One of the dangers of learning about a subject through reading, without obtaining a firsthand experience of the subject, is that it is easy to get a false sense of the true nature of the subject. In religious circles, for example, there are stories floating around the internet from frustrated converts who became Catholic, Orthodox, or a particular brand of Protestantism by reading their way into that church, without getting a real sense of what the church was like through personal experience before entering it.
I confess that I am guilty of having an overly sentimental view of monastic life because I have read about it, but not lived it. A life of silence and prayer seems appealing when the maelstrom of life reaches a fever pitch.
This article about a story from Sicily should cure me, and anyone who reads it, of that overly sentimental view: "Criminal serving his sentence with monks pleads to be sent back to prison....because monastery life is too hard."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2081757/Criminal-serving-sentence-monks-pleads-sent-prison--monastery-life-hard.html
(Thanks to Matthew Dallman for the link, and for noting the appropriate nature of the article's last line: "Nobody at the Santa Maria community was available for comment").
It is love that makes all things easy. I am a Catholic who "read" my way into the Church. It is the best thing that ever happened to me. Why? Because I love the Church. Have bad things happened to me during the 40 years that I have been in Catholic Church? Yes, of course, but the Mass and the Eucharist and Confession make it all worth it.
ReplyDeleteA monk without love will suffer greatly, but a monk who loves God and loves his vocation will find heaven on earth.
P.S. Watch out for the Daily Mail. It is a tabloid-style rag out of England with no love for the Catholic Church.
I was just talking with my daughter who is your age. She reads the Daily Mail and really likes it. She says it is no more anti-Catholic than most of the media. (She was reading the story about the man who shot his wife in Miami [near our old neighborhood -- friends of friends] -- and posted the photos of his wife's body on Facebook.)
ReplyDeleteThe news media's relationship with the Catholic church is strange. On the one hand, they give the Catholic Church a lot of attention - much more than any other religious group, it seems like, even here in "Luther-land" of the upper Midwest where there are as many Lutherans as Catholics. Some of it is positive - witness the stories about the priest at the Missouri car crash. But, I agree, much of it is also unfortunately very hostile.
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