CHAPTERS of the ABBOT GENERAL OCist at the MFC 2025

THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF CHRIST’S LOVE

01. “Just what is man?”

How many times have I cited the passage from the Prologue of the Rule of St. Benedict in
which God is shown seeking workers, asking in the middle of the crowd, with psalm 34:
“Who is the man who desires life and longs to see good days?” (Ps 34:12; cf. Prol. 14-15)!
It is important to check that this search is there in order to begin a path in a monastery,
but also to embrace whatever other vocation.
But is this search truly enough to persevere in a vocation until death, to remain faithful
to our vocation to the end? I ask myself this often as I face the many desertions and
inPidelities that we attend to in monastic life, in consecrated life, in married life. Maybe
one stays formally faithful, does not go away, but it’s like you were remaining in the form
of one’s proper vocation but without the heart, with wanting life or happiness more.
Maybe you remain out of a sense of duty, you remain because you don’t know where else
to go, or you remain by misdirecting the desire for happy life toward other things and
persons who are not inherent to the vocation and mission of our life.
We all pass through such moments in the course of our life. The crises, the loss of
enthusiasm, of vitality, are trials and temptations against Pidelity, but they are not in
themselves failings of Pidelity, are not betrayals. Many saints have passed through the loss
of enthusiasm and passion for their vocation and mission, but by remaining faithful, it
was precisely thanks to these trials that their vocation bore even more fruit. There are
drynesses that, paradoxically, spray fresh water over the Pield of our life, of our
community, of the Church, because they make us pass through deserts in which it
becomes more obvious for us and for others that it is only the Lord’s grace that gives our
life and the whole Church fruitfulness for the Kingdom.
But to what deeper Pidelity are we called when the desire for life and happiness fades
away? It is important to Pind help in understanding this if we want to live our vocations
with maturity, with that maturity that bears fruit for the Kingdom.
Basically, one is dealing with passing from a desire for life and happiness that is more or
less instinctive in us, to an awareness of ourselves in which we know and experience that
the fruit of life in Christ, the fruit of following Christ, of monastic life or of every vocation,
is greater and more profound than our life and our happiness.
Of course, to start a path of following Jesus it is important to be aware that God calls us
to life and happiness, that God responds to the desire for happy life that we have in our
heart, but to remain faithful and reach the goal of this path requires recognizing that the
fullness of life and of happiness that the Lord grants us are much more profound than
what we could think of or perceive at the beginning.
Often, when you lose enthusiasm for your vocation, you feel almost betrayed by it. But
how! God has promised me life and happiness, and instead, with the passing of time, it
seems like I am ever more losing the joy of life. Has God maybe reneged on his promise?
Has God maybe tricked us?

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But, in reality, what did the Lord promise us when he called us? Yes, he asked if we have
the desire for life and happiness, but this desire was basically the entrance ticket for the
path of our vocation, it was not the object of the promise. The desire for happy life is the
beginning of a vocation, it is what allows us to decide, that makes us say yes. It’s like
falling in love for a young person. We, however, confuse the conditions with the
completion, we demand that the end of the path coincides with the entrance gate. But if
it were so, what path would there be? Formed by today’s culture, we demand everything
all at once even with respect to the vocation of our life. We would like for the full joy of
life to be given to us right away, without having to take a path. This is why vocations are
few, superPicial, and their have been so many desertions. We have a conception of
ourselves, of our heart, that is vitiated by a demand, or rather, by a presumption: that of
abandoning ourselves to Christ only if he guarantees us all that we desire from the very
start and as we imagine it ourselves.
But why doesn’t God, who is omnipotent, satisfy us in this way? If he wants so many
religious, priestly vocations, if he wants so many Christian families, if he wants so many
saints, why does he make us wait, why does he disappoint us, why doesn’t he immediately
fulPil his promises that draw us to follow him like a carrot draws the rabbit? The fact is
that God did not created us alone... but for a carrot! And not just to be good monks and
nuns, good priests, good husbands, wives, and parents. God creates us for a fulPilment
that is much greater. What is?
To respond to this question, the answers of our feelings, our desires, our demands are
not enough. We must know ourselves deeply, we must ask ourselves who we truly are.
The question of Psalm 34 – “Who is the man who desires life and longs to see good days?”
– must be completed, deepened, with the question of another psalm, psalm 8: “Just what
is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man, that you care for him?” (Ps. 8:4)
The question of Psalm 34 is a question of God to man. It is like God had grown a bit
impatient, after so many gifts given to the human creature, and said: “But after all, with
all that I have given you, with all that I have done and am doing for you, could you possibly
be less passive, less apathetic! At least one of you could desire the life that I offer you and
the happiness that I want to give you!”
The question of Psalm 8 is not a question of God’s: it is a question of man’s. Perhaps of
the man who let himself be provoked by the exasperated question of God in Psalm 34. As
if the man had suddenly realized that he is a mysterious thing, that he is a mystery to his
own eyes. And the man knows that he cannot give the answer himself, because man does
not succeed in explaining his own mystery. The man asks God the reason for the greatness
of which he senses he is the bearer, he asks God the reason for himself. “How is it that I
can be so important to your eyes? What do you Pind great and beautiful in me? I seem to
myself to be a paltry, unimportant thing with no value. Why do you think of me? Why do
you remember me?”
To be mindful of someone is something greater and more beautiful than thinking of them
one time. To be mindful of someone means carrying that person in your heart, it means
that this person is important to me, that he is not a matter of indifference to me. Man,
who lives in time, realizes that God, in his eternity, has so to say a duration of thought of
him. And this Pills man with a question about himself, about just who he himself is to be
so important for God.