The unfolding mystery ... is the paschal drama, the tale of the Son's dying and rising and ascending with humanity to the Father, a tale retold in the small circle of the monastic day, again in the wider sphere of the Christian week, and again in the cosmic cycle of the Christian year - an archetypal pattern made real by the power of the Holy Spirit, inexhaustible renewer of exhausted hearts. From the 40 days of Lent, whose knots and loopholes tell us that we are still in our sins, we reliably do make it to the 50 days of Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, where we hear the final word God wants to say to us.
The Easter Monday prayer Vivendo teneant! .... "may we hold on to this in our lives!" - sums up ... monastic wisdom. The Christian regularity for which monasticism provides a template, daily rehearsing the paschal mystery, singing the psalms until they repeat in the heart, sitting at table with the same companions over the same unremarkable food, all this repetition leads not to boredom but to joy - objective Christian joy, the precise opposite of happiness on demand. We are to be sunk in joy whether we like it or not. Joy is ... a "Trinitarian conspiracy."
Carol Zaleski reflecting on Don Hugh Gilbert's
Unfolding the Mystery in Christian Century, May 1, 2007
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