I
pretty regularly fantasize about being a monk. My vocation is married life and fatherhood, and I've basically always known that -- but religious life has long had a great appeal to me. The simplicity of the monk's life, the certainty about how their time will be spent, the development of the interior life; these are things that feel both valuable, and unattainable.
But this unattainability is a lie. Jesus Christ called His people to be a nation of priests. What I am trying to recall to myself is that I am a monk, in the sense that I have duties that must be fulfilled for the glory of God; and that I must find in my life a detachment from worldly things. My duties look very different from a cloistered penitent's, but the simplicity of heart that I imagine is the monk's goal should be, and is, my own goal as well.
Therefore I say to you, be not solicitous for your life, what you shall eat, nor for your body, what you shall put on. Is not the life more than the meat: and the body more than the raiment? Behold the birds of the air, for they neither sow, nor do they reap, nor gather into barns: and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not you of much more value than they? And which of you by taking thought, can add to his stature by one cubit? And for raiment why are you solicitous? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they labour not, neither do they spin. But I say to you, that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of these. And if the grass of the field, which is to day, and to morrow is cast into the oven, God doth so clothe: how much more you, O ye of little faith? Be not solicitous therefore, saying, What shall we eat: or what shall we drink, or wherewith shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the heathens seek. For your Father knoweth that you have need of all these things. Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you. Be not therefore solicitous for to morrow; for the morrow will be solicitous for itself. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.
This is what my Lord commands of me. In all my daily tasks, I think it is helpful to imagine that I am in fact a monk who has been given these duties, disinterestedly, by my superior. Tomorrow, I will be given others; but tomorrow is not my concern.
I sometimes worry about losing my house and my land, about losing my wife or my family, about my computer breaking, or my bank account running dry. What a hypocrite! I worry about losing these things, and then fantasize about the joys of having nothing at all.