on it in sight of her son huddled in a corner rocking to and fro. He pretended not to see; but soon after she left, he went up and ate the biscuit. That was as much love as he could take. But it was enough. It struck me that God was like that mother, bringing me only as much as I could cope with at any one time, huddled in my corner “meditating”.
The sacred Veil of the Temple was woven of mixed threads, three of wool, one of linen and one of gold, representing creation: purple for water, red for fire, blue for air (these three of wool), white (linen) for the land, and gold for divinity. The four elements of the created world (fire, water, air and land) are, notice, woven together with uncreated divinity: the Creator is visible in creation, God is present in the world, the thread of divinity is woven into the fabric of being.
The Veil of “this world” is not, then, a mask or an obstacle that hides God, but a garment that protects us from more than we can accept. (The usual high priestly vestments were made of exactly the same stuff as the Veil.) There is nothing here of the stoic or Gnostic hatred of flesh and the world. Nor is that the case with the Rule. Romuald doesn’t say, “reject the world”, “despise the world”, or “condemn the world”. He says “forget”—or as I have chosen to translate it here, “let it go”: in other words, “don’t cling to it”—at least, not when you “sit in your cell as in Paradise”, not when you are in God’s presence.
Detachment is a key monastic and contemplative “virtue” (literally, “strength”). But misunderstood as “not caring” it is easily distorted into a weakness, indeed a vice. Detachment is a paradox. Its purpose is to subvert the kind of attachment that cares for nothing and no one but the illusion called “I”, the ego. When I cling to the illusion of my own separate and autonomous “I” as opposed to and over-and-against you, I am, in fact, detached from my own True Self. That kind of “detachment” is what it means to be “lost”—from which we need to be “saved”. But we are not “saved” by being “attached” to someone or something else—that would be imprisonment—but by being set free. What sets us free is the truth; and the “truth” is not something “I” can grasp, but a person who loves me: “I am the truth, the way, and the life,” says Jesus. We receive our True Self as gift only when “I” move out of myself in love towards “you” because God first loved us, a love made visible, “become flesh”, in Christ.
There is an early Church legend (from the second century) that speaks of Mary as one of the Temple virgins who wove the Veil and the priestly vestments. When the lots were cast, it fell to her to weave the purple and the red—water and fire: symbols of the Holy Spirit and baptism. While she was weaving, the legend says, the Angel of the Lord appeared to Mary and the Holy Spirit (Holy Wisdom) came and “overshadowed” her—took up abode over this new “Ark of the Covenant”, this “Daughter of Sion”. The Angel told Mary that the child to be born of her was to be called—which is to say was to be—“Yahweh saves”…
Jesus. Mary (like the Holy Spirit that “overshadows” her) is called both “mother” and “bride” of Christ, just as Divine Wisdom, Yahweh’s Holy Spirit, is both his “Virgin Mother” and “Bride”. Now, Mary is just us as God had always intended us to be: “immaculately conceived” (i.e. free and whole from the beginning), “virginal” (i.e. free for ever) and “mother of God” (i.e. the gold thread woven into creation as God’s “image and likeness”).
As we enter into the Holy of Holies we “forget” the world and “let it go” not in carelessness or escape but in the way of self-forgetting and self-giving love. Indeed, we enter and “sit” in the presence of God so as to learn how to embrace and care more deeply for the world by moving out of our own veiled autism and clinging fear.
How do we do that? “Like a skilled fisherman watching for fish, carefully observe your thoughts.” More about that next time!
Comentários