A Handbook
for Extern Associates
of a
Recluse of the Common Reclusion

who are also
Monks of the Monastery
of Christ in the Desert

<<< The extern associate must not speak to others about the life of the recluse or about his association with the recluse. He must not under any circumstances allow this booklet to be read by others. He must suffer with the recluse the pain of silence by laboring to ensure that no one knows what the recluse does, where he lives or even that he exists. <<< //First Edition, Dated December 7, 1994// //Approved by The Most Reverend Michael J. Sheehan, Archbishop of Santa Fe, and by The Very Reverend Philip Lawrence, O.S.B., Prior of the Monastery of Christ in the Desert.// ''Introduction'' The recluse of the Common Reclusion has been humiliated by God. He is left a cripple in the world; he is a worthless bum. But such is what God has willed him to be; and since he has nothing else to call his own, he dares not sully God's will. So the recluse accepts that God wills him to be a worthless fool; he aims only at that which God wills him to be; which is the most common and worthless occupation of all: a lover of God and neighbor. So the recluse does only what God wills him to be, nothing more, nothing less; for in this only is he wise, that nothing is that is not of God. So he retires into his strict enclosure to be as worthless to the world as God wills him to be; a man who can do nothing more than love his God and his neighbor; a man wholly worthless in himself and wholly dependent; upon God and his Extern Associates. Now God knows the character of his worthless bum, the recluse, and he has pity; for he knows how poor he has made him; and so whatever gifts he has kept from the recluse, he multiplies seven times seventy-fold; and these he gives to his agents of mercy, the recluse's Extern Associates. For it is like a little retreat-house reserved for God, this unity between humiliation and strength, recluse and extern associate; a miniature image of God's Church in every detail; a place where Christ may retire and be at home; a place where God may rest in the warmth of his Mother's heart. It is rather like the home of Lazarus, where Christ dwelt frequently and long. A very hospitable home, where the family tended perfectly to the needs of their guest. Where Martha, certainly the gifted homemaker and cook, tended the fire and prepared the meal; while Mary, less gifted and perhaps a nuisance in such matters, did what she did better; which was to engage their guest in conversation; or rather, to listen and love his conversation with the Father. Now if everyone in the Lazarus household had bothered about the kitchen, poor Jesus would have been left alone in the living room, a neglected and unhappy guest; whilst if everyone had abandoned the kitchen to converse with Jesus in the living room, the cold, hunger and noise of the affair would have left for God no polite alternative than prompt escape. Either way, Christ would not have been a frequent guest; indeed he ought not ever have returned; but as it was, Lazarus, Martha and Mary were fine hosts; and Christ dwelt there frequently and long. Now in tending this little retreat-house for Christ, the extern associate attends to all those spiritual, intellectual and material needs, about which the recluse is best not involved; while the recluse keeps their guest in conversation. Now anyone who has ever kept a guest in conversation knows well that oddly intense desire to do the dishes; whilst nothing so quickly discovers the conversationalist in a man as vigorous pot-scrubbing. But so long as everyone keeps to the task that falls to him, the household remains hospitable; and Christ is sure to be a frequent visitor. But Christ is a very spoiled guest. He expects no less hospitality than he receives from his Mother. So if the little retreat-house for God tended by the recluse and his extern associates is to welcome Christ, nay, beg him to stay, it must become very much like the home prepared by Mary for her Son. Which home is above all her heart. Now we can't say much about Mary's heart; because the one thing we know about her heart is that it is silent; with the silence that ponders the depths of eternity. Of this we can know nothing more than silence; and that God dwelt there, whole and entire; and that while God could have dwelt in any heart of his making, he chose one that was silent. So if we wish to welcome Christ into our retreat-house, we should be wise to observe his requirements. Above all else, this spiritual home between extern associates and their recluse must be silent in the eternal silence of God. But make no mistake: this kind of silence, this Marian silence of love in which God dwells, is no retreat: at least not for us; but certainly for God. For on this earth, silence of this sort brings pain. We want to talk about God; we especially want to talk about God dwelling in us. To shut up, to keep this most secret of things secret, hurts. The longer we keep it, the deeper is the pain. But this pain has nothing to do with God dwelling in us, even if we should be so lucky; it has rather to do with the death-throes of our pride, and of our desire to gossip and chatter, which we must suffer to put to death: for surely nothing can make Christ a more unwelcome guest than such noise. The true host of Christ chooses rather to be like Mary; to welcome Christ and ponder his visitation with a silent heart; and so to gladly suffer the pain of silence. Of course Mary suffered this pain of silence more than any, because she suffered it not at all in herself. She suffered it with her Son, for all of humanity. The pain of Mary in her silence was the very pain of Christ in his passion and crucifixion; the pain of all sin dying. The recluse enters into this silence of Mary through the obscurity of life and enclosure to which he is most strictly bound by Rule; for this Marian silence is the specialty for which God has humiliated him; and so he specially suffers the pain of this silence. But he does so with a joy he cannot contain; for this silence in the heart of Mary is the very architectural proportion and ornament which seduce Christ into his little retreat-house; and if extern associates are to enter into this home, adorn it and tend it hospitably for Christ, they must dress properly for the affair. They must bathe themselves in silence, gird their loins and anoint their heads in silence; they must put on and breathe silence; and so they must enter with the recluse into his spiritual retreat house, the deep silence and hidden obscurity of Mary. Here they must suffer with the recluse the pain of silence, so that they may know the joy of Christ. For then, in this little spiritual retreat-house formed between the extern associates and their recluse, there will be that kind of home that Christ designed for himself; one that is to him as familiar and restful as his Mother's arms: a desire silent in the pure singularity of its desire for God. And here God will dwell, frequently and long. ''About This Booklet'' This little booklet is primarily a tapestry of texts taken from the //Rule of Common Reclusion//. It is intended to help introduce the monks of Christ in the Desert to the life of the recluse for whom they are Extern Associates, and to help them integrate their own labor to his so that the labor of both may become a single act of charity. ''About The Extern Associate and His Duties'' The first duty of the extern associate in tending this little retreat-house for God, is to love no other will than God's. For a monk of Christ in the Desert, this means being faithful; indeed, heroically faithful; to his vows and to the Holy Rule of Benedict. If the extern associate can suffer pain in order to make his brother monks saints, all the better; they suffer plenty for him, God knows. But suffering plenty is not enough for God. He demands heroic suffering. So he makes some monks suffer more than their lot; he makes them Extern Associates of a recluse of the Common Reclusion. The extern associate suffers for the recluse because this is God's will; because God has made the recluse a dependent and generally worthless lout; because the recluse cannot fight his own sin except by being the lout that God wills him to be; which means that he must be very loutish; because the strength, glory and power of God has an odd affinity for the foolish things of the earth; and because nothing is more foolish on this earth than a recluse. So the recluse offends the world with his foolishness, because Christ seems to like to chat with fools. But Christ also has a particular fondness for those who suffer heroically, especially those who suffer fools. After all, Christ knows better than to eat a meal prepared by a recluse. Far more healthful is that prepared by the extern associate; so that once the meal is ready, Christ puts an end to the conversation and does what he came to this little spiritual retreat-house to do in the first place: to dine upon the meal prepared by the love of the extern associate. But until the meal is ready, the extern associates must keep Christ entertained. So they gladly suffer the recluse to please Christ. To be sure, the conversationalists have material needs, lest they become too cold and hungry out there. But the recluse knows the generosity and fine householding talents with which God has equipped his extern associates; he knows that he will receive rather more abundantly for his needs than he requires. But nothing will so quickly disrupt a good conversation as interruptions; and in this respect the duties of the extern associate become more daunting; for there are children and dogs in the house, who would love nothing more than to pile into its midst and play Super-Nintendo. There are also neighbors who would try to drop in; to snatch some odd gossip; to snatch an odd souvenir; to evict the whole odd bunch; to convince us, that it's best to convince them, that nobody's home. So the extern associate has the duty to keep the children and dogs out of the living room; to keep the shutters shut and the porchlight off; to tell the mailman that they've moved to Tahiti; and so to ensure, that in this little retreat-house for God, if Christ whispers, his voice will be heard. But the extern associate is a busy man about the kitchen, and cooks prefer recipes. So for the care of a recluse and his most honored Guest, we here list seven essential duties: 1) To be a faithful, holy Benedictine monk of the Monastery of Christ in the Desert. 2) To protect the hidden obscurity of the recluse by telling no one about him, where he lives, or even that he exists. 3) To protect the sacred solitude and silence of his enclosure and of the entire area surrounding his enclosure. 4) To help him faithfully observe the strict solitude of his enclosure by performing shopping, errands and other external tasks for him. 5) To help supply his material needs that his strict enclosure and spiritual duties do not allow him to provide for himself. 6) To pray that he will remain faithful to his vocation and Rule. 7) To pray for Archbishop Sheehan and for the Archdiocese of Santa Fe. //The extern associate must not speak to others about the life of the recluse or about his association with the recluse. He must not under any circumstances allow this booklet to be read by others. He must suffer with the recluse the pain of silence by laboring to ensure that no one knows what the recluse does, where he lives or even that he exists.// But the extern associate ought also to know what the recluse's Rule teaches about extern associates; and so we quote from that document: “An extern associate is any person who provides you with the material, intellectual or spiritual help that you require to keep a strict observance of this Rule, and who does so regularly and with a stable commitment to a spiritual union with your hidden labor" "...always your extern associates shall be mature in character; of sound rational mind and judgment; possessed of natural virtue; strong in faith, hope and charity; of reposed and prayerful temperament, protective of, faithful to and joyful in silence and solitude; and free by obedience to holy Mother Catholic Church and her teaching authority." "These associates are to you as angels of God...For these men intercede for you, spiritually, intellectually and materially, in order that you may be led to the same good by which God dwells in their souls; and it is only by their holy intercession that you are able both to love God as he wills to dwell in your soul, and to love for your neighbor the same good that God loves for yourself." "You shall pray for your extern associates with a special and most solicitous care." Every claustral member of the Monastery of Christ in the Desert is an extern associate of their associated recluse of the Common Reclusion. ''About The Recluse of the Common Reclusion and His Duties'' From the //Rule of Common Reclusion//: "If by a right judgment you have submitted yourself to the standard of this Rule, then you come to it by an obedient certainty of humiliation, that the only grace that you have received from God is but the common possession of every member of the Church." "For God has willed in his unsearchable wisdom to deprive your soul of every...[special] grace, though He finds most men in His Church worthy of such grace. Therefore you have been graced by the common sanctifying gift alone, which is the one thing necessary and the minimum requisite of life in Christ." "Now such a state is never to be desired. For a man called by any special...grace has also the entire common gift of sanctifying grace, so that he can accomplish not only the entire work of the common gift, but still greater works...Therefore no man who has been blessed by... [special] gifts can expect to take up this Rule and live...[for in this he would commit] the most deadly sin against the Holy Spirit.” "Consumed by this Love who alone is, the man called to this Rule is not, nor therefore is he to act; but Christ is. Now the good that God loves in a man is that man's love, and so a man loves and must love for his neighbor the very good that God loves in him. But the good that God loves in the man humiliated to this Rule is so purely God's own being, that the man in whom God thus loves is wholly not; and so the love that he must love for his neighbor is wholly God, which he cannot work, but God alone. So purely is this love God's being, that it breathes out his breath and leaves him for dead to the world. He cannot work for his neighbor by his own powers the good that he must; but yet he knows more clearly than that he knows he is, that he is dead to the world by this love, and that he must be so, that his neighbor may know beatitude; and he knows above his own life that this good is his neighbor's most essential need, for which he must suffer death. But yet he cannot die for his neighbor by the love that God demands of him unless he is so completely dead to the world in every power of his own, that his love is and is worked not at all in or by himself but wholly in and by Christ." "Therefore, even though your love is confined by a deprivation of grace to an interior and hidden union with God, such that it does not move you to an external work of assistance to your neighbor, yet this deprivation causes your love for your neighbor...[no] loss of its potency to aid your neighbor's salvation. For by being assumed into Christ [in the person of his Church] and by being worked by Christ, whose power infinitely exceeds any human power, your love works the salvation of your neighbor with a potency infinitely exceeding any human assistance." "Therefore, if you should neglect or mitigate this observance for any reason whatsoever, save holy obedience, you should thereby grievously fail both God and neighbor." ''Obscurity of Life'' "You shall provide that in life you will be unseen and unknown by men and that when you die you will be buried without name, solemnity or legacy...You shall neither communicate your observance or manner of life to others nor permit it to be known." Obscurity of life is the first regulation to which the recluse is bound. ''Enclosed Solitude'' "Enclosure is your garment of silence, woven from solitude, obscurity and the undistracted stillness of God. It is a delicate cloth and you shall tend it with the greatest care, for within it Mary swaddled the eternal Word of God." "The spiritual substance of God's Word is present to your soul in the silence of your enclosure, and you shall adore God in that silence as in the Eucharist itself." Enclosed solitude is the first and essential discipline of the recluse's life. It is the means by which his unstable mind and will are silenced, to be fixed singly on God. Without enclosure the recluse can be of no good to his neighbor. The regulation of enclosed solitude is the first, strictest and most exhaustive regulation of his Rule. This strictness is essential; for as a Carthusian has written, "...solitude...must always retain this flavour of courageous refusal to compromise. The history of monasticism demonstrates that only those religious families that were adamant in insisting on this rule retained their solitary character." ''The Prayer of the Church'' The recluse is called not to private prayer, but to unceasing participation in the prayer of the Church. "The prayer of the Church is her love, which is her will to participation in...the ineffable and holy breath by which the beatitude and life of God is willed to be.” This prayer is essential. For unless "men pray the prayer of the Church, the sacrifice of Christ Jesus upon the cross and in the Eucharistic sacrifice is futile; for though God continues to offer men his Word, yet that Word cannot be in men unless men will to be in him...Thus...the Eucharistic sacrifice and the prayer of the Church are inseparable; for the Life is not where he has not His breath." The Liturgy of the Hours is a sign and instrument of the prayer of the Church that serves "to order and habituate a man's will to a love of God that does not cease in time." The recluse celebrates the Liturgy of the Hours in his own Recluse Rite. This Rite is "a liturgical act by which... [the recluse's] will is joined to the Holy Spirit in God's Word to know the Father." The Recluse Rite is very simple in ritual and text, interiorly Marian, and somewhat longer that the Monastic Rite. It is different in character (though not in basic structure) from the choral Monastic Rite, in that it is more an integration of psalmody with //lectio divina// and mental prayer. The recluse spends seven and one-half hours each day praying this liturgy. ''Work'' "Your duty is to charity without ceasing, and work is the essential human act of charity, a gifted participation in the love named work by which God wills the existence of man. Thus to love you must work, for God has created you to love in his image and likeness...Thus your prayer and work are bound by their nature, mirroring that Nature in whose image they are. Prayer becomes the will of God in desire; work becomes the will of God in act; and the two abide as the same will of God in love." "Therefore, except for a divided but adequate period for sleep and necessary periods for eating, physical exercise and relaxation, your entire day shall be occupied in work." "The proper end of human work is love of God as Creator, and in and through this love of neighbor. This love is a participation in God's will that creation be in the Word to know the Father. This creative love to work beatitude is workmanship, which is the intrinsic perfection of work according to its proper end in the fulfillment of beatitude... Spiritual work attains beatitude directly; intellectual and material work participate in beatitude indirectly by serving the needs of spiritual labor, each according to its proper nature." Human work embodies God's image as Creator in four ways. First, work must become like God the Father, who is the principle of the act, through the systematic determination of the need to be fulfilled. Second, work must become like God the Son, who is the knowledge of the principle or, in corrupted time, of how that principle may come to be, through the design of a process of work that will satisfy the need as efficiently as possible. Third, work must be like God the Holy Spirit, who is the acting will by which the knowledge attains its principle, through the competent application of the process to the need. But the fulfillment of these three parts depends wholly upon a fourth: for a worker must restore this triune image of God as Creator from the corruption of sin by undertaking a labor of continuous improvement in the sweat of his face. "This redemptive labor of improvement must be applied to each of the three preceding parts of work, and it must be applied to them unceasingly. For because of sin, man cannot achieve the workmanship willed by God. He can only labor in an unending approach to this divine workmanship. But the love of a workmanship attainable only in heaven is the very means of human sanctification and the substance of continuous improvement." The recluse's day is divided into periods of spiritual, intellectual and material labor. Dedicated spiritual labor consists primarily in celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours. Intellectual labor consists mainly of theological and philosophical study. Material labor is mainly simple bodily manual labor of cooking, domestic chores and maintenance, laundry, wood chores, hauling food, water and supplies, etc. ''Corporeal Discipline'' "The aim of...corporeal disciplines is to reform your lower appetites, in order that they may be subject to the command of your rational soul and thereby free your soul to an indwelling of God. Therefore these disciplines serve to perfect your corporeal health." "Whatever little therefore you may suffer by the exercise of this corporeal discipline is the death of sin and of its disorder. Therefore any suffering that you might endure in this respect is...united to Christ in his passion." The recluse observes a traditional eremitic schedule of fasting and abstinence. He is also bound to other traditional monastic penances and to a discipline of poverty. But enclosure is his greatest, most difficult and most fruitful corporeal discipline. ''Vows'' "...since the normative state of perfection in the Church requires the right exercise of all of a man's principle powers, so then are all men normally expected to attain perfection through the exercise of beatitude, work, ownership and marriage." "But for reasons known fully only to divine Providence, God wills that some men refrain from exercising all of their principle powers, in order that their wills might specialize upon the right exercise of the essential powers only, namely beatitude and work. Thus they may be able to say with Christ, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work." (//Jn 4:34//)" "...if you are to cooperate with grace you must radically humiliate your soul from the normative state and cleave to the essential gifts alone." "... [Therefore] to free your will from marriage and ownership you must vow chastity and poverty...To bind your will to the power of work you must vow obedience to this Rule...To bind your will to the power of beatitude you must vow obedience to the Law of God..." "But the public profession of vows must be according to the visible nature of God's will as he acts in the hierarchical Church...[therefore] within the visible, hierarchical body of Christ, you must...publicly profess the vows of chastity, poverty and obedience to the Law of God, to the supreme governing authority of the Church, to this Rule and to your Bishop..." A recluse of the Common Reclusion vows chastity and then poverty, but finally and above all he vows obedience. His obedience is however of a different character than cenobitic obedience. He vows a fourfold obedience: first to the law of God, second to the supreme governing authority of the Church (the Pope), third to his Rule and fourth to his Bishop. Stability is implicit in the very act of profession, and is further solidified by obedience to Rule. //Conversatio morum// is implicit in the entire obedience, but especially in obedience to the law of God and to Rule. ''Suffering, Illness and Death'' " ... this freedom of will that the human soul possess, though it be the cause of sin and death, is yet so sublime a glory to God for being so close to the essence of His nature, that...God chose rather to suffer the death of man's sinful choice of will, than to take that free will from him." "...in order at once to restore man from sin, and at the same time to preserve man's free will, God respoke his Word...into the death of creation...[to] suffer man's sin, in order that God mightpatiently respeak his Word to men, in order that man might again be free to choose God..." "Your understanding of suffering and death...must be like to God's...you must joyfully accept any suffering that you may endure, spiritual, mental or corporeal, and even your own death, as the most precious gift of love to your neighbor." "...if in order either to discipline your own soul to cooperation with grace, or to adhere to God's will above all else, you must suffer from penances or persecution or even martyrdom; or if while patiently cooperating with the labor of God's indwelling Word you are called to endure suffering or death passively, as through illness or injury or spiritual dryness; then your suffering is most precious: for then your suffering is the patience of the crucified Christ with your neighbor...in order that God by dwelling in the love of your suffering soul may take flesh in his Church, where he may speak his Word to your neighbor, in order that your neighbor may yet be free to choose God: which free ascent to God's Word, for which God chose even to suffer death, is a glory surpassing heaven and all of the angels." [END OF TEXT]