“The Vowed Life on Mount Tabor”
Fr. Ignatius John Schweitzer
[Written for a Carthusian monk on the occasion of his profession]
Lord Jesus Christ, for our sake you consecrated yourself that we may be consecrated in truth. Therefore we humbly yet boldly entrust to you our religious consecration, unto your glory and the good of others. Bring to perfection our feeble conversion of life! Transform it in the deifying energies of your Holy Transfiguration!
Animated by the Holy Spirit, may the vow of obedience daily increase our participation in you, the Beloved Son, and in your Paschal Exodus and passing-over to the Father.
Engulfed by the cloud of the divine Presence, may the vow of chastity more and more separate us from worldly attitudes so that caught up in the divine, our chaste love may listen to and find you alone Jesus and your Kingdom above all things.
One cannot carry much up the Mountain, so the vow of poverty leaves us with almost nothing but the promises of the Word, the prophetic message that is altogether reliable. So may we await with hope that Last Day when the Morning Star will rise gloriously in our hearts. May we now find our support in nothing but the blessed poverty of this Word, this small lamp shining in a dark place.
The Mountain of the Lord stands firm forever, it cannot be shaken; and it is established as the highest mountain. So may the vow of stability form in us a deeper and higher perspective, to see in faith all reality transfigured before our eyes.
“Master, it is beautiful that we are here with you” and it is just as beautiful that you remain with us even when we are not so attentive to it, or when cloud and darkness are your raiment. Take us to yourself, to the heavenly tabernacles you prepare for each of us, and which our cells even now foreshadow. So passing from grace to grace, glory to glory, we shall always say, “How lovely is your dwelling place,” Father, Son, and Spirit, now and forever! Amen.