We are set apart,
Something not a part,
Something distant
From the changing times,
The blowing winds,
The seaside escapes,
The tiny escapades,
From running reasoning minds
Of brilliance and cavalcades,
The rising of the tide,
Indisputable arguments,
The wrestling with impermanence,
We sit silent, unafraid,

Not needing,
Not needing reinforcements,
Not needing attention,
Not needing victory,
Not seeking to defeat,
The difficult suffering,

What we do is hard,
Content in being apart,
Passing beads through fingertips,
Touching and caressing,
The presence lingering within,

Expanding darkness,
Empty space filling,
Purging imperfections,
Overwhelmed and tongue-tied,
At peace in rustic abstinence,
Content with our wretched poetry,
Unafraid, fearing no thing,

Happy with all things,
Loving and kind,
Fighting back the violence within,
Aware the battle is within,

Knowing hope,
Knowing charity,
Knowing faith,

While unsure about everything,
Doubting ourselves,
Not believing in ourselves,
Fasting, abnegation, frugality,
Renouncing, rejecting, refusing,
Flowering from within.

At the end of the afternoon, we went to the large abbey cemetery. At the bend of an avenue in this solemn enclosure, Dom Olivier turned to me and said: “The hardest death is the little daily death, when we are perfectly healthy. In life, we go from one death to another; they prepare us for the ultimate end. Little deaths of the ego are the big deaths, and they allow for a good death. Why do some monks experience more difficult deaths than others? I cannot explain to you the reasons why God distributes our final trials so unequally. Perhaps monks carry for others humanity’s fears and anxieties. One day, my father told me that he was not afraid of death. I told my father that this was not a sign of holiness. Peaceful deaths are not necessarily the most holy. Good monks can experience anxieties when they embark for heaven. How did our brother Cistercians in Tibhirine die? We are almost certain they were beheaded. Who can know if they were afraid? Their spiritual battles must have been terrible. Satan is present until the final moments. He does not ease his infernal grasp. Why does God allow the devil to act as he pleases? Lucifer loves to sow trouble and despair. He is monster of pride. But God has the last word. 

–”A Time to Die: Monks on the Threshold of Eternal Life” written by Nicolas Diat