Ora et Labora: Memories from Last Year’s Retreat at the Farm
“The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer” (Wendell Berry).
The day began with Mass in the biting cold, the moon above us, and the cattle lowing outside the chapel. It was peaceful…and wild. After a warming cup of coffee, we gathered by the barn to feed the pigs, tend to the sheep, and gather eggs. The day carried on as adults and children together worked the dirt, pausing only to pray the Angelus, heads bowed, and hearts focused on Our Blessed Lady. After work was done, it was time for Compline, and at last a refreshing meal by the flickering camp fire. Time changes when you spend consecutive days under the open sky. Eternity penetrates mundanity. The earth is charged with wonder.
Greetings! We are gearing up for our second Spring Retreat and Community Garden Planting at the Ave Maria Farm. If you are interested in attending please reach out by email: Father Kavanaugh@gmail.com
This will be an opportunity for prayer, fellowship, and hard work as we plant our community garden — putting St. Benedict’s philosophy to practice: Ora et Labora! Please feel welcome to participate in whatever manner you are comfortable and reach out if you have questions. Here is the itinerary and a few matters to help you prepare and have a great time.
“While everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds” (Matthew 13:25).
Prayer. Asceticism. Fraternity.
A few weeks ago, I overheard a conversation between two men discussing cold showers. It immediately peaked my interest. I had the idea once, and, after a 5 second trial jettisoned it as fast as you can cry ‘help’! For some months now, these men had formed the habit of taking daily showers in glacial temperatures. There are a lot of benefits, they told me. It increases metabolism, improves blood circulation, burns fat and glucose, lowers stress, and gives you a dopamine kick that far out rivals an extra large coffee.
“The Unfading Rose” is a discussion group for Orthodox Christians interested in homesteading, farming, grappling with technology, and the Benedict Option, who are aspiring to rediscover a balanced life centered on sacraments and nature.
Someone once suggested to me, with a slightly dismissive gesture, as though the issue was simple and obvious, “We can’t turn back the clocks.” That statement has long since intrigued me. What does it mean, after all? It is the kind of thing we all grow up with, a bit like saying, “You can’t have breakfast without toast.” “You can’t go on a country walk without a GPS, heavens no.” We breathe in ideas like this without ever questioning them, and they become hardwired into us.
It’s been a while since I’ve sent out a blog. I’m afraid it has been a busy year, and I am struggling to keep up with some of my goals. To be honest, I have also dithered quite a bit about how much time I want to spend online at all. Nonetheless, I think I will start creating shorter entries here. Some topics need a lot of words to flesh out, but other times, a line or two is equally weighty.
Here are some words from a recent Paul Kingsnorth article: “Suffer Little Children.” Perhaps it plant a seed.
“It’s a sunny April day when I turn down a small side road near Lough Derg in County Clare on my way back from the morning school run. I’m not really going anywhere, it’s just that I pass this road every morning and I’ve never known where it goes. Sometimes I like to head down lanes and get lost. Getting lost is itself becoming a lost art. Somebody could write a book about it, if anybody still read books; but the art of reading is going the same way as the art of wandering aimlessly. If you want to know where something is today, you just Google it, and the little Satanic Rectangle in your hand obligingly offers up a characterless, inhuman little blue line to follow, precise to the last gigamillimeter, with the help of all the satellites spying on you every second from space. You don’t have to know how to read a map, or even where you are in the landscape. The Machine has your back.
Well, humbug to it. One reason I have neither a smartphone nor a satnav is that I like getting lost. I don’t want Elon’s Starlink to tell me precisely where I am. I reserve the right to know neither where nor who I am, for as long as I damn well like.”
How can our ordinary lives be reordered and transformed? In the next few weeks, I will be looking at the Daniel Opperwall’s work, A Layman in the Desert. I hope this is not merely theological abstraction, but offers a little food for thought about how we are supposed to be living in this crazy modern world . . .
How Can We Achieve Enlightenment within the World?
“How, we might ask, can a married person learn about chastity from ancient celibates? How can a wealthy person in the world learn about charity from people who owned nothing? How can a construction worker learn about fasting from people who ate little more than a biscuit every day?” (Daniel G Opperwall, A Layman in the Desert 11).
“Lay people and monks do not each have their own ‘spirituality,’ and the Holy Spirit, whom they all receive at baptism, is one. The enemies and adversaries of the Christian are the same at all times no matter how well they disguise themselves. Victory will be gained also in one and the same manner, even when at first sight lay people and monks do not always put the same means into action” (Gabriel Bunge, Despondency: The Spiritual Teaching of Evagrius, 33).
The goal is simple, the attainment daunting. The one purpose of our life is spiritual perfection and unceasing communion with God. This sounds overwhelming, to say the least. The Church offers us 2,000 years of Holy Scripture and patristic teachings on how to undertake this journey, but putting it into practice is no easy task. Furthermore, most teachings on enlightenment were written by monastics. How can we apply these to our lay lives in the world, and especially in the 21st century?
These are the real life issues we will be exploring in the next weeks to come in our Spiritual Life Class. We will be following closely the work by Daniel G. Opperwall, A Layman in the Desert. Through his insight, the teachings of St. John Cassian and other patristics, and open group discussions, we can take the next step in our own, personal dedication to pursuit of holiness.
Our Goal and Telos
Anonymous Monk: “A monastery is merely a place where people come to help one another to salvation. Your home as a married man should be no different from that” (9).
Our task in the world is to work out our salvation through our daily lives, within our ordinary responsibilities and community. But how can we do this?
First, we must keep our goal and telos at the center of everything.
Our telos, ultimate end, is the Kingdom of God. Our goal, the means for attaining the end, is Purity of Heart.
Abba Moses says this of the distinction: “The telos of our commitment, as we noted, is the kingdom of God…but the immediate goal (scopos) is purity of heart, without which it is impossible for anyone to get the telos that we are talking about. Fixing our eyes steadily on this goal, then…let us make for it without wavering” (23). Opperwell explains: “People who wish to win an archery contest aim at a small target (their goal) and when they hit it, they immediately receive a prize (their telos). However, if an archer loses sight of his target, he will by definition be unable to obtain his prize” (23).
“This,” Moses continues, “must be our primary undertaking — this the never-altered destination and never-failing pursuit of the heart — that the mind might always cling to things divine and to God” (27).
What is Purity of Heart?
Purity of heart is as a state in which one is free of sin, and no longer falls away from holiness, tranquility, and love.
According to Abba Moses, through God’s Grace, one becomes victor over the passions. By tranquility he means “the ability to rein in the mind, avoiding the problem of having one’s thoughts run off in all directions uncontrolled” (Opperwall 24).
Abba Moses illustrates purity of heart in the words of Isaiah: “I will establish your rulers in peace and your bishops in righteousness. Unrighteousness shall no longer be heard in your land, neither destruction nor distress within your boundaries, but your walls shall be called Salvation, and your gates Sculptured Work. The sun shall no longer be your light by day, but thy Lord shall be your everlasting light, and God, your glory. For your sun shall no longer set, nor shall your moon be eclipsed, for the Lord shall be your everlasting light, and the days of your mourning shall be fulfilled” (27).
Christ describes theoria in his prayer to the Father: “that they May be one as you in me and I in you that they May also be one in us” (John 17:21).
Path to Inner Purity: The Five Key Virtues
Five key virtues are held up by the desert fathers: detachment, discernment, discretion, humility, and balance. As we aspire to cultivate these virtues in our life, by God’s grace and the aid of the saints and angels, we scale the mountain of enlightenment. These steps are the means to an end, bringing us to a state of theoria (unceasing contemplation), and eventual theosis (oneness with God).
“Our task as Christians is daunting but that we take it on with the full assurance that it is possible to walk the hard road of life — where we live it — in peace if we seek purity of heart and the kingdom” (50).
“Who is she that riseth up as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?”
1789, the French Revolution broke out, that great demonic force and forerunner of the Antichrist. The rebellion stirred up hatred against everything sacred. Cathedrals, altars, priests, icons, men, women, and children were desecrated. But the French people did not give in passively. In the Vendée region of Western France, an uprising surged. Poorly clad peasants, armed with prayer beads and a sacred heart pinned to their breast, marched forward against the revolutionists. Knowing the odds all too well, they anchored their hope on heaven. Three times a day, the battalions prayed the rosary. Three times a day they called to their general above, the Blessed Virgin Mary, marching to their death.
At a grave point in the battle, the Vendée loyalists retreated. They had no chance for victory, and ran back. Who do you think they met behind them? Their wives and daughters, waving frying pans and buckets, urging them back to battle: “Turn around! Fight!” The war roared on. Half a million Christians were massacred that day, half a million martyred, for God and country, willing to give up their lives, rather than settle for the idolatry of secularism.
“Who is she that riseth up as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?”
This is a prayer from the Divine Office on the Feast of the Assumption. “Clear as the sun.” “Terrible as an army.” Who indeed? The Blessed Queen, our Lady and Mother.
St. John was taken up into heaven and foreshown the end of the world. Who does he find combatting the dragon? Our Queen.
“A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars . . . And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems” (Revelation 12:1-3).
The devil hates the Blessed Virgin. He was warned at the start that she would be his demise: “I will put enmities between thee [the serpent] and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel” (Genesis 3:15).
“Clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?”
Who is this great woman, Queen and Warrior?
She is the young, humble maiden who said, “Thy will be done.”
Picture this little girl. She did not have any lofty degrees. It never crossed her mind to be successful or accomplished. She did not wear flashy dresses or demand rights and recognition. She lived at the temple, wore simple clothes and a head covering, was quiet, submissive, and prayerful. The angel’s “Ave Maria” did not mean any earthly honor for the maiden. Her pregnancy would be a scandal to the world. She would be a disgrace, a shame, despised and probably stoned. How did she respond, in her quiet, little heart: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done unto me according to thy word.”
The irony of Christianity: everything is flipped upside down in Jesus Christ. The grand and magnificent become petty and insignificant. The poor and humble become mighty and powerful. What the world celebrates, God casts to the ground. What the world considers weak and puny, God lifts up and honors.
Who does God use to defeat the devil? Not a celebrity, nor a politician, not an Oprah Winfrey, or Margaret Sanger, or even someone like A.O.C. You would not see a picture of the Blessed Virgin in a feminist promotion, flexing her arm, saying, “We Can Do It!” No. God chooses someone smaller and less noticeable. Indeed, he chooses a girl that would not even be noticed in today’s pop culture — the handmaid of the Lord.
“When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him, and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this person,’ and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you.”
“Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 14. 8-11).
This is our path.
What is great in the eyes of the world, is nothing in God’s eyes. What is petty to the world, is everything to God.
“The cross is folly to those who are perishing,” St. Paul preaches. “But to us who are being saved it is the power of God . . . Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:17-2:5).
“[He] emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (Philippians 2:7).
The world we live in is going to hate us.
There is an underlying hatred towards God and the Church brewing in our culture today and . We need to prepare ourselves.
Do you remember the churches in Canada? 83 homes of God vandalized, burned down, or desecrated just a couple years ago, on the premise of unmarked graves. It is like something out of the French Revolution. It was all fake, and that is thoroughly documented and testified now. There were never unmarked graves, but you do not hear that do you, and it does not matter. This is just the beginning. There is a movement in our times which has always marked the end of a Christian world. Lies about our faith are festering everywhere, lies about our beliefs, morality, and lives, lies about the past and Christianity’s profound impact on the world, lies about the present and the unparalleled morality and charity of Christians all around us. Good people have swallowed up these lies. Friends, peers, children have been fed them.
We need to buckle down and get serious. Expect to be hated. Expect to be the shame of the world, among your peers, and your community. Expect to hear scandals said about your priest and your bishops. Expect to be laughed at. Expect to suffer. Expect that it will be very, very easy, to betray Christ and give in to the pressure — just a little incense, burn a little incense to the emperor. What will it hurt?
Do you remember our Corpus Christi procession last year. We took the Blessed Sacrament downtown and did an exorcism and dedication over our community. Did you know protestors went to the police station beforehand? They wanted permission to riot and mock us? The police intervened this time. They refused and sent out patrols to guard us while praying.
This is how you know we are doing God’s work. The world will hate us. It will not be so easy in the future. Things are getting worse, and quickly.
How does this make us feel? Is it unsettling? Is it our greatest joy? There is no better life than to share the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
How do we prepare?
“Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 14. 8-11).
We need to become smaller.
Start fasting. Starve yourself a little. Let the muscles in your arms atrophy. That is how you become a soldier of Christ. Pray more fervently. Sacrifice your time and strength on your knees. That is the best kind of prepping. Arm yourself with the rosary. The Blessed Mother has the final victory. She holds the weapons that sleigh the dragon. If we want to be soldiers in the 21st century, it is time to heed the call of our general.
This is our war, our joy! We were born for it. Fight it well!
“Who is she that riseth up as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?”
Greetings! I apologize that I have not posted on this blog for a long time now. Balancing parish life with all our new projects at the farm has kept my hands tied. In addition to that, I have to admit, I really don’t like the internet and have dithered back and forth between whether or not I want to spend time on it . . . I’m still not convinced. However, in the meantime, I plan on resuming these blogs. Maybe something good will come from it.
To begin again, I would like to share a letter I’ve written recently to my parish. “Is the ‘Western Captivity’ a Myth. I believe so, and not the good kind of myth.
Brethren,
Just now, I stumbled across this fascinating article called: Was There a “Latin Captivity” of Orthodox Thought? Fr. Seraphim Rose says “No”– It intrigued me, because it resonated closely with my personal journey and studies. I wish the article was written more elegantly, but it is well-cited and grounded in reason.
Within the Orthodox world, there exists a wide range of attitudes about the appropriateness of “Western” influences in our Apostolic Church. It is important to be authentic and genuine in our Orthodoxy. However, it is not always easy to discern what that means, in the West, in America, in modernity, and so forth. In the mid-20th century, a number of theologians (almost exclusively in the West) introduced a term called the “Western Captivity” or “Latin Captivity.” This teaching and attitude has become quite prevalent ever since, and is especially influential today in Orthodox circles in America and Greece (though not in Russia). The mentality is highly suspicious of anything Western, and criticizes the predominant movements in Russia over the last few centuries — suggesting that the Russian Orthodox world was infiltrated and harmed by Latin thought. What can we make of this?
While in seminary, I engaged in many in-depth studies on this topic with a number of professors and peers, who recognized serious problems in the so-called “Western Captivity” claim. The Russian Orthodox world did indeed embrace a good deal of Latin thought and practices over the last few centuries. St. Augustine was highly celebrated all throughout Russian seminaries, and priests were encouraged to be fluent in Latin. This may sound scandalizing to some converts today, but we have to remember something critical here: the Orthodox Church herself embraced this “Westernism.” It saw this Latin influence as positive and accepted it eagerly. Indeed, western thought, music, art, and practices were celebrated not only by the Russian Orthodox hierarchs, but also by countless saints over the centuries in Russia and across Mount Athos (including John of Kronstadt, Ignatius Brianchaninov, Theophan the Recluse, Seraphim of Sarov, the Optina elders, the new martyrs, and more recently, Fr. Seraphim Rose). No one forced western influences in the Church. She was eager to adopt them.
Through the ages, Orthodoxy has always been open to wisdom and beauty wherever it can find it — whether from pagan culture, the Islamic world, or non-Orthodox Christians (Catholics and Protestants). This approach — insisting on tradition, while remaining flexible and celebrating cultures — is our inheritance. As American converts, we need to be slow to criticize the Faith handed down to us. We are here to accept the Faith passed down to us open-heartedly. When Orthodox Christians in America and the West are hyperactive in rejecting anything “Western,” we are pulling the carpet out from under our feet. In the name of ‘being traditional’, we are rejecting tradition and elevating ourselves above our holy fathers.
This is a mistake. It is not Orthodoxy, and it is harmful. If we want to survive today, to keep our soul from atrophying in a nihilistic world that gnaws away at every part of our Christian and Western traditions, we need to hold on to what is good and beautiful.
These are just some thoughts I’ve had and felt I would share. Our Orthodox faith is so beautiful. We need to be open to it and celebrate it as the Fathers (ancient and contemporary) pass it down to us.
