PART 1

Conducted During our Community Retreat on January 5, 2010 - Part 1. Discusses Fr Michael’s books, his readers, and his current work with podcasts.

 

Br Chris: When Abbot Peter announced to us at our community chapter that you would be giving us this year’s community retreat, he said it would be based on the new book you are working on. What can you tell us about it?

 

Fr Michael Casey: Generally, I don’t like talking about the book in progress, as many authors don’t, simply because it takes a certain amount of the pressure out of it. What I do however is to workshop my material and to try it out on people and see how they respond and how it fits together and perhaps learn something from the feedback that I receive. What it also does, it helps me to formulate different ways of ordering my material. So I may give a very similar retreat in different places, to different audiences and a different progression of ideas emerges. This retreat, as you are probably becoming aware, is a little like a continuation of my book Fully Human, Fully Divine. It’s this idea of taking the Gospel of Mark, which is, my favorite I think, and reflecting on it, in a way that allows it to speak to our own experience and to give us some sort of guidance and direction for the way that we live our particular mode of discipleship. So it’s a monastic retreat, not because it brings in all sorts of monastic figures necessarily and waves a flag, but because it’s derived from monastic experience and directed to monastic experience. It talks about the things we are familiar with, there is nothing much which is new, but it stirs over the coals a bit and hopes to kindle a bit of flame, somehow or other.

 

Br Chris: How do you deal with the tension between writing for a monastic audience and a non-monastic audience? For instance, your book Strangers to the City is a very monastic oriented book, while Fully Human, Fully Divinewould have a broader appeal.

 

Fr Michael Casey: The person I want to please, is myself. So I must admit, I write to please myself. Fully Human, Fully Divine, which I think is my best book, is really just closely tied to the Gospel but it’s also, in a very clear way, a continuation, if I wanted to be ambitious, of what the Cistercian Fathers were doing. By taking the Scriptures and interpreting them in a behavioristic kind of light and drawing in our own contemporary experience. Strangers to the Citywas great fun. I had the most fun writing that because I was pretty uninhibited and fired off a few rockets in it in every direction. It’s a very challenging book in some parts so I wonder whether this will be suitable for other people. Yet from the feedback I received, all sorts of different people are reading it, monks least of all possible… Cistercian monks least of all [laughs]. It’s being read in a lot of Benedictian refectories. The two biggest Benedictian communities in this country, which is Saint Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania and Saint John’s Collegeville, in both, every monk received a copy of it. It’s unabashedly from the Cistercian end of the Benedictian spectrum, it’s talking about Cistercian values, but I was very interested in just the wide spread acceptance of what I had to say. It tells me to trust in my own instincts. To say what I want to say and if people want to hear it, they will hear it. Perhaps, as often happens, they will hear more than I thought I was saying. So it’s a very monastic book which has had a wide readership. It’s a bit the same with Thomas Merton. His most monastic writings are the one that people seem to enjoy the most. The ones that are more political and perhaps controversial, have a readership and following but not of the same depth and enthusiasm as those who read books like The Sign of Jonas, which is just simply monastic gossip written in appealing language but it’s just what happened in the monastery in the 1940’s or 50’s whenever it was written. Not much happens but people are interested in the monastic side of things.

 

Br Chris: Are your non-monastic readers challenged by your work?

 

Fr Michael Casey: I hope so, I suspect so. They try to put my writings into their context. I think that’s far more realistic for the reader to put it into his or her context than for me to try and imagine where the reader might be and try to talk to that imaginary person. So if what I say is true to my context, they just simply have to take it and put it into their context. Obviously, that means a very active and intelligent sort of reader.

 

Br Chris: Personally, I find your work, on the one hand, to be very challenging. At the same time, I feel encouraged by your work and that your speaking to me where I’m at in life.

 

Fr Michael Casey: I think that’s a very Cistercian quality, if I may be so rash to claim it, is that the program that I’m giving next week on Aelred, as we start his nine hundredth anniversary this year, it begins by talking about just how well Aelred knew monks, their foibles, misbehaviors, trails, temptations, and vices. You might say how well he knew the ugly side of life. It’s because he knows the weakness, blindness, and malice of the human condition and speaks about it very openly that we can accept that when he speaks a message of hope, when he proclaims the Good News, that he’s not proclaiming it in the delusion that he’s talking to angels or to saints or to the innocent but that he’s talking to a pack of losers [laughs], but that he’s still giving the Good News to the losers. He says that you’re included in this. So yes, there is a challenge to pull up your socks and to be more faithful to the Gospel but it’s a challenge that is optimistic. It’s one, that by the grace of God, you can do it.

 

Br Chris: Is the program on Aelred from your new podcast.

 

Fr Michael Casey: No, the program I’m podcasting is something else.

 

Br Chris: What is the podcast program then?

 

Fr Michael Casey: The idea was to set up something a little different on our website, that would have audio capabilities. The first idea was to record the Sunday Homilies, which I personally think is an abomination because a homily is destined for this particular group, it’s ephemeral, it’s meant to evaporate. Homilies are not meant to be preserved and as soon as you start preserving it for eternity you’ve lost the character of a communication with a particular group. You’re making a Papal statement from the balcony up there that’s destined for the city and the world. Really, the sacrament of preaching, is the sacrament of communication between persons. When it becomes just a reading of a written text, or the proclamation of something which can be heard on your ipod, well it becomes a different genre. So I said if we’re going to have some audio on our website, it needs to be just simply for the website, speaking to the audience that would listen. We thought about what to do and I said the thing I would like to do is to reflect on the Rule of St Benedict. Now this word “reflect” is not one that I use easily, in the sense that if you look through the titles of many of my books, you’ll find that the sub-title is often “Reflections on”. I think that’s my specific genre. I do a lot of scholarly work, I read various languages, but my actual writing is a reflection. It’s a conversational piece that draws in streams from many directions and it’s not unlike the Sermon, the discourse of the Cistercian Fathers. It’s a relational kind of thing. These reflections then are on the Rule of St. Benedict. What I’m in the course of doing is offering a reflection on the Prologue of the Rule. There are fifty verses in the prologue and each week I’m going to reflect on one single verse alone. That’s a great discipline for the speaker and also a discipline for the reader. To just look at that verse, to read it closely, to reflect on it, and to try and extract from that verse just some short message. The podcast are short messages about five to six minutes and a couple of introductory ones and that will make fifty-two so we will have enough for the year. Then we will go on to something else.

 

Part 2

Conducted During our Community Retreat on January 5, 2010 - Part 2. Begins our look at Cistercian history. This part focuses on our Cistercian Fathers and how best to read them.

 

Br Chris: Moving on to our main topic: Cistercian History!  From your perspective, what is the importance of our Cistercian Fathers and what do they have to offer to us today?

 

Fr Michael Casey: Well, their importance is what they have to offer us [laughs].  What they have to offer us is a mirror, in the sense that we can look and find ourselves, we can learn self knowledge from them and not just self knowledge in a very analytic or psychoanalytic context, but self knowledge in the context of a monastic vocation.  What it is like to live as a Cistercian monk.  What it is like to live the contemplative life, in a life that is meant to be a low intensity, low impact kind of life.  Simple, communal, marathon of a life that goes on, if we’re lucky, 40, 50, 60 years.  What happens in that life is spaced out over that period, so nothing very much happens for a long time.  They give us a sense that they were living the same life that was understood by them, in other words, they are talking to us.  Particularly, at the moment, I’m working on Aelred’s Sermons and people are often amazed at some of the things they find in monastic tradition.  Things that read as though they were written last week.  Contemporary kinds of interests, strategies for living a good, and happy, and holy life.

 

Br Chris:  How do you recommend reading the Cistercian Fathers?

 

Fr Michael Casey:  It depends on the individual.  Some people you give them a reading list and they read it, other people you give them a reading list and they don’t read it.  They’ll read anything but books on the reading list!  So it depends on whether you’re a contrarian or not.  Generally, I think you have to start with some texts that are fairly easy.  For me, it has to be the Sermons.  The “so called” Sermons, though I’ve taken a vow never to use that word because they were chapter discourses.

We have the chapter discourses of Guerric of Igny, which are very polished, very humane, a very gentle introduction which you can follow through the liturgical year.  We have the chapter discourses of Bernard of Clairvaux, unfortunately not fully translated into English, it’s very incomplete.  Some of these are quite spectacular.  Then we have the chapter discourses of Aelred of Rievaulx.  Ninety-nine of these are in the process of being edited because they were only discovered in 1989, the Cluny-Redding collection.  We only have about half of his discourses and even some of these are of comparatively recent discovery.  About 20 to 30 have been translated into English and these are mainly discourses which he gave while he was abbot at Revesby.  This was before he came to Rievaulx so they are his earlier ones.  It takes a certain amount of patience, it takes a certain amount of skill, but they are talks, chapter talks given to real monks, in a real situation.

It seems to me, that Guerric of Igny took a lot of care about his discourses and he had long practice and he probably wrote them out in advance and delivered them pretty much as they are given.  Bernard of Clairvaux, on the contrary, had an outline and may have delivered them in something that was approximating the vernacular, a sort of dog Latin, and then because he was very proud of his literary style revised them later.  Aelred, on the contrary, on at least one occasion comes in and admits that he hasn’t got anything prepared.  So he just waffles on.  There’s always a discourse before the discourse; he talks about something for five or so minutes before he actually gets into what he’s going to talk about.  So his soles are working!  He never had any interest in revising them so they’re rough and ready in one sense.  They’re a bit repetitious, he takes whole sections from one discourse and puts it into another.  He gets off the point and pulls himself back again, but they’re very humane and immediate because of that fact.  They’re not dressed up because mostly if somebody’s talk is too elegant and obviously well prepared and very learned, monks just go to sleep in it!  With Aelred’s in particular they’re pretty rough and ready.  There are some elegant passages but they are really worth while reading.  They kind of grist for the monastic mill, they talk to you about monastic life as it really is.   I think that’s what we can look to these ancient masters for is, as Bernard says about Peter and Paul, they didn’t teach us the riddles of Aristotle, or the complexities of Plato, but they taught us how to live.  The same could be said of Bernard’s own writings.

Aelred said there are three purposes in a Chapter talk: to give instruction; to give direction; to give motivational encouragement.  So sometimes he’s instructing people, he’s telling them how temptation works, how the idea transforms itself from just a vague thought into an action.  It’s a very interesting sort of psychological analysis!  He’s instructing his monks.  Other times he’s correcting them.  He’s talking about people that are complaining about their food, or complaining about their clothing, or who want a better job in the monastery.  It’s very clear correction.  Sometimes he’s just encouraging them.  Reminding them of the wonders of grace and the mystery of Christ and all these kind of things.

 

Br Chris: Do you think that Saint Bernard is over emphasized amongst the other Cistercian Fathers?  It seems that he has the pride of place in Cistercian monasteries, over and above our other Cistercian Fathers.

 

Fr Michael Casey:  Well, as I quoted Julia Childs in the retreat conferences saying, “You can never have enough butter”, you can never have too much Bernard in my book!  You asked the wrong man that question [laughs].

I’ve just written a fifteen thousand word article on how to read Bernard.  It’s being published in a companion book to Bernard by Brill, edited by Brian Patrick McGuire.  In that I say, Bernard is brilliant.  He’s a head and shoulders above all the others.  With the sheer brilliance, it’s really the only word for it.  But he’s also a very warm personality but we need to begin with some of the more basic works of his to understand where he’s coming from.  I like to suggest people to begin with the Parables.  They contain a lot of his solid teaching but in a fairly easy form.  The letters of Bernard are also very interesting although they are more demanding.  The translation by Bruno Scott James is not good and that’s the only one available in English.  Some of his other works are better to start with, the Sermon on the Song of Songs really needs to be postponed until we’ve got a good feeling for where he’s coming from.  It’s a brilliant piece of work but it belongs to this genre of Sermo, they’re talks and he models them as talks or reflection which go round in circles, they’re not logical, you’d go berserk if you tried to list the contents of it.  There’s a kind of coherence about them, so read as a whole they really do constitute a very good treatment of all aspects of monastic and contemplative life.  But they’re not the place to begin.

The Steps of Humility and Pride, which is a bit of a joke in some cases, he’s got some very profound things in there.  Things which are often forgotten, his three stages of spiritual growth.  The first one is self knowledge, the third one is contemplation, and the question is, what’s the intermediary step?  It’s compassion.  That’s the step which people often forget, they think they can get to contemplation simply by self discipline and self knowledge, by working hard at gaining humility and they’ve completely locked other people out of the equation.  Bernard is saying, if self knowledge is genuine then it’s expressed in compassion.  It’s expressed in this ability to go easy on other people, to be merciful and so forth.  It’s only in that context of giving and receiving mercy that we actually proceed to third stage of contemplation.  That’s a pretty unexpected, counter-intuitive sort of step.  That instead of going through the works of discipline and self knowledge and proceeding to contemplation, you actually do a sort of loop and come back to the world, come back to the neighbor before you go on.

So there’s a lot in Bernard.  But sometimes people are put off by too much enthusiasm, but there’s plenty there.  Really to understand Bernard, the other thing is to know the world in which he moved.  So reading any of the Fathers and knowing about the monasticism of that period is good preparation.

 

Part 3

Conducted During our Community Retreat on January 5, 2010

Part 3. The Conclusion of our interview, which contains many wonderous and amazing things, too many to be listed here.

 

Br Chris: What’s your perspective on the Cistercian reformer and Abbot of La Trappe, Armand de Rance?

 

Fr Michael Casey: I haven’t read much of de Rance.  A former postulant of ours, who in fact only lasted three days in the monastery, has retained a lifelong interest in monasticism.  He was at a Church book sale, where they were selling old, second hand books for very low prices and he managed to buy de Rance’s Commentary on the Rule of Saint Benedict, a first edition, for two dollars.  It was a beautiful, two volume work.  So I started reading bits and pieces of it and it’s very interesting.  As far as I’m aware, de Rance was almost the only person in monastic tradition that has taken St. Benedict’s idea of mutual obedience seriously.  It’s one of these ideas in the Rule of St. Benedict that we say is terrific, that it’s revolutionary, but then why didn’t all these great figures take it up and develop it?  There is a little bit in St. Aelred, but de Rance actually has a really coherent commentary on it.  We have to obey our superiors because we’ll get into trouble if we don’t, but the real spirit is when we obey those who have no power over us.  Particularly, he says when the Seniors obey the Juniors!  He goes further than St. Benedict and he actually, in his regulations, he institutionalizes this.  He said that the Juniors are to get the best rooms and the best cloths, while the Seniors are presumed not need these fringe benefits any longer.  So I wouldn’t say that I’ve take a vow, but I’ve said to myself that I must continue to delve into this commentary of de Rance.  He was certainly well read in monastic tradition for his times, John Climicus and so forth.  He was a very learned man, and a bright man.

I think that a lot of what we attribute to de Rance actually comes from Fr. Augustin de l’Estrange and his kind of penal attitude towards things.  There was a rigidity and strictness and so forth, that was probably necessitated by the fact that they were traipsing around Europe at the time.  They didn’t have a monastery and structures but they had to carry their structures with them.  So the very ridged system of spirituality which was then preserved when they came back to the monastery.  These days I’m finding de Rance a far more attractive figure than I previously did.

 

Br Chris: Do you think that the spirit which de l’Estrange had went all the way up to Vatican 2?

 

Fr Michael Casey: And beyond!

 

Br Chris:  To this day?

 

Fr Michael Casey:  To this day, yes.  I think, as I mentioned this morning, a kind of narrowness and scrupulosity, a meanness.  Take for example in our Order, there is no list of the monks and nuns of the Order that is generally available.  Just about every order, the Benedictans have a directory that is published every five years that lists every Benedictan monk and nun in the Order.  In our Order, they don’t count.  The General Chapter, they grudgingly admit delegates but they get no vote because they say that they don’t represent anybody.  It’s very much centered on Abbots, there not very much respect, it seems to me, for the experience and the wisdom of monks and nuns.  Many regional meetings are moving to restrict the number of non-Abbatial people that come to the Regional meetings.  I think there’s a sort of tendency to institutionalization and hierarchy is quite strong in our Order, it doesn’t have that sort of human respect.

Benedict, on the contrary, talks about honoring every human being.  I don’t think that we, non-Abbots, are very much honored by the Order as a whole.  It’s been shown, interestingly enough, that honor given to people actually extends their life and those who receive more honor, generally live much longer.  Ever since I read that article, there were a number of surveys that were done, I’ve noticed that when the death notices come up, Abbot’s tend to live longer [laughs].  Just looks at the death notice, there are exceptions of course, but living with honor, with respect actually prolongs life.  I don’t think that we have been solicitous enough in really honoring the people and saying you are valuable human beings.   You go to certain monasteries, the quality of hygiene, the quality of food, the way that it’s served up, the quality of the buildings and so forth, all of it speaks to me that there is a kind of stream of thought, in our Order, that says it’s not important that you give honor to persons.

 

Br Chris:  Do you see that changing?

 

Fr Michael Casey:  I would hope so!

 

Br Chris:  What could change that?

 

Fr Michael Casey:  Well usually the only thing that changes things is a change in leadership.

 

Br Chris:  What about our current Abbot General now?

 

Fr Michael Casey:  No comment [laughs].  I’m talking in generalities of course, I’m not talking about personalities.  But I’m just saying, respect for persons is very important.  Talking about Dom Eamon, he’s only been in office for a short time but Dom Ambrose and Dom Bernardo certainly respected persons.  Small and great.

 

Br Chris:  Did you see much change in the Cistercian Order with Dom Bernardo?

 

Fr Michael Casey: I think we have to distinguish between “with” Bernardo and “by” Bernardo.  The Order has changed in the last fifteen years but not necessarily through any action of his but because there’s a certain evolution.  If you think back to the 1970’s obviously the Order has become a bit less wild.  In those place where it became wild, it’s rebounded a bit from what you might call the excesses after Vatican 2.  I think it’s more conscious of the importance of stable structures in the monastery, of trying to direct people towards a goal.

At the same time, all of our communities the average age is creeping up.  You only have to look at photographs taken twenty years ago and you see that all these people are much older now, if they’re still around.  That changes things.  It changes your capacity to embrace change.

 

Br Chris:  Looking now at another important Cistercian figure, Fr Tomas Merton.  Do you see your books as being the new Merton by having an effect on people’s desire to enter monastic life as Merton’s works had on so many?

 

Fr Michael Casey:  No, I think I’m minor league, I’m in the little league only.  You only have to look at the royalty checks, they’re not in six figures I assure you [laughs].  I don’t worry very much about influence.  In fact, if I did, I would probably get scruples and never write another word.  I write what I write like Pilate and once it’s written, it’s written and I’ve forgotten about it.  In fact, when people talk to me about my books I often say, “I’m sorry, I don’t remember it.”  It’s out of my system.  It’s a kind of cleansing, a catharsis.  The thoughts that I have, I put them on paper and then go on to the next thing.  I think I’m always learning.  I’m always interested in pursuing new fields and that is always more interesting to me then what I wrote ten years ago, twenty years ago.  Occasionally, if I’ve picked up something I wrote twenty years ago I’m surprised by it.  I can’t remember writing it, I can’t remember where I got those ideas.  I even look at the footnotes and I don’t even remember reading that book.  So I’ve moved on.

 

Br Chris:  Is it fair to say Fully Human, Fully Divine is your best book then?

 

Fr Michael Casey:  Well, I think it is.  As I said, I think that it has a little bit of magic about it.  Yah, each book means something different at a different time in life.

 

Br Chris:  I think, that if I were to write books about monasticism, I would want to write books that would bring the monks in.

 

Fr Michael Casey:  Yeah, well you dream that way, but in fact it’s the call of God, it’s the work of God.  I mean think of all the people who Merton brought in and who went out again!

 

Br Chris: I guess I don’t think of that.

 

Fr Michael Casey:  I wouldn’t like it to be just a sort of public relations exercise, although it certainly is to some extent.  I really just think that I like writing and I find my own truth by writing.  So I’m writing for myself more than anybody else and the fact that publishers are naïve enough to put it into book form and people are generous enough to buy it, well, that’s something different.  Once I’ve expressed it, that’s what it’s purpose is as far as I’m concerned.  If there are collateral benefits well I’m delighted!  But that’s not why I write.

 

Br Chris:  What was it about Merton that attracted so many people?

 

Fr Michael Casey:  I think it was his modernity.  He was the very model of a modern monk.  That, I think, is something that we need to consider is maybe his downfall as well.  In the sense, that we have already moved into a post-modern world.  Modernity seems so very last century.  Although there will always be a cult following of people who like Merton because he had an interesting life and wrote very well about that life and it skyrocketed in all sorts of different directions.  But the most enduring and attractive tray that I consider is that he was so up to date, but so up to date in 1968 – if you pardon the rhyme [laughs].  That’s forty years ago and even to read some of his things on race relations he would never have thought that there would be an African-American in the white house.

Many of the things he wrote are still relevant but I think that any writer is running in a relay race.  He runs a certain distance and runs it well.  But the time does pass.

 

Br Chris:  I’ve heard it said that Merton was a prophet.  He was a prophet in his era, is he a prophet now?

 

Fr Michael Casey:  P-R-O-F-I-T, yes his books are still selling!  [laughs]  I don’t know exactly.  As I said, he still has a following.  What he does with that following I don’t exactly know.

 

Br Chris:  We’ve touched on it a bit but what’s your perspective of our Cistercian Order today?

 

Fr Michael Casey:  Part of the truth of who we are, is what we’ve been and we have a very good tradition.  The Cistercian tradition is top drawer, there’s no doubt about that.  A great tradition of spirituality because it takes seriously the Word of God and the tradition of the Church on the one hand, and human experience on the other.  That is something that is perennial.  This can be seen by the number of papers that are given every year at Kalamazoo on Cistercian topics, the number of books that Cistercian Publications has published, that there is something attractive and perennial about the Cistercian tradition of spirituality.  I think to the extent that it shapes our Order, we’re in good shape.

I know there are plenty of monks who haven’t ventured into the patrimony of the Order and it’s foreign country.  I remember the inimitable remark of a certain monk in this country, who when confronted with the new Constitutions and there was a quotation from Baldwin of Forde, he said, “Who the hell is Baldwin of Forde!”  Well it doesn’t say much of his monastic formation, if he was unaware of who these people are.  So I think, one side of monastic formation is introducing people to the Cistercian Patrimony in its living and vibrant form.  So long as we allow that to govern us, then we’ve got something going.

I also note that in a recent vocation survey in this country, that when they asked people, four thousand men and women who entered religious life recently, what are the things they were looking for in the communities that they joined, that just about all of those things you find in a Cistercian monastery.  We have a regular life, we have a community life, we have regular prayer, we have daily Eucharist, we wear habits, we work together, these are the things that are actually attracting people to religious life.  They are the things by our great fortune, I think, more than by calculation, we have retained.

So I’d say, yes we’re going to get smaller numbers because families are smaller and people are faced with more options of living a sort of spiritual life or even an ecclesial life without becoming members of a religious order.  There is one post-modernist kind of tray which is a fear of institutions and particularly the fear of commitment to institutions, lifelong commitment.  All these things are diminishing the intake to all religious orders but I think that we will probably still continue to get our own share of vocations.  Our communities may well be smaller and experience a sort of trauma in reframing the way that they live, but I would be relatively optimistic about the future.  Relatively optimistic.

 

Br Chris:  I’m very optimistic for Our Lady of Guadalupe, I feel there is hope here.

 

Fr Michael Casey: There’s a hope there but there are also demographic changes.  The level of Catechesis in Catholic education for example, means that people can go through twelve years of Catholic schooling without encountering a religious or being aware that religious life exists.  If the go on to study science or something like that, they can very quickly go through the university training without knowing anything about the history of the Church or medieval history.  It’s not that they’re bad people and they’re not, it’s just that the Church and monastic life have never impinged on their consciousness.

 

Br Chris:  Are you doing anything at Tarrawarra Abbey to reach out to people?

 

Fr Michael Casey:  It’s very hard to know what you can do.  Our website is the main instrument of outreach and certainly I know there are religious orders who have people on the road, going around campaigning but they’re not yielding much fruit.  The Marist Brothers, which my own brother is one, put a lot of effort into youth apostolate.  They have a very good induction program but the numbers are very slight.  You would think that these dynamic people, going full-time with a generous budget, working at this, that something more would develop but the numbers are not there.

I think we’re simply a different style of life.  They have the problem that they’re associated with the teaching apostolate and that teaching apostolate is becoming increasingly difficult, in the sense that people can be teachers without being religious.  On the other hand, many religious don’t want to be involved in this anymore.  So what’s the point in joining religious life?

Monastic life is far more visible and far more attractive.  It frightens a lot of people because of its intensity and commitment.  If you read the Exordium Parvum, that’s what they say about the first generation, that they were scared stiff!  It’s a wonderful thing but it’s not for me.  That’s where I think it’s important that those who work in guest house exhibit a certain quality of humanity and accessibility.

 

Br Chris:  We’ve come to our final question.  Looking back on your life, what are the major life lessons you’ve learned?  How have you grown in wisdom?

 

Fr Michael Casey:  Well, let me tell you about wisdom.  In the old rite of Baptism, a little piece of salt was put on the child’s tongue.  The words said were, “Accept the salt of wisdom.”  When I was Baptized, I accepted the salt of wisdom and then I stuck my tongue out again and got a second dose! [laughs]  Then I stuck my tongue out again for a third dose but my mother wouldn’t let me have it!  So I think that’s a very holy story that will look good when I’m canonized, he was always in the pursuit of wisdom! [laughs].

Wisdom is the taste for ultimate truth, I suppose and I’d have another definition for it.  Wisdom is just simply the quality of resilience after making mistakes.  Any real human life is full of mistakes and the more mistakes the better because with more mistakes we learn.  The longer we live, the more mistakes we make, and if we’ve got half a brain, we eventually begin to learn something from those mistakes.  What I would see as one grows in age, the number of one’s mistakes increases, thereby you learn from one’s own experience what works, what is good, what is true, what is beautiful.  That’s what wisdom is.

+ I’m very grateful to Fr Michael for participating in this interview with me. He is an outstanding man and a great light in our Cistercian Order. He’s also my favorite author, so do your self a big favor and read his books!

Br Chris