The maze of our lives…
Life is a soap opera.
No Terry, it’s a maze, you just wrote to David and said, “Oh David, life is so difficult, the twists and turns, yet it is the same maze, and only once in a while are we able to see the pattern.” (Feel free to quote me on that.)
And I’m sure you see the connection with soap operas - “Days of our lives”…”Maze of our lives.” I like tweaking titles from media to suit my own creations. In sophomore year of High School I wrote my own coming of age novel entitled “The Cardinal In The Bushes” - a direct rip-off from Salinger’s “Catcher In The Rye’ - much to the amusement of my friends. Although I was unconscious of imitating the title, much less the story.
Of course I was Holden Caulfield, but I’m sure my name was more glamorous, probably Corky St. Clair or something. My mother read the manuscript and considered having me committed or sent away to undergo shock treatments. She had no idea that I had so many ‘experiences’ and I had the hardest time explaining that it was all just my imagination, that I was a ‘novelist’ - which somehow scared her more.
(And again, life is somewhat analogous to a soap opera in that, just as the same drama is repeated over and over in the shows, thus so in life. We frequently encounter the same difficulties over and over until we realize the lesson we need to learn. Soap operas are never resolved, although we can resolve our own life issues if we are able to recognize the pattern. Or at least discover there is one.)
What about the maze analogy?
Yeah, well, I was reading a 4 page letter my former novice master had written to me in 1982 - Wow! 25 years ago. As he often remarked, “How Providential.” I ought not to identify him, even though he is deceased, so I’ll call him Fr. Sean. I must remind everyone that I had been in three different monasteries, so don’t try to figure out which one. I wrote about Fr. Sean once before and almost got sued by the monastery and Father’s family. (I have letters however, and I keep absolutely everything, so all a lawsuit would accomplish is to make my life a bit inconvenient.)
Oh. What about the maze analogy…
The letter.
In this morning’s Gospel Jesus rebukes the disciples for not believing the others when they told them how they saw the Lord after the resurrection. I couldn’t help but wonder why people always think others are lying to them. Anyway - I’m here to tell you, I don’t make this stuff up. (I thought I should add this disclaimer to cancel any doubt one may have regarding my veracity.)
Towards the end of 1981 I found myself writing to Sean because I felt I should return to the monastery, and just to clear the air regarding some ugly rumors about Father. I had just recently emerged from a short lapse in my moral life, converted as I was shortly after John Paul II became Pope. Sean wrote me a beautiful letter (if not revealing of his own struggle) concerning sanctity in the present moment.
Fr. Sean admitted that he had suffered a nervous breakdown in the cloister, and thereby explained his living outside the monastery, albeit remaining a member of the community. Commenting upon my temporary falling back, and his breakdown, he wrote,
“For both of us, the house that we built too much with our own hands had to collapse. As painful as those days were in their own right, through them we tasted the sweetness of God. I may be wrong (yet I doubt it!), what I see happening to you now is what must happen to every true child of God: transformation into the unique image of Christ that you most deeply are. There is no other way but to lose everything we clung to and to surrender to the darkness which is Love. You are being formed into the pattern of Christ’s death that his image may rise to fulfilment within you. Trust the transforming process, Terry. Let God do it. Trust.” - Letter, Fr. Sean, 01/16/82
There is more to the letter, which happens to be a gem, and perhaps I’ll write about Sean more, using some of his letters as reference.
Two things.
In the first place re-reading Sean’s letter, I captured a glimpse of my so-called ’pilgrimage’ through life. I saw clearly how so often, the same experiences arise at different times in our lives, hidden in the various disguises of seemingly unrelated situations. Hence my thought, that life is something of a maze - the encounter of dead ends, round abouts, all of them different in place and time, yet all encapsulated into one big plan.
The point is, the substance of his letter, the lesson he was conveying, is as applicable to me today as it was then, albeit I rejected what he said at the time. Perhaps now I may learn from it and understand a bit better…
Secondly, I was able to read Fr. Sean’s letter with greater compassion for his own struggle, his fallings and risings, without rejecting his profound spiritual insight, and growth in holiness. At the time he wrote, I had idealized him as well as his vocation as monk, and wouldn’t allow for his fragile humanity, his seeking to come to terms with the person he was.
For now, let’s just say he died at a very young age. It was a holy death, marked by a profound return to his early love of Christ, then renewed in his devotion to the Divine Mercy. A fellow monk revealed to me his greatest consolation in death was gazing upon the Image of Divine Mercy.
I feel so badly that I rejected him, yet exult because Our Lord never did.
It has taken me these many years to finally understand. It seems fitting that this grace should come on the eve of the feast of Divine Mercy.
Jesus, I trust in you.
