Lecture given by Armand Veilleux, OCSO at the American Benedictine Academy in 1984 and published in The American Benedictine Review (37:1, March 1986, 34-45)
The monastic call is ultimately a call to unity. And that unity can only be reached through a long journey implying successive deep transformations, that is, through a long conversion process.
Such a conversion is rooted in baptism, by which we are introduced into that most radical of all the conversions lived by a human being, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. No conversion has any meaning without a relationship to that paschal mystery.
The paschal mystery stands at the very heart of human history. The two arms of the cross cover the whole span of time, from the dawn of creation with God breathing his breath of life into humankind, to the eschatological return of everything to God at the Parousia, with Jesus of Nazareth at the center, surrendering his spirit to the Father and receiving it back to become the first of our kind to partake fully in the glory of the Father.
Our monastic conversion, as a form of participation in the paschal mystery of Christ is an element of that global transformation of mankind and of the whole cosmos under the action of the Spirit of Christ. Although it is first of all a conversion of the heart, it takes its meaning from God’s experience of human conversion in Christ, and the long journey of mankind that preceded it; and it will not be achieved without our active participation in the building up of the Kingdom of God, which implies a radical transformation or conversion of the whole fabric of society.
My purpose here is simply to show how all these aspects form a unified reality that receives its meaning from the paschal mystery into which we are inserted by baptism….
The entire article can be read on Armand Veilleux website.
