Third Sunday of Lent: Psalm 95
Brother Duffy,
I am still entrained to the spiritual resonance of our Lenten retreat collaboration last night; our conversation felt less like a telephone call and more like a shared vigil at the foot of the Mountain. As I turned this morning to the 1962 Roman Missal and the sharp clarity of Ephesians 5:3, I was struck by the Apostle’s uncompromising boundary: "But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not so much as be named among you, as becometh saints." This isn't merely a list of prohibitions; it is a blueprint for the atmospheric pressure required to sustain the life of a saint. For those of us navigating the 21st-century digital wilderness under a vow of monastic celibacy, this "not so much as named" standard is the very airlock that keeps our internal sanctuary pressurized against the vacuum of a hyper-sexualized world.
I speak, however, as one finally stabilized in a heavenly orbit—but only after the heavy, chastening hand of midlife grace corrected more than thirty-five years of profound sexual disorder. This graying beard is a daily reminder that I am no pristine "virgin master" speaking from a lifetime of unbroken silence; I am a repentant prodigal who had to learn the architecture of the cell through the wreckage of the world. It forces the question: Who am I, in light of such a fractured history, to preach a perfect celibate order to that rare one percent of young men still "on the ground" who may truly be called to this vocation from their youth? Perhaps the instruction of the virgins is best left to those who never left the garden, while my own voice finds its resonance among the veterans of the spiritual wars—the widowed, the divorced, and the late-blooming monks over forty—who understand that for us, "not so much as named" is not a mere suggestion, but a life-saving oxygen scrub for a heart that has finally found its atmosphere.
For us, Duffy—living as we do in the unique friction of the 21st century—this Digital Enclosure has become the modern equivalent of the heavy stone cloister wall. While I may occupy a celibate cell and you have been called to the high vocation of family life, we are both standing guard over the same frontier: the sanctity of chastity. In this Lenten wilderness we traverse together, sexual holiness is no longer just a private morality; it is a Vow of Digital Fidelity that guards the eyes and the mind from the corrosive drift of the algorithm. For the married man, this enclosure is the fortress that protects the exclusive radiance of his wife; for the celibate, it is the seal on the tabernacle of his solitude. We are both learning that in this age, to "not let these things be so much as named" requires a new monastic skill—a deliberate curation of our digital boundaries that ensures our devices serve as altars of communication rather than windows into the void.
Let us continue to sharpen one another in this discipline, Duffy, holding the line of this enclosure until the bells of Easter morning. Whether we are guarding the garden of a family or the silence of a cell, may our "not naming" of the dark be the very thing that allows the Light of the Resurrection to speak our true names.
With you on the Watch,
Brother Jonathan.
Perhaps the image at the top is a letter you are writing to your younger self, Brother Duffy. Here is my post on The Five Cords.
Here is the Gemini construction thread for today's letter:
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