Fr. Ryan Lerner, Chaplain
This week I’m writing to you from the peaceful silence of Saint Joseph Abbey, a Trappist monastery in Spencer, Massachusetts, where I am on retreat with my friend, Fr. Richard, a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, who I first met sixteen years ago in the seminary of Saint Joseph in Yonkers. For a few days we are living and praying with a community of Benedictine monks. The Abbey is located atop a small mountain. The landscape here is vast, and one can see for miles.
It was chilly and windy when I went out for a mid-morning run. Starting from just outside the guesthouse, which is just a stone’s throw from the Chapel, it was all downhill for the first mile-and-a-half, then rolling country roads for the next six miles or so. The return was a steep, brutal climb back up the mountain, as that fierce, howling wind pressed against my body, making each step feel like an act of surrender to the ascent.
As I continued to climb, I put my head down and leaned into the resistance. I found strength in that surrender, just as we find strength and grace when we surrender to God’s will, which at times can feel like a mighty wind.
I was praying with words I came across in the last lines of a book which caught my eye shortly after I arrived here on Monday night. The book, entitled Run to the Mountain, is the third volume in a series of journals written by the late Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk and one of the most influential spiritual writers of the twentieth century. Merton penned these words in December of 1941, following an intense period of conversion and awaiting a response from the Franciscans and the Trappists about whether he would be accepted into their novitiate, which of course would shape the rest of his life.
Merton’s words, written so many years ago, echoed in my mind as I ran up the steep final mile to the monastery. He wrote: “When I pray, there is no fear, for the Lord shelters me, who am nothing, in the immensity of His being and His silence and His love. O God, My God! I long to cry out and out to Thee, over and over, and Thou art nameless and infinite. All our names for Thee are not Thy name, infinite Trinity. But Thy Word is Jesus, and I cry the name of Thy Son and live in the love of His heart and believe, if He wills, He will bring me the answer to my only prayer: that I may renounce everything and belong entirely to the Lord.”
In the wind and the cold, with every stride, I silently repeated these words like a mantra: “I have no fear, I live in the love of Your heart, help me to renounce everything and belong to You. Run to the Mountain.”
Whether we are discerning our vocation or awaiting a response, a letter of acceptance or appointment, an answer to a prayer, when we surrender ourselves to live in the love of Christ and trust that He will answer in accord with God’s holy will, it is a continual process of renunciation, letting go of what we think we need, in order to belong entirely to God.
When we have that mindset, we are always ascending, even when it feels like the wind is in our face. So let’s run to the mountain, embrace the unknown, the difficult, and the uncomfortable, trusting that in God's heart, all will be made clear.
