It is better to be small and unknown-a challenge

People in the world and in the world of the media are having a hard time understanding the Pope's desire to go into the monastery at the end of the month. I understand. In many ways, I prefer that lifestyle

The person who enters into the solitude of his or her heart is making a decision to be one of the unknowns. How many unknown saints have there been? We do not know.

Many saints worked out their salvation without the notice of the Universal Church. It is only in this day of media coverage that we are surprised when a saint we have never heard of is canonized.

St. Benedict Labre

It is better to be small and unknown. Why? Freedom.

I have an extremely wealthy friend who I only see rarely. We do not move in the same circles. However, for all her wealth and contacts, she is unknown. She does not belong to a country club or the Daughters of the American Revolution. She is not involved in loud politics.

She prays and reads and visits her family and does charity work, quietly.

Her life, she admits, is complicated by wealth. She has demands I shall never, ever have.

But, for all her wealth, she is living and has lived a life of relative simplicity compared to others in her social set.

The point of this post is that riches complicate one's life; one has duties if one is given more by God.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux and his family were in the highest echelons of their society. They owned great tracts of land, at least on castle, and had labourers, as well as house staff and so on.

St. Bernard gave up his inheritance, as did all his brothers and his sister, Humbeline, who I have highlighted on this blog. They knew how to find God. God was not in the castle for them to find, but in the walls of Citeaux and Clarivaux and other monasteries which sprang up from those foundations.

Imagine a monastery today with 700 monks!

There are absolutely beautiful monasteries for men in England. Buckfast Abbey and Downside, as well as Prinknash and Farnborough are amazing.

These phenomenal places are almost empty.

I challenge young men today to become small and unknown....and holy.