The Best Day of Our Life

Painting by Sergi Cadenas

Today I saw a fascinating 19-second video of a dual-image portrait by Sergi Cadenas (you can view it at this link: https://twitter.com/i/status/1585263283602325504). At first the painting appears to be the face of a young girl, about 14 or 15 years old; her skin is smooth, her lips plump, her eyes innocent. However, as you change your vantage point, the painting changes in appearance; the face is lined with wrinkles, the lips have thinned, the eyes are rheumy. Suddenly you are looking at the face of an old woman! Cadenas achieves this effect by painting an image on each side of vertical strips, which allows him to include two completely different images in one piece. 

Watching a person age before your eyes within 19 seconds is a graphic representation of St. Benedict’s advice to “keep death daily before you.” For most of our lives, death seems far off, when actually we carry it within us; every minute, 300 million cells die in our body. Ironically, the death of these cells make life possible as new cells are formed to take the place of the ones that are worn out.

One thing I noticed about the Cadenas painting is that the images of both the young girl and the old woman are beautiful — the promise of youth and the wisdom of old age. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year,” but we can expand that notion. In one way or another, every day is the best day not just in the year but in our lives, full of wondrous things that will never be again.

Keeping death daily before us can help us live each day as if it is the best day of our life. Then, when the time comes to take our final breath, we can place a lifetime of well-lived days into God’s hands in gratitude for loving us into being.

A Life of Holy Curiosity and Good Cheer

Me and Sr. Seraphine

For the past three years I had the privilege of being the companion of Sr. Seraphine Tucker, who resided in the Dooley Center care facility at Mount St. Scholastica until her death on October 15, 2022. My role was to visit with her on a regular basis, help her send Christmas cards to her family, accompany her to community gatherings, and the like. In return, I got to learn firsthand how to live a good Benedictine life from one of the wisdom figures of the monastery.

I took an immediate liking to Sr. Seraphine because she reminded me of my dad and his siblings — plain spoken, tough as hickory, hardworking, faith filled, practical, and grateful for life’s blessings. Looking after her three younger brothers on the farm where she was raised made Sr. Seraphine an instinctual caregiver, and she set many an elementary and high school student on the right path during her years as a science and math teacher. She embodied the Benedictine value of stability (having celebrated her 75th anniversary of monastic profession in 2021) and was a faithful seeker of God, whom she found in the Eucharist, in other people, and in creation.

Two characteristics of Sr. Seraphine that I found particularly remarkable were her curiosity and ever-present cheerfulness. Albert Einstein counseled, “Never lose a holy curiosity,” and until the end of her days, Sr. Seraphine maintained her holy curiosity about the natural world, mechanics, and most importantly, other people. Her interest in the lives and thoughts of others was what led her to be so hospitable to guests.

Sr. Seraphine had few needs, and more than any other monastic I’ve known, she hewed to St. Benedict’s instruction to never grumble. Rather, she was habitually cheerful, and why not? She trusted implicitly in God’s care and providence.

Although I will miss Sr. Seraphine very much, I’m delighted that she has been reunited with her family and monastic sisters who preceded her in death. I don’t know that she’ll join the angel choir, but surely heaven’s maintenance department can use someone interested in the workings of the universe, and she’d make a mighty fine guardian angel as well. In addition, her holy curiosity and cheerfulness will continue to guide all of us who remember her with affection and gratitude.

Learning to Be Part of a Community

I’ve been sick with a cold for the past few days and have been hibernating so I don’t infect others in the community. Thanks to a cousin who gave me a subscription to Apple TV, I’ve been able to watch the TV show Ted Lasso on my laptop during my period of isolation.

Ted is a coach with a unique perspective; he believes his primary job is not to win ball games but to help young men build on their strengths, understand their weaknesses, and become the best person they can be. One member of his team is a hotshot, Jamie, whose father insists that he be the star of the team. Ted, on the other hand, is trying to teach Jamie to be a team player and pass the ball to others, sharing both the glory and the pressure to score.

Jamie needs to learn the Benedictine value of being part of a community. I myself was reminded of a benefit of community life this morning by Sr. Irene Nowell. I saw her in the hallway and told her I tried to go to morning prayer but had to leave because of my cold symptoms, and she said, “Well, that’s why the rest of us are here.” When you live in a Benedictine community, others pray when you cannot, and you pray when others cannot. Life in community is both humbling (when I can’t be there, life goes on) and reassuring (when I can’t be there, life goes on). It’s also comforting to be checked on several times a day by multiple people who invariably say, “Let me know if you need anything,” reflecting another Benedictine value: the primacy of care of the sick.

Illness, although not pleasant, is one of our teachers. This time, what it taught me is that it’s okay to rest. The community has my back and can carry the ball for a while.

The Goal of Humble People

Recently, The New York Times featured an article by Peter Coy entitled, “Humility Is a Virtue. But Can Humble People Succeed in the Modern World?”

Coy is asking the wrong question. By “succeed in the modern world,” he means building wealth in a capitalist system. However, the goal of humble people is not to become wealthy but to serve others and love greatly, as Jesus did.

Sometimes, humble people do make a lot of money. For example, Yvon Chouinard, the founder of the company Patagonia, became a billionaire by selling outdoor apparel. However, his goal was not to become a successful businessman but to help save the environment. Recently, he and his family gave the entire company away to a nonprofit organization that will use the money to combat climate change and protect undeveloped land around the world. In Chouinard’s hands, money was a tool to protect God’s creation and provide a livable earth for future generations rather than a status symbol or a means to live extravagantly.

Cultivating humility is a tricky thing. Meister Eckhart said, “My work is to free myself of myself so God can be born in me.” Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh acknowledged the difficulty of such a task in his response to the question of how to achieve humility: “Humility is too exalted a goal, but perhaps you could aim for the halfway house of gratitude.” We will know we are the road to humility not by the markers of success in the modern world but by our level of gratitude for unearned gifts that God showers on us every day.

Invitation to Equanimity

We are entering into the season of autumn, one of the quarterly challenges to our human desire to be in control. As much as we may favor one particular time of year, we cannot keep the seasons from changing. Whether we prefer the heat of summer, the crispness of autumn, the snow of winter, or the greening of spring, we have to wait for our favorite season to cycle around.

This summer I watched the documentary The Green Planet featuring David Attenborough. The series gave me a great appreciation for plants, which do not resist change but adapt to it in marvelous ways. Whether they encounter light, dark, moisture, drought, wind, or predators, they react to outside conditions and their own inner nature by sprouting, growing, reproducing, diminishing, and dying in due measure.

If we pay attention to the vegetation of the green planet that is our home, it will teach us equanimity and the ability to sit with what is. In quietness and contemplation, we come to learn that instead of trying to change what is, we can use our own inner resources to adapt to our conditions. That might mean adjusting our hours for sleep and work according to the seasons, as St. Benedict outlined in his Rule, or using our technological advances to work from home when snowstorms or pandemics hit.

Nature has the power to humble us. However, when we relinquish or desire for dominion over the natural world, it is freeing to realize that we can be partners with soil, water, plants, and animals to nurture life and affirm God’s proclamation about creation: It is good.

Delight and Sorrow

In reading about the lives of medieval female saints, it appears that a great many of them experienced dismal arranged marriages. The wealthy ones attempted to distract themselves with frivolous diversions of society life, but the emptiness of their lives changed only when they had an encounter with God and responded to the love they experienced by serving others.

This is the story of St. Catherine of Genoa, who served the sick at a local hospital, even during an outbreak of plague. As Robert Ellsberg notes in Give Us This Day, “As she grew in love, she grew in her capacity for happiness.” Catherine herself said, “In God is my being, my me, my strength, my beatitude, my good, and my delight.”

Along with the delight of love comes sorrow, as we acknowledge on the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows. Mary, the mother of Jesus, expressed delight in God’s goodness in her Magnificat prayer when she greeted her cousin Elizabeth. However, her deep love of her son led her to profound sorrow as she watched him suffer and die. And so it is for all of us.

As Kahlil Gibran observed, “The selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” Cynthia Bourgeault notes that sorrow “…at the same time call[s] forth some of the most exquisite dimensions of love ... qualities such as steadfastness, tenderness, commitment, forbearance, fidelity, and forgiveness.” Thus, as Rainer Maria Rilke said, “Why would you want to exclude from your life any uneasiness, any pain, any depression, since you don’t know what work they are accomplishing within you?”

Delight and sorrow are companions on our life journey. Despite the sorrow she experienced, Mary’s prophecy was fulfilled: all generations call her blessed. She teaches us that the sorrow that accompanies love will bear fruit because love always begets more love.

Love Languages

I recently learned about the concept of “Love Languages,” developed by pastor Gary Chapman 30 years ago. As noted in The New York Times, Chapman “…proposed that the ways people prefer to have love communicated to them fall into five categories, or ‘languages’: acts of service, words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts and physical touch.”

Understanding love languages can help Christians express God’s love more effectively. Different people may be more likely to see God’s love reflected in helpful acts, through words of encouragement, in companionship, through gift giving, or in hugs, for example.

Jesus, the supreme messenger of God’s love, was fluent in all the love languages. He constantly served others through his acts of healing; he affirmed those who were humble and generous; he spent a lot of time teaching the crowds and eating with his disciples; he gave food to the hungry; and he used physical touch in his healing (taking Jairus’ daughter by the hand and rubbing mud on the eyes of a blind man, for example).

We, too, can become fluent in the five love languages when we listen to others and observe their reactions when we offer service, verbal affirmation, companionship, gifts, and physical touch. It’s easy to tell when someone is delighted with a gift, touched by our assistance, brightened by our affirmation, appreciative of our companionship, or warmed by a hug. This is how we learn to speak this person’s preferred love language.

Jesus said that the greatest commandments are to love God with all our heart, mind, and soul and to love our neighbor as ourselves. He didn’t offer many specifics about how to do this, however. Love languages give us a basic framework for how to most effectively extend God’s love to others.