In the quiet oratory of Holy Wisdom Monastery in Middleton, Wisc., I spent my mornings gazing at the face of Jesus. On the far wall of the room where we prayed hung an icon of Jesus holding a tablet that read, “Behold, I make all things new.” Outside the prairie was a technicolor parade of coneflowers, whorled milkweed, and purple loosestrife, while robins, cardinals, and song sparrows continued their song; but it was hard for me to believe that Christ was making things new in the present.
It was July 2023, and the smog from the wildfires in Canada covered much of Wisconsin, including the grounds of the monastery. Israel had just launched the largest military operations in the West Bank city of Jenin since 2002. Typhoon Egay had caused landslides and flooding in the northern part of the Philippines, where many of my friends and family members resided. All creation groaned, and even in the monastery, I could hear the cry so clearly.
I was sure the Benedictine sisters heard it too, because part of the liturgy was dedicated to praying for the prisoners on death row, the hungry who did not have food, and the unhoused who didn’t have shelter during the smog and the heat wave. I was there for a week as a summer steward, a program of the monastery to teach young single women about Benedictine spirituality, creation care, and monastic rhythms. While the world burned around us, we sat in stillness, praying three times a day, speaking the words of a forthcoming kingdom in the Magnificat, “He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly.”
Sister Lynne Smith, prioress of Holy Wisdom, said that her love for justice began with reading the Psalms. During the Gulf War in 1990, Psalm 79 struck her, particularly verse 3: “They have poured out blood like water all around Jerusalem, and there is no one to bury the dead.” More than three decades later, this passage still resonates with her, especially as she has seen Palestinian blood pouring out in Gaza. Because she is pained by seeing people suffer, she believes that God, too, is pained by seeing people suffer.
“These were not just words. People experienced it,” Smith said, hit with the daunting realization that the Psalms, too, were prayers for people who were suffering. It is a book about Hebrew people on the margins who are exiled, oppressed, and affected deeply by war, which then gives us a picture of a people cared for by God. “[Justice] is a central concern of God, hence it should be a central concern for us,” she said.
This is why Smith finds it important to pray specifically for those who sigh under the heavy hand of injustice. She learned to trust that even though she is not directly involved in providing aid for a war on the other side of the world, she can still pray in solidarity with people. Prayer, too, is necessary in the work of restoration.
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The Benedictines live this restoration out by seeing the image of God in everyone. Praying for people in marginalized communities broadens the world of Benedictine brothers and sisters who have vowed to be rooted in their community and may not interact regularly with the people for whom they are praying.
“In the Benedictine life, prayer is at the center,” Smith said. “But that does not absolve [us] from action.”
This action shows in works of mercy, which requires a faith that is neither bound by time nor geography. God carries out justice through all of those who have been called — whether we are in the monastery or in the world.
The God who finishes justice
In the Benedictine tradition, there is a belief that God is the one who finishes the good work of justice.
“[W]hen thou dost begin any good thing that is to be done, with most insistent prayer beg that it may be carried through by Him to its conclusion,” writes Benedict of Nursia in the Prologue of the Rule.
Humankind is simply invited to offer the work of our hands to be used as God wills. Having developed a deep center in Christ, what we do flows not from our own strength, which can cause burnout and make our hearts callous. Instead, God’s grace gives us the capacity to be tender to the sufferings of the world, just as Christ was tender. It gives us the ability to be firmly anchored in the knowledge that God will not tarry in carrying out justice.
In the week I spent at the monastery, faithfulness was cultivated in me. Every day, after morning prayer, we went out to work. In the sisters’ garden, we harvested bok choy, Swiss chard, and zucchini. In the prairie, we weeded invasive species and collected seeds for the Dane County Park System. The monastic life taught me to return to the ground with patience and expectant hope, just as I would in prayer. Every day, we returned to the field to get dirt under our fingernails and do the same thing over again. Through this, I learned that the life of work and prayer are not separate. They both draw from the well of Christ’s love.
It was with the Benedictines that I learned the work of justice and prayer for it to come to earth are rooted in the same hope and spoken in the same breath. While tilling the ground, I realized I was harvesting the fruits of centuries of impassioned work and prayer of monastics, and I, too, was partaking in it by being devoted to work the patch of land that was in front of me. And when I failed, I was liberated to try again because my flailing attempts at obedience were not in vain.
In the monastery, I was radicalized to believe again — that mercy abounds for the hurting, that faith is available to the unbelieving, and that justice is coming. I needed God to give me the eyes to see it and the hands to work for it. As a radical, it is my job to work and pray but it is not my job to bring justice to this world. I remember the gentle gaze of Jesus in the oratory. During centering prayer, when my mind would wander to the thick haze of smog outside the window, his face grounded me. I remember how revelatory it was to realize that it is Jesus who I am called to behold, not injustice. For even the dark is not dark to him who is light.
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