Chapter Twelve
CHAPTER TWELVE
We know from chapter 8, verse 4 that Lauds was always celebrated at daybreak. To welcome the dawn, greet the rising sun, and rejoice in the coming of the light of the new day touches a universal instinct.
A Native American describes how his people, at the turn of this century, began their day:
'In the life of the Indian, there was only one inevitable duty—the duty of prayer—the daily recognition of the Unseen and Eternal.
His daily devotions were more necessary to him than daily food.
He wakes at daybreak .
. he stands erect before the advancing dawn, facing the sun as it dances upon the horizon, and offers his unspoken orison.
It needs a leap of the imagination for those of us who live in an artificial or an urban environment today, who have lost any close touch with nature, to appreciate what power the sun would hold for people in a world totally dependent on natural forces for light, warmth, life itself.
If we look carefully at the very detailed account of the structure of Lauds on solemn feasts that Benedict gives in this chapter, we are able to appreciate the way in which it flows in a succession of carefully thought-out steps. It opens with the introductory Psalm 66 (67), which includes the verse ''Let your face shed its light upon us.'' In chapter 7 Benedict had reminded me that the gaze of God is always upon us, and now I feel that this idea is carried on in the reference to the light reflected from the face of God. The psalm that follows is a penitential psalm. In the light of God's goodness I become aware of my own darkness and sin, and my cry is: ''Have mercy on me, cleanse me from my sin, purify me, wash me." This act of acknowledging my weakness and failure is not a morbid dwelling on sin but a turn-
ing in confidence to the God who sees a humble and contrite heart and is there to rescue me just as he rescued his people in the past.
Psalm 117 (118) is a psalm that is traditionally used to celebrate Christ's resurrection: ''This is the day the Lord has made."' It is a psalm of confidence that springs out of the certainty of God's care and love in the past and his continuing help today. Our God is a God who is good, his love is a love that has no end. This is the God for whom I long and Psalm 62 (63):2, 9 expresses that longing:
My body pines for you like a dry, weary land without water.
My soul clings to you; your right hand holds me fast.
Benedict then inserts the canticle of the three young men in the fiery furnace, the Benedicite from the third chapter of the Book of Daniel, which has formed part of the Christian liturgy from earliest times. In it the totality of the universe, from the furthest spheres and elements to all living things on earth, is called on to give glory to God. It always reminds me of St. Patrick's breastplate, that wonderful song of creation that also has this sense, which I find unparalleled anywhere else, of the unity of the world, of the whole created order, although in this case it starts with the Trinity, the heavens and angelic beings, and then moves through fire, water, sun, and moon to birds and beasts and man and woman. Daybreak on the first day of the week is the time above all other for thanksgiving for the wonders of the whole created world.
Bless the Lord all created things: sing his praise and exalt him for ever.
The final psalms, as was common usage in both East and West, were psalms 148-150 joined together and known as the Praises
(Lauds). They open:
Alleluia!
Praise the Lord from the heavens, praise him in the heights.
Praise him, all his angels, praise him all his host.
And they close:
Let everything that lives and that breathes give praise to the Lord. Alleluia!
The short reading from the Book of Revelation is chosen because it carries the theme of the victory of the lamb, which is particularly appropriate for a Sunday morning. The Office then returns to what will be said daily at Lauds throughout the coming week: the Song of Zechariah. In Jewish tradition the morning is the hour of deliverance from the darkness of night, and here again we touch on the powerful symbolism of the movement from dark to light and sleep to life, which has come so strongly throughout this whole discussion of Lauds. ''The dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.
."' How easily this leads on into the litany so that the last prayer of Sunday Lauds is outward looking, a petition for deliverance for the Church and the world, the sick and the suffering, those in need, in fear, in darkness.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Lauds on a weekday opens with Psalm 66 (67) and Psalm 50 (51) as in the Office of Sunday. These are permanent features of this morning Office because they express two things that Benedict wants us always to keep together in tension. In the first psalm comes a plea for continued grace, which asks, ''May God still give us his blessing,'' and in the second a recognition of our need for continual forgiveness:
Have mercy on me, God, in your kindness In your compassion blot out my offense.
O wash me more and more from my guilt and cleanse me from my sin (50 [51]:3-4).
A pure heart create for me, O God put a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me away from your presence, nor deprive me of your holy spirit (SO [51]:12-13).
If I make this psalm my daily prayer, it will not allow me to forget ''a sense of God's goodness and our brokenness, a sense of God's greatness and our dependence, a sense of God's grandeur and our fragility.''
Then, combining the regular and the familiar with the changing and the new, Benedict chooses differing psalms for each succeeding day of the week. The very first words of Psalm 5 for Monday morning are:
To my words give ear, O Lord...
It is you whom I invoke O Lord.
In the morning you hear me in the morning I offer my prayer, watching and waiting.
What could be a better start to the week? On Friday Psalm 75 (76) and Psalm 90 (91) speak of the protection that comes with the victory of the Cross. Saturday brings a sense of passing time as the week draws to its close: ''I remember the days that are past"'
(Psalm 142 [143]). Then comes the sense of looking forward:
''Make me know the way I should walk.''
In the final paragraph of this chapter, Benedict says that the Lord's Prayer is to be recited aloud daily. This, he explains, is so that each day we admit our constant and continuing need for forgiveness. He knows all about community life (and what is true for community is as true in marriage, family, school, parish, or whatever the set of relationships in which I find myself), about the hurts that we do to one another and the damage they can do if they are allowed to go unhealed. In making the Lord's Prayer primarily a prayer for forgiveness, he is, of course, in the spirit of its setting in Matthew 6:9-15, where it comes after Christ has been teaching about forgiveness. Once again we see how totally the Rule is shaped by the Gospel. When in verse 13 Benedict uses the word ''covenant"' (a better translation than ''pledge''), it is to show that the commitment to continual forgiveness is to become a constitutive part of life. Daily reading of Scripture is a reminder of the faithfulness of God in his covenant relationship with his chosen people, and that is not less true of his people today.
That short phrase ''thorns of contention'' (12), which in Latin runs propter scandalorum spinas, presents me with two vivid images. First, I have a picture of thorns springing up and choking the green shoots of new growth. ''Contention'' brings to mind the idea of a snare, since it comes from skandalon, a Hellenistic
Greek word used for a stick in a trap on which a bait is placed and when touched by the animal springs up and shuts the trap.
The failure to forgive prevents new life springing up and traps me in the coils of a snare from which I cannot escape.
To fail to forgive is to be trapped in the past, caught up in resentment and bitterness, staying with wounds that remain open and raw— everything that will prevent new life and new growth. It is not only damaging to the individual, but destructive of community life as well.
When I choose not to forgive, I am choosing death rather than life, and Benedict, who is trying to lead us all the time forward into freedom and fullness of life, wants to rescue me. Since he
knows only too well that forgiveness is neither easy nor finished, he sees that we remember this twice each day. ''We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour—unceasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family,'' as Henri Nouwen says.
To forgive and to be willing to receive forgiveness means admitting that things have gone wrong and that I am involved in all that muddle and mess, for the situation is never likely to be clear-cut or simple. I must take responsibility for my part in it all, just as much as Benedict will later tell me that I must take responsibility for any damage or loss to material things (46:1-4).
In the end what makes it possible to forgive is the knowledge that I myself am already forgiven. If I am truly the prodigal, and if the way of Benedict is that of the return to a loving father from whom I have strayed, then I also know that the father awaits me with unconditional love and unconditional forgiveness. Forgiving myself means accepting this forgiveness, not being too proud to receive it. If am not able to accept this gift of loving forgiveness held out to me, how can | hope in turn to be able to forgive?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
How glad I am to find this short chapter on the celebration of Vigils or Matins on the anniversaries of saints. It adds another dimension to the sénse of time and order that Benedict is giving us. Once again I find it brings me something that I find so strongly in the Celtic tradition: the sense of an almost physical presence of the saints around me so that it is quite natural to feel oneself
'*keeping house amid a cloud of witnesses.'' I am reminded of | how I am linked to the communion of saints. If at intervals during the year I am recalled to their life on earth and their presence in eternity, this helps me to become aware of my part as a member of the body of Christ. Here is one more element in that corporate sense that Benedict is building up. I am inserted into a community here on earth; I am also part of a community in the wider context of the Church beyond time and space. It makes me think in gratitude of what I owe to the saints, living and dead, known and unknown.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Alleluia is a Hebrew phrase meaning ''Praise Yahweh!"' It passed into Christian usage without translation, and in the Book of Revelation the chants of triumph of the blessed begin ''A/leluia, victory and glory and power to our God.'' Here we see how Benedict links it as an exclamation of joy in relation to Easter. It is to be said abundantly during the paschal season, the time above all of rejoicing in the victory of Easter. In Lent, it is a mark of the fasting and repentance of the forty days waiting for the coming of Easter that it will not be used. So once again Benedict is showing us a pattern to be observed in the year that centers us_ on Easter, the paschal mystery at the heart of the Gospel becomes the central pivot of the Rule. As we saw already in the prologue,
Benedict's implicit theology is wholly paschal, and all the time we are being pointed forward to new life in the risen Christ. This short chapter encourages me to ask myself what role the reality of death and new life, of dying and rebirth, plays in my life. Do
I say Alleluia sufficiently often in recognition of the victory of the Cross?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Twice in this short chapter that looks at the celebration of the Divine Office during the day Benedict repeats the line from the psalmist that says ''seven times.'' The number seven has always carried an almost mystical sense of completion, perfection. But the reality, of course, was that in his monastery his monks were praying eight times a day, so he finds a nice quotation to explain why they get up at midnight for Vigils (Matins), which allows him to give scriptural justification for the pattern of the monastic
Ortice:
Each of the five quotations from the psalms includes the word "*praise.'' This is what this chapter, and the whole of the liturgical code, is ultimately all about. There are so many ways of praying, so many ways of addressing God, in repentance, in petition, in intercession. But in the end we were made ''to praise our Creator.'' Gratitude puts everything into a different perspective. It_ prevents me from taking anything for granted. It helps me to live my life awake, alert to those good gifts that I am given, in a state of mindfulness or awareness. Then, when I look at the world with eyes of wonder, I discover, rather to my chagrin, that it is often only too easy to drift and become neglectful, lazy, forgetful of gratefulness. I enjoy that line of W. H. Auden, ''Practice the scales of rejoicing,'' because of its suggestion that it really is hard work and needs discipline. I might rewrite those familiar words ieee "pray without ceasing" so that they become ''praise without ceasSnr qh
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
As Benedict's careful explanations continue, I am being drawn deeper and deeper into the sense of time being punctuated by prayer, that praying is inseparable from life itself. For here, having dealt with Vigils and Lauds, he looks at the remaining hours.
The opening versicle, '"God, come to my assistance' (3), is a small phrase commonly used by monastics as a means of recalling one- 'self to the presence of God in one's mind and heart. It prompted
Cassian to write some of his most inspiring teaching in which he said that if those words were repeated throughout the day—at work, in reading, in physical weakness, in moments of temptation
—they would lead to a continuous state of prayer and so to contemplation:
This thought in your heart may be to you a saving formula and not only keep you unharmed by all attacks of devils, but also purify you from all faults and earthly stains, and lead you to that invisible and celestial contemplation.
"'Lord, have mercy"' is equally a phrase that can become like some Continuous underground stream that flows on quietly in my
'heart whatever I may be doing externally. Some sorts of physical work lead nicely into prayer, some sorts of travel are wonderful settings for praying. But much of the time what
I really need help with is to control the constant prattling of the mind. As an Eastern tradition describes it: ''The mind is like a thousand chatter_ing monkeys.'' Cassian's insight, which passed into the monastic tradition of the West, that the repetition of a short phrase is the best aid in the stilling of the mind, gives me a tool to help me live from a contemplative center even when I seem almost devoured by the demands of a seemingly impossibly busy life.
The last Office of the day is Compline for which the three psalms set never change but are repeated nightly. It was usual simply to say Compline wherever the monks might be gathered together, and since these psalms were known by heart, no light was needed. For all of us too they bring the day to an end on this note of certainty: that we can rely on the knowledge of the protecting power of God through the hours of night as we have during the day. After he had spent two months at the Trappist
'monastery of the Genesee, Henri Nouwen wrote in his diary:
I start realizing that the psalms of Compline slowly become flesh in me; they become part of my night and lead me to a peaceful sleep. Trust is written through the evening prayer:
He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High and abides in the shade of the Almighty says to the Lord: ''My refuge, iy stronghold, my God in whom I trust!"'
Slowly these words enter into the center of my heart. They are more than ideas, images, comparisons: they become a real presence. After a day with much work or with many tensions, you feel that you can let go in safety and realize how good it is to dwell in the shelter of the Most High.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
In this chapter, Benedict is giving us his detailed organization of the psalter so that it can be said in its entirety during one week.
He tells us that the ancients had been used to saying the entire psalter during a day, but he is concerned to model it in rather more humane terms. In doing this he is following the advice he gives to the abbot: the Rule has to be made livable, and then there is no reason not to keep it. He is ready to be firm and flexible,
Tather than absolute or extreme. If we can improve on his scheme, then he is humble enough (or sufficiently relaxed about himself!) to say that that is fine provided the commitment is there, that the obligation is taken seriously. What he abhors is that we should be lazy or lukewarm.
For the most part the psalms are to be recited numerically, which suggests that he saw them primarily as material for meditation, a means of lifting the mind to God. But for the three short day of Offices of Terce, Sext, and None at the start of the week he chooses Psalm 118 (119), the wisdom psalm, with its theme of following God's law, doing God's will, learning God's commandments, pondering God's precepts:
Teach me the demands of your statutes And I shall keep them to the end (v. 33).
I ask God to open my eyes, bless my lips, to guide my footsteps, as I seek God's Word with my whole heart:
Your word is a lamp for my eyes and a light for my path (v. 105).
If I do not find myself with time to recite an Office during working hours, almost any verse from this psalm can recall me
to base and bring my heart back to a sense of the presence of the Word. The longer that I stay with the psalms, the more I come to realize my debt to them. As Henri Nouwen said: ''Slowly these words enter into the center of my heart."' uD
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The inner and the outer must correspond, my heart must be in tune with the words that I speak—this i is something that Benedict has said before, and he comes back to it at the end of this long discussion of the Office. He challenges any behavior that depends on the outward observance and lacks the inner attention.
The words of Psalm 46 (47) quoted in verse 4 can be translated '*Sing with wisdom,'' showing that they mean that the words framed by the lips are echoed by the heart and mind. As Michael
Casey says, commenting on this chapter:
In this way the monk is shaped, in his whole inner being, accord- 'ing to the inspired words of the text he is saying. He is
2 is possessed by God' s Word; it enters into composition with his own. own subjectivity and acts as a leaven in the process of his transformation.
In verse 3 Benedict returns to the theme of the fear of the Lord, for that is foundational, as he has shown me in the first step of the ladder of humility in chapter 7. His concern is always with attitude, with the disposition of the heart, awareness of the presence of God, response to that presence, habitual attention. This simple chapter is one of the most important in the Rule.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The theme of reverence in prayer follows on from the previous chapter, and together these two bring to a close this section on the opus Dei by looking at the relationship of its two main elements, psalm and prayer. The psalms were an invitation to prayer, the silent prayer of the heart. In the older monastic practice the psalm was not regarded as human homage rendered to God but rather as God's message to humanity, awakening the response of prayer. So the reading of the psalm, like any other part of Scripture, was a reading that invited and encouraged the interior prayer of the heart.
The usual practice was that, following each psalm, every member of the community would silently prostrate themselves to allow time to appropriate its deeper meaning. This private response might then be gathered up into the words of a public prayer or prayer collect in order to have a three-stage movement—reading, personal interior prayer, and public shared prayer.
As always Benedict does not give us any direct methodology for prayer. Instead he expects us to find our own way with his guidelines. He reminds us of humility and reverence and attention and fear—all the attitudes that will predispose our prayer to be sincere and simple, which will encourage purity in prayer.
With this chapter he ends all that he has to say on the liturgical code.
I notice that, just as in chapter 8, which opened this section, there is no scriptural quotation, which is extremely unusual for Benedict. I get the feeling that this is a simple summary of his own experience, so that if what he has written here has any resonance in my own life and in my own heart, it is because he has himself lived and prayed in this way. Like the abbot himself, he would never teach anything that he did not himself practice.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
''The sharing of burdens,'"' the small phrase that we find in the third verse of this chapter, gives us the keynote of what follows now. We have seen the strength of shared prayer; here we are to look at the strength that comes from what we might rather more self-consciously today call collegiality or the ''ministry of the laity.'' The concern of the next two chapters is with the quality of community, with shared life. The abbot is to appoint deans, men to be in charge of groups of ten, who will look after things both material and spiritual, just like the abbot himself. In Benedict's holistic spirituality, there is no separation of the material and the spiritual. The men who are in charge of sleeping arrangements in the dormitories must also be ready to console and comfort those who need help.
Here we see something about the exercise of power. This is delegation but still under the authority of the abbot, and more fundamentally, under God, for it is to God that all are to look in the handling of affairs of the monastery. Rank and position are not determinants of office. Benedict lists the virtues that he is looking for: virtuous living, wise teaching, confidentiality. In all of the office-holders that he describes in the Rule (and later we Shall be given a vivid portrait of the cellarer to add to the list),
Benedict is seeking men who will model the Christian life to the brothers. It is clear that he is looking for truly spiritual people to hold office. In chapter 64 the abbot is to be chosen for ''goodness of life and wisdom in teaching'' (2). In chapter 31 the cellarer is to be wise and mature (1). Here the deans are described in terms that are found in Acts: ''men of good repute.'' This is close to the Old Testament experience in which Moses' father-inlaw Jethro advises him to choose elders who are ''wise and experienced'"' to help with his leadership burdens (Deut 1:13-15).
It is, therefore, their holy way of life rather than any technical efficiency or specialized expertise that commends them for office or rank, and their appointment is not for reasons of administrative convenience but to encourage spiritual growth.
This, says Adelbert van der Wielen commenting on this chapter, is not possible without an intense effort of love and prayer,
''The double-carrying power by which we can help others.''
You will be able to bear responsibility in so far as you bear others by your virtue and your contemplation, by your charity and your prayer. If I want to know whether I am able to bear this responsibility I must check on how I meet my brothers and sisters in daily life: whether I love them prayerfully and pray with them lovingly.
Such an attitude is restful and disarming for the other. So they will be free and will be themselves with me.
It feels as though something changes at verse 5, perhaps, it has been suggested, in the light of some negative experiences of Benedict himself. There is a hint here of tension, and the positive note at the start of the chapter seems to have turned sour. Yet when he puts an attitude of pride or becoming puffed-up with one's own self as the root causes of things going wrong, he is only returning to a favorite theme. This is something that I know myself, that what most militates against the shared life, the common good, is when individualism pulls away and self-interest is placed before the good of the whole. So once again we are being shown a model that has much wisdom to offer to anyone living and working in today's world. Here is order with flexibility, authority being used to weld the larger group, not to fracture it, but above all the attitude of loving wisdom that in the end makes it all possible.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Here we are given a chapter that is typical of the way in which Benedict handles some of the most mundane and down-to-earth aspects in the organization of daily life. It is important not to let ourselves be distracted by some of the details that can easily strike a jarring note and appear quaint or amusing. So often in Benedict's hands, the daily and the material are made to yield up spiritual insights. He followed the common monastic dormitory arrangement of his day, which became the norm in the sixth century after the Emperor Justinian decreed that monastics of the Empire must sleep in common dormitories to protect against sexual immorality. It would be quite easy to read this chapter simply in these terms, for there are many details that could be interpreted as guards against immorality. But I think that Benedict's main and over-riding interest is in so planning the dormitory that the monks may rise with the utmost speed and ease.
In the prologue he wanted to rouse us all from sleep, and his concern is always that we should live life fully, alert, alive, not half asleep and half awake. So much of the Rule, and also the Gospel, is about life—coming to life, fullness of life. There is a connection between light and life. To stay with the dark is the denial, the opposite of life. The cornerstone of St. John's Abbey,
Collegeville, Minnesota, bears an inscription in Greek letters that translates into English: ''LIGHT—LIFE.'' Those two words sum up the Christian life. Here I find, as so often, that Benedict refreshes my awareness of them as he puts them into the context of the most mundane and daily of situations.
The whole thrust of this chapter is toward what Benedict is saying in verse 6: that the monks will be always ready to rise without delay, for the opus Dei, the work of God, is the whole purpose of their life. So they sleep in a state of availability. It makes
us think of the many parables of Christ's return, so it would not seem unlikely that Benedict wanted his monks to resemble the servants in the gospel who await their master's return in the dead of night. The sense of urgency, therefore, explains why they sleep clothed (later, chapter 55 will mention change of clothes, so we should be wrong to assume anything unhygienic here). They sleep with a light burning, and they have put aside the knives that might harm them as they make quick movements, all in order that they can hasten when the signal is given. Here for once there is an uncharacteristically competitive note: that they might arrive at the place of prayer before their fellows.
It is entirely typical of this way of life to find a combination of real tenderness and concern for the welfare of each, in the matter of separate beds and adequate bedding, with an overriding concern for good order and community living, so that all are placed under the watchful eye of the seniors. Benedict's humanity is most clearly seen in that final verse. Silence is to be discreetly broken in the interests of encouraging one another. In Benedict's way the spirit is always of more consequence than the law.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
There is a very real danger that we might either be tempted to look on chapters 23-30, generally known as ''the penal code"' or ''a code of discipline,'' as some new departure, different in emphasis from what has gone before, or that we might dismiss them as outdated and irrelevant. No less a scholar than de Vogué has said that ''of all the parts of the Rule, this one that we are about to consider is without doubt the most outmoded."' The attitude toward corporal punishment and excommunication is totally alien to present-day thinking, and it might seem very doubtful that there could be much spiritual profit in spending time considering these chapters. Yet if we are to add on to this section chapters 43-46, which are also concerned with the correction of faults, we shall find that the subject of sin and of discipline occupies no less than ten percent of the entire text.
What are we to make of this? If we do not pay it full attention we shall fail to do justice to a central tension in the Rule.
While Benedict points us toward life, fullness of life, the risen self, and Easter, he also tells us that our life should be thoroughly penitential, a perpetual Lent. The sorrow of the prodigal, repentance, and metanoia are an essential part of our Christian discipleship. Daily we should internalize both Lent and Easter, for they belong together. Again my discovery of the Celtic tradition has deepened my appreciation of what Benedict is saying, for there is never any doubt that we can have the light without the dark, creation without redemption. The tradition that has given us creation celebrations of unparalleled beauty has also given us penitential literature.
When he used military imagery in the prologue, Benedict was introducing an important theme that runs through the Rule. The struggle against evil, above all in our hearts, underlies the spiri-
tual section of chapters 1-7, and the theme of purification from vices and sins is constantly recalled, as in 7,70. The previous chapter has looked at community at the point where the flesh is weakest and in most need of support, and Benedict has been showing the vital role of the building up of trusting and supporting relationships as the very fibre of community life and of the communal way to God. Anything therefore that might threaten this or do damage to the welfare of others is seen as extremely serious.
In a time of individualism this rings strangely in our ears, for we are encouraged to think of our sins either individually (between ourselves and God) or against another individual, rather than seeing what effect they have upon the community or the society as a whole. Perhaps it would be no bad thing if I were now to spend time reflecting on the common, shared nature of sin.
Benedict wants the monk to realize the communal dimension of his fault so that what is at issue is a question of social responsibility as well as individual responsibility. He sees sin as deep, structural, and pervasive, tying the individual and the corporate together. It must not be buried and denied, but exposed and lived with in terms of repentance and new life.
The point of departure of the Rule is that we are all responsible beings who have ''departed'' through a sinful act of selfwill, through disobedience (Prol., 1-2). This is recalled in the words ''stubborn or disobedient or proud'"' with which this chapter opens, and it reminds us again of Benedict's determination not to allow vices to grow unchecked (2,26-29; 64,16). When the good of the whole is at stake Benedict is prepared to take a firm line.
David Parry suggests that this chapter can jolt us into thinking about sinful states of mind and the damage that they can do. If I turn what Benedict is saying to his monks into a questioning of my own conscience, I am forced to ask myself if I am proud or arrogant. Am I contemptuous of the ruling of those in charge?
Do I grumble and protest? Am I discontented and frequently telling just how unfair life is? For it is the interior attitude that more than anything else can create or disrupt the common well-being and peace of the shared life.
Eradication of these faults is, however, not for the sake of good discipline. It is essentially pastoral concern for healing, not punishment of the wayward but the "'loving correction'' of the Gospel. Once again Benedict is pointing us to the teachings of Christ. The movement of amendment proceeds by successive steps,
following the outline given in Matthew 18:15-18. The correction begins gradually with private warning before further action is taken, but if there is no amendment, there must be public correction, and finally excommunication. The corporal punishment that he suggests was probably quite mild according to the standards of his day, But the point that he is making remains valid whatever the circumstances of the times. He is speaking of growth and of responsibility. If things go wrong he expects reform, atonement. Later on he will be clear about this in the handling of material things: if anything gets lost or broken, then one must own up at once. When things are wrong, they must be put right. Ultimately the message is as simple and clear as that.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The greater the fault, the greater the exclusion from the community. Failure and punishment are in step: there are corresponding degrees of severity, so that there is no arbitrary exercise of power. Here, for lighter offenses, a person is separated from the shared meal and from the right to lead prayer. In effect this is what had been happening. By his behavior and, above all, by his attitude, the individual has already made that break by behaving like an outsider, separating him or herself from the whole body.
This punishment is a recognition of that fact.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
This isolation from the community is not only to move the sinner to repentance (2-3), but to serve as a reminder that continuing and further hardening of faults could eventually exclude a person from salvation, that full and permanent exclusion of which St. Paul wrote so severely in the passage that Benedict quotes from | Corinthians. It is significant, however, that he omits from this quotation the mention of being handed over to Satan, for that would mean expulsion not only from the monastery but from the Church. The withholding of a blessing or greeting in verse 6 has to be seen in the context of the early Church's understanding of the ''communion of saints,'' which was not that of communication of earth and heaven but of the sacramental sharing of ''holy things to holy people'' of Christians of the time.
The separation that we are shown here is something of a vacuum into which the individual enters, distanced from the community and from what has been going wrong there, since if anyone really wants to be a part of the family they will feel this solitude as a privation. Yet in this isolation there may well be a chance to stand back and to see with greater clarity where the origin of the sin lies. Here is the opportunity to find a space of time for the making of right choices.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
In this chapter Benedict continues to handle the situation with tough love. He wants to make sure that the patient is given time to cure his wounds without undue meddling or interference, for he knows that what is apparently loving and supporting may do greater good to the giver than to the recipient. It is tempting to the one who is standing and watching to intrude, and Benedict is quite clear that this must be resisted, unless, of course, it comes from the one who is in charge and who may be assumed to be handling the case sufficiently well on their own. Again he is telling us about responsible behavior on all sides.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Here comes a most loving and gentle portrait of the healer exercising ''the utmost care and concern'"' (1). One way of reading the Rule is to see Benedict's whole purpose as remedial and the monk's life-work as a healing process of the wounds of sin.
The purpose of all these recent chapters is never with discipline per se, but with healing, with metanoia, with ongoing conversion and opening up into freedom from all those forces that would threaten or destroy that.
In his wisdom the abbot recognizes that he needs to turn to those with particular wisdom and skill in discerning needs. He is still in charge, and this chapter does not, therefore, contradict anything that has gone before, but he also knows that those who are hurt and wounded need especially loving and wise guidance.
/ The exercise of total confidentiality is also a vital safeguard, and here again Benedict shows a grasp of the best counseling practice. I love the use of such gentle words and counsel, so that the sufferer does not feel overwhelmed. I love the emphasis on affirming love and on prayer. Anyone who has known tiredness to the point of exhaustion or depression that suffering so often carries with it will appreciate Benedict's wisdom in providing for skilled support when it might be all too easy to sink into apathy and negativity.
How significant it is that in the middle of what is usually called the penal code, we should be given this passage, one of the most. lyrical in the whole Rule, on compassion! There are two models for the abbot, the skillful doctor and the good shepherd, both of which apply to Christ himself. It is, of course, quite possible to cure without compassion, but this can be no more than a shortcut. If Benedict points us all the time to Christ, then in the exercise of his ministry of healing we can see an example of true
compassion. The deaf hear and the blind see and the lame walk, and I like to take this metaphorically for the healing needed for all those inner wounds.
What I have increasingly appreciated as I have stayed with the Rule is finding how it provides for the whole range of human weakness and inadequacy, yet with a complete absence of cynicism or pessimism. This is what the human condition is, and this is where God's grace is encountered and the paschal mystery happens. St. Paul had insisted on his weakness as a credential, and there are many echoes of Pauline writing in these chapters. Benedict would seem to be saying that weakness and failure are not necessarily a handicap or a disqualification but can, with help, be made the place in which the power of the crucified and risen
Christ can be manifested in our lives. Lent and Easter, the forty days in the desert and the forty days of Easter joy, the paradox of the paschal mystery, this is what underlies the message of Benedict's understanding of sin and healing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Here Benedict deals with a most serious matter, recidivism, the persistent offender, the person who has fallen back after having been forgiven and reaccepted. This is a call to growth. Benedict is realistic and honest. He believes in progress and that is the way that he himself implements the whole healing process: in a series of stages. But he also realizes that the response may not be forthcoming, and in that case truth demands amputation, the cutting out of the diseased part. The successive steps are gently shown, and the images that they present are striking: compresses to draw out the stinking puss, ointment to soothe a raw place, medicine to reach deep down into the body, the cauterizing iron that purifies, and, if all of these fail, the final resort is the knife that cuts out the bad. For just as one sick part can infect the whole body, so what is true of the individual is equally true of the body corporate.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
This chapter, says David Parry, is short and amiable. Here Benedict recognizes indecision and uncertainty and tries to contain it most positively, so that in the end the right way may be discerned. The notion of patience is a very powerful one in the waits and watches.
But neither does he want to make it so easy that there is apparently no price to be paid for this coming and going, so he does impose certain limitations. There must be no 'more than three attempts, and each of these returns is to be a new beginning, starting all over again. Boundaries enable growth, as any mother knows, and what Benedict says of the questing monk in search of his monastic identity is as true of any of us as we also try to discern our own right way.
CHAPTER THIRTY
In describing the exercise of the office of abbot in chapter 2, the words that Benedict used were ''accommodate'"' and ''adapt''; here is an example of putting them into practice. Each one of us was addressed in the prologue as son or daughter, the unique child of a loving father. That is something that Benedict never loses sight of throughout the Rule, just as we too should hold onto it in all our dealings with others. We should be concerned with what is appropriate. In the context of the world in which he was writing, the severe disciplining of the young would have been considered appropriate. It is for the healing and growth into freedom that this is applied, his concern here, as ever, is with the ends rather than the means. It is because of those ends, healing and growth, freedom, new life, those positive and life-giving qualities, that I have learned so much from this section of the Rule.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The healing of wounds and fractures so that we can lead a full and fulfilled life does not stop with people. The responsible handling of others, as well as of our own selves, now leads to the handling of the non-human; what we have been shown of gentleness and compassion and stewardship is now applied to the material world. The totality of Benedict's vision is, for me, one of its most significant features.
I was brought up to believe that the spiritual was of infinitely greater worth than the material, led to believe that God was much more interested in souls then in bodies, that the saying of prayers was of far greater concern to him than the handling of the tools of my daily life. In other words, I found myself trapped in that dualism, which has been common for so long in the West and which I feel has done such damage to our Christian understanding, which finds a split between the sacred and the profane, and introduces this terrible divide into our lives. Such a dichotomy is not to be found with Benedict. Indeed it is contrary to the whole tenor of the relation of the human and the divine that is found in the Scriptures, from which, of course, he drew his inspiration.
''Everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated by the Word of God and prayer'' (1 Tim 4:4). So Benedict moves naturally between the-material and the spiritual.and sees both as being part of an integrated unity.
In this chapter Benedict looks at the office of the cellarer of the community, whose title comes from the Latin word cellarium, meaning storeroom. At once we realize that we are now going to be given the portrait of a man who is concerned with the day-to-day necessities of life, the man in charge of the store in which all the things that members of the community might need
are kept. How are all these things to be handled? The key comes in verse 10, one of the most famous aphorisms of the Rule: ''He will regard all utensils and goods of the monastery as sacred vessels of the altar.'' But the chapter puts this into its wider context.
Benedict is concerned with the question of how the cellarer is to relate to the people who ask him for these things and how he is to handle his own self. It is the inter-connection of the people and things that is one of the most important aspects of this discussion. Today many concerned for the environment, such as Wendell Berry, are reminding us of something that we have for far too long failed to observe.
There is an uncanny resemblance between our behavior toward each other and our behavior toward the earth. By some connection we do not recognise, the willingness to exploit one becomes the willingness to exploit the other.
. It is impossible to care for each other more or differently than we care for the earth.
The chapter opens with a sketch showing what sort of man the cellarer ought to be, for it is much less the job to which he is assigned than the qualities he brings to it that concern Benedict. I find it fascinating to see that it is to the description given for a bishop in | Timothy 3:2-4 that Benedict turns for the portrait of the cellarer, for at once the underlying point is implicitly made: the pastoral care of souls and the careful handling of material objects can be paralleled.
There is much here that is in common with the earlier portrait of the abbot in chapter 2, and indeed the cellarer is said to be like (sicut) a father to the community. But that word sicut is important. He is not to take over the role of the head of the community; he is a man under orders. Benedict knows only too well that for anyone who has to deal with material possessions, there is always the danger of the abuse of power, the temptation to build up a power complex, and he is careful to say, not only in verses
4 and 5 but again in verse 12, that the cellarer is never to forget that he is a man under orders.
The cellarer is to be wise, mature, temperate, not proud or excitable. The key word is moderation. Just as the brothers are to have sufficient, not superfluous goods (a point that is made very clearly indeed in chapter 55 when Benedict comes to deal with clothing), so also the cellarer is to steer a mid-point between being either extravagant or mean (12). It is waste in particular that
Benedict warns against. He uses the word ''wasteful'' in the first verse, and repeats it in verse 12, adding ''greed'' and ''extravagant.'' In a society with planned obsolescence built into it, a society which is increasingly throw-away with little regard for things per se, Benedict is giving us a statement about values that I need to hear. There is much more to be said about this, and it is a theme which he will develop in the following chapter.
But the discussion here is essentially about human relationships, about the use and abuse of power, about the exercise of authority. To any of us holding positions of authority and responsibility, there is sound, practical, loving wisdom in this portrait from which we can learn much. Am I tempted to diminish or make people feel dependent on me—even by so small a thing as keeping them waiting? Do I needlessly irritate? Do I overlook the small people, the weak, the powerless? These are questions that rise to mind as Benedict shows me how the cellarer exercises his role amongst the brothers, and how he handles situations in which, with complete community of goods and everything being shared, each is at the mercy of the other and the relations between them become of the greatest importance.
Here the man with access to the source of supplies plays the most sensitive role. The verse from Matthew quoted in verse 16 shows us what is at issue here: the concern not to lead the other astray, not to crush the morale of the other, either by causing anger or dejection. In verses 6 and 7 the cellarer is shown as being very sensitive to the feelings of the community. A refusal is made gently and cheerfully (13) so as not to cause undue distress.
He responds with gentleness to those who come to him with extreme or difficult demands. He does not return evil for evil (8).
He is mindful that everything he does is seen by God. He is indeed a model of non-violence, and the very way in which he handles people demonstrates a profound spiritual truth: people are to be handled with respect and reverence.
But the cellarer is also to handle himself with gentleness. He is to show these same qualities toward himself in the way in which he takes care of his own body and spirit. For anyone in ministry today, the final verses of this chapter remind us of something that we might be tempted to forget or to neglect. The cellarer is not too proud to admit that he may need help. He is prepared to delegate, not seeing himself as indispensable. He knows the importance of drawing lines so that he is not endlessly accessible. He
makes himself available at established times; self-protection requires that boundaries are laid down. Many of us are grateful for a book that Henri Nouwen wrote some years ago on how those in ministry should take care of themselves. Elsewhere he has reminded us of the importance of the ''ministry of absence.'' Handling with care applies just as much to my own self as it does to other people and to the material world. It is this profoundly sacramental understanding that is to color what Benedict is to unfold next for us.
And the purpose? So that he remain calm. Peace is fundamental in the Rule. Even though the word itself is not used all that frequently, Benedict has much to say about the peaceable person. Peace is essentially an inner quality of the human heart, and he knows only too well how much we all need to cultivate that internal peace. There are so many entertaining and extremely human glimpses of the restless, quarrelsome, murmuring, selfimportant, or complaining behavior of the monks with which I can easily identify, and it shows how well Benedict knows the human situation. But here is the cellarer, a man busy and under pressure just like so many of us today, subject to interruptions, demands, expectations, and the final point that Benedict makes in this chapter is that it is vital that the cellarer pays attention to his own equanimity.
This chapter is one of the most profound, original, and beautiful of the Rule. (It is interesting to see that it is longer than chapter 64, which describes the qualities of the abbot.) It is a portrait of humble love. As I read it I am struck by the example of the simple qualities of humility and kindliness that Benedict expects the cellarer to express in his daily work, in the way in which he handles the people, and the things for which he is responsible.
I feel that I am being shown something very important, which does not come across as any moralizing statement or ethical demand, but rather as an example from which I should learn—and once again that it is the figure of Christ himself incarnated in the figure of this busy and down-to-earth man that is the model that Benedict is giving me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
In the previous chapter, Benedict said that we were to regard ''all utensils and goods of the monastery as sacred vessels of the altar,'' and in those few words he has given us a whole theology in relation to the material world on which this chapter is to build.
But there is another earlier reference in the Rule that we can now recall with advantage. At the end of chapter 4, which looked at the tools of good works, we were told that when we have used them without ceasing, day and night (76), and handled them faithfully (78), we hand them over and receive our reward. Now we see how the ordinary tools of daily life are to be handled in the same way. The description of the procedure is very precise. Tools, clothing, any other equipment, are entrusted to the brothers by the abbot, who keeps a list, so that they may be cared for and, after use, may be collected again. The seriousness with which things are to be handled is emphasized: the abbot is aware of what he is handing out and what he will receive back.
For things matter. We are placed in this world, and it is in and through this world, not by the denial of it, that we shall come to God. But I need guidelines on this. I am surrounded by a materialistic culture and I need help in holding a balance between appreciating the material things in my life and finding myself trapped by them. Since the abbot holds the place of Christ for the community, I now translate what that means for my own self, and I then find that I am being given a most practical and immediate example of how to approach this. All the good things in my life are lent to me by Christ. They are to be cared for. Each is important and Christ has kept a list. They are on loan so that I can fulfill the assigned tasks, and they are to be collected at the end, at the end of my life, the day of judgment. The actual word used for collect, reco/ligenda, is a word used later on in chapter
48 for the actual physical work of harvesting, and I find that it carries significant resonances, not least the biblical ones, of the gathering in of something that has reached its full maturity through the careful husbandry of the farmer.
Benedict is here facing me with something so utterly ordinary and daily that I really cannot escape its practical implications.
Things are on loan to me. They are good things. I am to look after them properly and use them responsibly because each and everything matters. Christ has kept a list, and at the day of judgment I shall have to answer for the way in which I have used them.
The underlying assumption is, of course, that I shall have handled them in such a way that, just as things grow to harvest, they will have come to fruition in my hands. I must not forget the day of judgment; failure carries reproof, punishment.
I am grateful that Benedict insists on how seriously this is to be taken. It is something that I can easily think about, particularly when the whole idea of stewardship is so popular at the moment, and yet I drift along without doing much about it. I think that it would be a good exercise to make a list of all the good things in my life and then ask myself if I really do handle them with the sense of respect and responsibility that Benedict is asking of me. I then ask, do I really remember that they are only on loan? I guess that I might then find that Benedict's way is a real challenge to the way in which I live.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
We do less than justice to Benedict if we emphasize his moderation and balance to the detriment of the passion that is also there.
In this short chapter when he comes to talk about private ownership, he twice uses the word ''evil,'' which shows that he considers this subject of the utmost importance. It is, however, not so much the physical possessions themselves (for after all he has just been telling me to handle my material possessions with a sacramental reverence) but the underlying attitude toward them that is his concern. The word habere, which appears in the Latin title of the chapter and again in verse 3, can mean to ''consider'"' rather than to have. His interest is not, therefore, on external behavior, but on the purity of intention, so that once again it is the disposition of the heart that is the real issue. If this is so, it immediately widens its application and makes this chapter extremely relevant to the attitudes and values with which I approach the affluent society in which I live.
It is interesting to see how Benedict has ''reworked"' (this is Kardong's word; RB 1980 uses the more modest word ''adapted'') the verse that he quotes from Acts 4 in order to seriously alter it to suit his purposes. His concern is with the practice of personal dispossession; the concern in Acts is for communal sharing. This all strengthens the thread that has been running throughout this discussion. Avarice is at stake, which is what I now realize that this chapter is about. If we are foolish enough to let avarice into our hearts, it will become an insatiable tyrant.
This is, of course, based on | Timothy 6:10: ''The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.'' This is so serious a matter that it must be uprooted, pulled out by its roots (amputare, the Latin makes the point of radical amputation). As with certain plants, the smallest part of a root will continue to flourish. This is a maligby)
nant growth, and merely to lop off the top growth will not be sufficient to stop it from going on growing and spreading. This is a totally radical demand. Avarice can never have enough; it gives rise to other vices. That is why it must be totally excluded from the monastery.
Why this radical demand? What is it saying to me? Benedict is forcing me to see that it is not so much possessions in themselves that concern him, as the danger that they are, or can become, the vehicles for relations between people. They can lead me to trust and to love, or they can lead me on to more and more acquisitiveness, and thus to greed, envy, resentment, competitiveness, bitterness. Rather than let any of this start to spread in my life, I should cut it out.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
This chapter now carries the subject of chapter 33 a step further. Its Latin title takes the form of a question: ''Should all receive the same necessities of life?'' The answer is taken, as it was previously, from Acts 4:35, quoted right at the start. Everyone gets what they need. This may differ from what they want! Benedict is not showing us a consumerist paradise, fueled by the systematic inflation of false wants and desires. It is the abbot, the father, who discerns what are the real needs and cuts through the delusions in order to see what these may be. This distinction between need and want is one that I can apply to myself and use as a yardstick in my own life.
But Benedict's interest is not in the individual: it is with the building up of harmony and peace amongst all the members. So in many ways the real inspiration for this chapter comes from that passage in | Corinthians 12:12-30 on the members of the body of Christ, which is caught in verse 5 where Benedict speaks of '*all the members.'' I like to read it as a prayerful reflection on what follows if the practice of avarice and envy and all the consequent evils are rooted out in each of us and so in the group.
If I am content (and this very simple word is to come up again later, repeated twice in a lovely small phrase that Benedict uses in 61,2-3) with what I am given, whether it be my talents and gifts or my material possessions, then I can rejoice in what I have received and look with equal rejoicing on what others have been given. This asks a true mutual concern for one another. Neither the strong nor the weak envy the other. Grumbling is the enemy of this. When I think of those greatest grumblers of all, the Pharisees, who are the prototype of the strong and who are jealous of the mercy shown to the weak, I realize that what is being asked of me is a deep, loving openness, which does not judge, ,
which is in fact simply the exercise of that unconditional love that is ultimately what Benedict is hoping for in us all.
If we are all members one of another, that implies that each one of us is a special, unique individual. The worth of each is something that Benedict returns to time and again in the Rule.
If some are stronger while others are weaker, this is not to be a cause for either self-congratulation or commiseration. The passage in 1 Corinthians is about each member of the body having its part to play no matter how humble and seemingly unlovely.
So it asks of us acceptance, accepting myself as the person I am, the unique son or daughter of a loving, generous Creator father, and accepting each of my brothers and sisters as of the same unique worth.
This chapter is also a study of peace. If the emphasis in the previous chapter was on personal attitudes, in this chapter it is on the corporate, with the goal and aim of peace, the peace which is described in Acts 4:32: ''the believers were all of one mind and one heart.''
* Before I move on any further, I want to stay with these two chapters that come at roughly the midpoint of the Rule, for they show me so clearly the two streams that flow into the text of the Rule as into my own life. Benedict addresses both the personal and the corporate, or, in monastic terms, both the anchoritic or eremetical and the cenobitic. In scholarly terms we might say that he has drawn on two divergent literary sources in order to juxtapose two schools of monastic tradition and draw insights from both. The point that he is making is that_both are needed, that one depends on the other, that my approach should be inclusive.
So I can look on chapters 33 and 34 as some sort of hinge that is holding together the vertical and the horizontal. I have been prepared by much of the earlier material, in particular by the first seven chapters, for self-understanding, for my solitary relationship with God. But this must not be separated from the shared relationship of my life with others. It is this that Benedict will now show me—both in the utterly practical and down-to-earth chapters that follow, but later on, in a piece of lyrical writing in chapter 73, about what mutual love asks and gives.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
''The brothers should serve one another.
. Such service .
. fosters love'' (1-2). Here is one of those aphorisms that Benedict loves so much, and it opens a chapter about work in the kitchen. This service is to foster love. The figure of Christ the Servant is never far away as Benedict writes about the life of the community. Christ came amongst us as one who serves (Luke
22:27). We think of Philemon 2:7 (Christ ''taking the form of a servant''), or the quotation in Matthew 12:18 from the Servant
Song of Isaiah applied to him: ''Behold, my servant whom I have chosen.'' Since no servant is greater than his master, Christ intended his example to be followed by his disciples: ''The Son of man came not to be served but to serve'' (Matt 20:28). It is summed up in the injunction: ''Serve one another mutually in charity'' (Gal 5:13). Life in community, as the following clutch of chapters shows, brings the opportunity to express that love and service in daily contact with one's brothers or sisters.
There are two New Testament scenes that were probably present in Benedict's mind as he was writing this chapter. The original task of the first deacons in Jerusalem was that of ''the service of tables,'' which is specifically, of course, the subject at issue here. But there is also the example of serving one another in love with the feet washing at the Last Supper. In verse 9 that is directly recalled in the rite with which each week opens and closes.
The earliest cenobitic founders saw that the reality of living the paschal mystery gave them the example of Christ's own total selfgiving as the culmination of a life of service. Living in Christ, living the Gospel, means service in humble love.
Such an approach to meals and the sharing of food brings Eucharistic understanding into daily life. The washing of the feet at the beginning and end of the week takes place around the meal
table. The change-over of the weekly officials takes place in the oratory. The words for the start of the week's work in the kitchen ask a blessing in exactly the same words from the psalms as those for the opening of the Offices. As I see the natural flow between refectory and chapel I ask myself: How do I translate what Benedict is showing me into my own life?
Here is the acid test: Can everything that I have been shown in the previous chapters about stewardship, about service and mutual concern, about the sacramental approach to life, become a reality in my daily routine in the preparation and serving of food?
Everything matters. Everything, each kitchen utensil, is to be handled with respect and care. I think again of the cellarer issuing the things for the week and keeping a list so that what is given out may be returned. The very activity of washing is an expression of a sense of responsible and loving stewardship.
Once again this attitude of love and care is shown toward people. While no one is excused from this most ordinary of work in the kitchen, unless for very pressing reasons, equally no one is to be over-burdened or distressed. Extra help is to be given where it is needed (3); extra food and drink are to be available an hour before mealtime (12-13).
I find that the way in which Benedict treats this seemingly prosaic subject forces me to ask some uncomfortable questions about the way in which I live my daily life. What he shows me is simply
Gospel teaching about things and people, made specific and therefore inescapable in daily life. This chapter also reminds me of something that I often tend to neglect: service begins at home.
Care and concern for the disadvantaged, ministry with the underprivileged, a commitment to good causes in distant parts of the world, does not excuse me from the demands of service to those close to me, in my immediate circle. This is the touchstone of the genuineness of the self-giving love embodied in the service to that wider brotherhood or sisterhood.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The word ''service'' runs like a thread through this chapter, which looks at the care of the sick, for it occurs no less than five times in its ten verses. It is the theme of mutual service of one to another that Benedict is again showing us. In this he is pointing us, as he always is, toward the figure of Christ as the exemplar whom we are to follow. As always with Benedict we go right to the source: Christ himself. Christ spent much of his earthly ministry healing the sick, maimed, crippled, lame, deaf, and blind so that they might live life to the fullest. But Christ also tells us that it is him whom we are serving in the sick, the poor, the needy.
This is not the only time that Benedict quotes these verses from Matthew 25, for they also come in 4,15-16 amongst the tools for good works and again at the opening of chapter 53 on the reception of guests. We all have to have present in our mind the day of judgment. This is a perspective that Benedict will not let us forget. Then we shall be asked what we did or what we failed to do, and this chapter is to encourage our commitment to this so that we shall be able to give answer on that day out of experience of compassionate service.
I like to find that anyone who is attendant on the sick needs to be God-fearing, attentive, concerned (7), and, above all, patient (5). This suggests a holistic approach to healing, the raising of the morale of the whole person, not just a careful application of nursing principles. When so much of today's illness probably has mental or emotional roots, I am glad of this approach. But I equally appreciate that Benedict insists that there are obligations on both sides. He always remains the realist, and so he knows that the sick may be very tiresome and difficult to endure. It is wrong to let someone get away with making selfish and excessive demands. Indeed, to do so would not help them toward standing
on their own feet and taking responsibility for themselves, which will encourage their real healing.
The point about baths in the monastic tradition (8) goes back to Athanasius' life of Anthony:
He never bathed his body in water to remove filth, nor did he as much as wash his feet or even allow himself to put them in water without necessity. No one ever saw him undressed, nor did anyone ever look upon his bare body until he died and was buried.
Here the issue at stake is sexual purity. The emphasis is on modesty, not on squalor. It is to be understood in the context of Greek and Roman baths, which were notoriously licentious places, and the desert monks fled the city. I think we should not make too much of this. Benedict is quite laconic, dealing with it in one verse.
His approach is strictly common-sense: ''advisable'' and ''permission'' seem nicely judged words.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Benedict's gentle care for human weakness means that he is always saying that exceptions have to be made in particular cases, that strict rules do not apply. He now writes about the elderly and children and about their need for special understanding. He talks, of course, in immediately practical terms: here are two categories where rules about food are to be relaxed. The sacramental quality of food, the careful preparation and serving of meals, has been a strong element in previous chapters. Now we see how food becomes the way in which we show special consideration to the weak, the old, and the young. Compassion asks for the exercise of patience that Benedict included amongst the virtues listed in the previous chapter. When society seems increasingly to say that productivity and usefulness are the qualities by which we judge the worth of the individual, here Benedict is telling us that respect should be shown to those who apparently contribute little or nothing to the community in these terms.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
This chapter describes another service. A reader is to be appointed each week. His week's work starts on Sunday, after Mass, when he is blessed in the oratory. He says the verse of the psalm that recalls the opening of the day Offices and receives a blessing.
He is chosen for his skills in reading aloud, bringing us to the category of those appointed for some specific form of service.
Benedict makes the distinction of those who exercise specialized forms of ministry, men such as the cellarer, the prior, and the deans, chosen for their particular skills, while other duties, such as serving at table, are equally shared amongst everyone and take the form of mutual service that is so delicately and beautifully caught in the phrase of verse 6, ''The brothers should by turn serve one another's needs as they eat and drink, so that no one need ask for anything.'' There is always the hazard with the specialist, of which Benedict is only too aware, that he or she will become puffed up with pride. While once again he shows himself sensitive to the demands of the task, so that, for example, the reader is to be given a special allowance of wine, he also warns against the spirit of vanity that would put the emphasis on personal excellence rather than attention to God.
The purpose of reading at meals is a reminder of the whole purpose of the life that Benedict is laying before us: it is so that we should be listening to God at all times. It goes back to the "'Listen'' as the opening word of the prologue. Silence is for hearing the Word. In this case the corporate situation of a shared meal asks for an awareness not only of God, but of the presence of one's neighbor. There is real sensitivity in the way in which Benedict suggests how important it is for the brothers to be conscious of one another's wants.
The only one to break the silence is the abbot if he should choose to give some commentary or teaching on what is being
read. In the balance of the life that Benedict seeks, I have been made aware of the attention paid to the needs of the body, but it is no less vital to think of the needs of the mind. It is important to nourish, feed, and enrich the intellect. Once again a chapter that might seem to be about an outdated subject referring to the monastic life of the sixth century is, on closer study, full of theological and practical insights that have much relevance to me today.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
In all traditional societies the family or the extended family sitting around the table and sharing a meal together is something that helps to forge the bonds that unite them. It is also a powerful symbolic image of their shared unity. The care that Benedict takes in legislating for meals reminds us of that. Chapter 43, which links punctuality at table and at chapel, shows us again the significance that he attaches to mealtimes. In a society that grabs food, where many families no longer sit down together with any regular pattern of mealtimes, where fast food service is becoming more and more popular, this sense of respect due to food seems far distant from the general experience today. Thus we read this chapter recalling values that seem to be disappearing.
Benedict establishes both flexibility and certainty in the times of meals and the amount of food. Eating, like saying the Office, pays attention to the seasons of the year, as chapter 41 will describe. There is additional food at times when work is particularly demanding. The young, the old, and the sick are all to receive special attention. There is avoidance of rigidity or undue austerity, with the exception of flesh meat, which was then believed to heighten animal desire.
As I read this chapter it seems that Benedict's concern is not simply about having sufficient food, enough but not superfluous, but about the right handling of these good things. That is why there is a choice of dishes, so that all can expect to eat with enjoyment. That is why when there are fruits and fresh vegetables in season, they are to be added to the table. That is why he is not mean with the bread allowance, but says that it should be a generous one. He has been speaking about the respect due to material things, to created things, since they are a reflection of God the Creator. Now he also addresses the most familiar place in
which I am faced by material things every day, namely, at the table. It is something over which I have a certain amount of choice. To look forward to a meal because it is carefully chosen and carefully presented gives to every meal something of a sacramental quality.
The one thing that appalls and shocks Benedict is overindulgence. It is a word that he uses no less than three times in verses
7-9. Many people today who know nothing of the monastic life, who have never heard of Benedict, are recognizing the wisdom of this as they pay the price for failing to eat properly, and have to resort to dieting or health resorts to restore the balance. But, of course, once more it is the attitude, the interior disposition, that Benedict is forcing me to think about. Greed, like avarice, makes me the prisoner of needs and desires that must be endlessly satisfied, and so it takes from me the freedom to enjoy the good things of God.
The quotation from Luke that Benedict uses in verse 9 is taken from that discourse just before the Passover on watching and praying and being alert for the coming of the Lord, when the disciples are to be tested and found wanting. The following chapter opens with the entry of Satan into the heart of Judas. The roots of his subsequent betrayal of Christ lay in the greed and avarice from which Benedict would want to protect us. iBT
CHAPTER FORTY
The gifts of which Benedict is speaking when he opens this chapter with a quotation from 1 Corinthians are the gifts of selfcontrol, abstinence, and, above all, sexual abstinence. But he refuses to be dogmatic. As he has done before, he first gives us the ideal—in this case, that monks should not drink wine at all, since the proper amount of drink is the subject of this chapter. But then he immediately goes on to qualify it: he confesses that he is un- ' easy about dictating to others, which gives us a very human and warm glimpse of his own feelings. He wants the initiative to come spontaneously from us. If I do give up drink, but unwillingly, and in my heart nurse negative feelings or resentments, then the action itself is of little value. As before, on a similar subject in chapter 34 where he is writing about sufficiency and moderation,
Benedict ends with a fierce denunciation of grumbling.
No one is really sure how much a half bottle, hermina, measure really was, but it has allowed a great deal of joking as well as endless serious academic discussion.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Here is what at first sight seems a rather dull chapter about dividing the eating schedules into four categories. The starting point is Easter, the pivot of the year around which all other times and seasons turn. Easter means resurrection, new life, the risen
Christ, the end and purpose of our life, as true for each individual as for the community. The other point of reference is light.
Today when electricity has destroyed any sense of the coming of light and of dark, it is good to be reminded of the symbolic significance daily given to us in the pattern of each day. Perhaps we are Just beginning to recognize the cost of our disassociation from the natural world and its rhythms. This chapter encourages me to reflect on whether or not I pay sufficient attention to the gift of light.
This chapter also encourages me to look again at fasting (2).
Fasting is a subject that is not often discussed these days, although hunger strikes and health dieting are now common. But there, of course, the motives are either political power or health and beauty. The very first statement that Christ makes about fasting deals with the question of motive (Matt 6:16-18). The purpose of fasting is simply to center on God. The discipline of fasting will reveal to me more than any other discipline what really controls me.
It is no longer possible to cover up my interior dependencies—food, good things, praise, anger, envy. Fasting, therefore, plays its part in the movement of freedom, of dissoci- " ation and non-possession, along which Benedict has been leading me so firmly in this section of the Rule.
Yet as always he is relaxed rather than rigorous. He immediately qualifies with exceptions. Fasting does not mean extreme asceticism for its own sake, nor should it be undertaken to the detriment of health and a sensible concern for our bodies. The
role of the abbot is a reminder of the importance of a spiritual director or responsible guide to check extreme impulses and impose some sort of balance.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
How are our minds to be filled, in particular just before going to sleep? Body, mind, and spirit go together. This is one of the essential planks of the Benedictine way. It is quite natural, therefore, having looked at the way in which food is to be organized, that Benedict should now turn to the feeding of the mind.
The intellect too must be nourished. The suggested material to be read aloud is to give food for meditation, drawing on the works of spiritual masters that will be suitably edifying, so anything that might excite the imagination, such as scenes of battle and conflict from Old Testament history, is to be avoided.
There is little here that has not been said already in one form or another. The proper disposition for any true listening is that of silence, and as the day draws toward its close this point has to be emphasized. There does not seem to be any suggestion that the brothers say Compline in the oratory, rather that it follows on naturally in the same place after that shared reading has come to an end. So the whole group moves from table to reading to praying. The three elements of body, mind, and spirit are brought together as the day comes to its end. The whole thing is wrapped up in silence, that deep interior silence that is such a creative part of life, of any life, since it allows us to hear the Word of God in the depths of our hearts and to rest there through the hours of darkness.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
But the balance of chapter 42 is not the same thing as being middle of the way, mediocre. Benedict wants people who are wholehearted in their commitment, not halfhearted, half alive.
He is writing of a love that is fervent, fervens, white hot, burning. Do our hearts burn within us? That is the question. The four chapters which come now are about being lukewarm, casual.
Drifting is amongst the less spectacular of sins, but it has nevertheless to be firmly dealt with.
To show a carelessness about time will distort the even flow of movement that gives shape to each day and that is based on respect both for time itself and for the life of the community. To be late, whether for chapel or refectory, shows a disregard for the delicate framework of study, work, and worship that Benedict has been setting up so clearly and humanely in the foregoing chapters, and whose purpose is simply and solely that life may center upon the work of God, the opus Dei.
Once again, we are given one of those aphorisms that sums everything up so well in one pithy saying: ''Nothing is to be preferred to the Work of God'' (3). I have a very simple prayer schedule, one that is reasonably flexible for it has to change according to the circumstances of my life. I know how easy it is to let it slip—in the morning to hear my alarm and to switch it off telling myself that it does not really matter, or in the evening to let other things crowd in instead. But it does matter. That is what Benedict is saying here. I have an assignation with God, and I must keep it, for in the end it is simply the most important thing in life.
Again there is humanity and humor in the way in which every allowance is made for human weakness. The opening verses of Psalm 94 (95) at Vigils (Matins) are to be said slowly to give the latecomer every opportunity to get to his right place on time (4).
That right place is a symbolic statement about right order in general. Each person and each thing has its proper place. To be out of that place, to be standing where one does not belong, is an outward demonstration of a deeper spiritual truth. To make such a dramatic public sign of amendment may seem rather extreme unless I appreciate the point at issue here. To have a place to stand is a basic human need in order that I know where I belong, and it is necessary both in relation to the places and to the people in my life. It means, above all, that I have time and space for listening to the Word of God in all the many ways that God is reaching out to me. That will be totally impossible if I am always running, late, distracted, feeling ajar and torn apart. Benedict is helping me to find my own center.
'*No one is to presume to eat or drink before or after the time appointed"' (18). This is not some narrow and negative ruling, but something that shows a real grasp of how human beings work best. It is one that I know from my own experience. It was particularly true in the years when I was bringing up small children who needed the sense of security that comes from knowing that things happen at the right times and in the right places. It is also true of a busy life in other circumstances. Respecting boundaries, not letting things drift, means that I am totally present to whatever I am doing, present with awareness, and therefore with energy for whatever that place, that moment may bring me.
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CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
This is a tough chapter that strikes a harsh and alien chord today. It is essentially about the authority of the person in charge of the sinner to see that there is true repentance, a recognition of what sin does to others and to God, as well as to oneself. It is interesting to see that once again the oratory and the table are linked: faults in ordinary daily life are no less serious than faults of a more strictly spiritual nature. To lie prostrate is an act of humiliation, of course, but it is also a symbolic act of touching the ground, being in touch with the ground of my being, the ground of the universe, and it reminds us of all that Benedict was saying in chapter 7. It is not easy today when I am so often encouraged to point the finger at my parents, my upbringing, my environment, my inherited genes, to be told that I have done something wrong, which hurts those around me and not merely my own self, and that this must be admitted publicly and openly.
The abbot is referred to no less than eight times in this chapter in what is shown to be a long, slow process. True repentance and restoration can never be a superficial matter. I find it illuminating to read this chapter in the context of the four-step return of the excommunicated in the early Church: mourn, listen, prostrate, stand. All those elements are here, and if I think about them as steps in a process, I see that in the end it all comes back to the desire of Benedict that I may stand—stand upright before God, stand in my proper place, amongst the people to whom I belong.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Whatever is done must be done well. The outer and the inner must be in relation. I am reminded of what Benedict said in an earlier chapter on behavior in choir: ''Let us stand to sing the psalms in such a way that our minds are in harmony with our voices'' (19,7). If I make a mistake, the chances are that I am simply not paying attention, that I am not wholly present to the work of God, that my thoughts are straying, wandering off in other directions. ''Negligence'' is a nicely chosen word here!
Again, the punishment seems excessively severe, but I can see that its underlying purpose is to emphasize the seriousness of the matter. We are brought back once again to the theme of respect and reverence for everything, but, above all, for the work of God.
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CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
There is no division into separate spheres of life. Benedict tells us this time and again, in different circumstances, in different ways, but the message is the same. His is a holistic spirituality in which exterior and interior correspond, where the same attitudes apply at meals as at prayer. And now he spells it out for us, giving us a list of places to remind us in the most down-toearth way that respect and reverence for the handling of things applies in the bakery, in the storeroom, the garden, the pottery.
Each single thing matters. Own up at once if you drop or damage anything. Own up in public, because by damaging the material object you also in some way hurt the community too. There is a sense here of inter-connectedness, inter-relatedness that our highly individualistic world has lost, though it is something that the older world knew (and I think once again of the world of the Celtic peoples, or the Native Americans). If you do damage to material things, or to the earth itself, you also do damage to the people involved.
But as well as the public admission of fault Benedict emphasizes the interior, the inward. It is probably anachronistic to read back the practice of private confession here. More likely verses
5-6 draw on the desert tradition in which the honest confession of sin and shortcomings was seen as the best way to defeat Satan at his own game, and it recalls 7,44-48 in which we also find this same master-disciple tradition. Living together, living with others, does not necessarily mean that everything is to be public. Just as I know that it is important to cultivate the solitary side of my own self so here, in the case of healing, there is a place in which the secret and hidden side is to be respected. What Benedict is describing here would be seen as in another age being professional, observing confidentiality.
Since in the end the purpose of the correction of faults is remedial, is for healing, this section ends in this delicate, gentle, understanding way. Those public prostrations, those corporal punishments, should not be allowed to detract from what lies at the heart of this chapter, the putting away of sin, of secret sin lying in the heart as well as of the more openly and apparently culpable offenses. This comes with the help of God, but also through the help of others who, because they acknowledge their own woundedness and know pain and fractures in themselves, can help to heal their brothers and sisters.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
This short chapter is about imposing a structure and framework on time that will allow attention to be paid to the work of God night and day. Its concern is once again that everything shall be done ''at the proper time'"' (1), one of those small phrases that sum up the whole essence and purpose of the Rule.
In Benedict's day it would not be at all easy to keep to a timetable that had the degree of flexibility that he has been describing with a community lacking any of today's devices for marking time—clocks, alarm bells. One person must be in charge, in this case the abbot, though he may delegate the responsibility to another brother, someone who will handle his duties conscientiously.
On him falls the responsibility of maintaining the movement from one activity to another, so that priority is given to the opus Dei.
Good order can, however, carry the danger of becoming mindless, automatic routine. To ensure that his monks are more than simply physically present in church, Benedict sees to it that those leading the psalms and refrains are men who will do it well and thus help to give the readings and the psalms their full meaning.
He describes what he is looking for in his approach to worship as '"'humility, seriousness and reverence'' (4). In those three words
Benedict is giving me a formula that I can apply in my own life, not only in prayer but equally in reading and in work, as the following chapter will be exploring.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Work, prayer, reading—how are we to hold them together?
Ora et labora is a short phrase always associated with the Benedictine way. It captures the imagination, for it seems to suggest that not only is work good in itself, but it is close to prayer, becomes prayer. This whole question of work is extremely relevant today when many people are experiencing redundancy, unemployment, or early retirement and are asking what place work plays in their lives, what the loss of work does to their self-esteem. The Protestant work ethic has shaped many of our attitudes, and in capitalist theories work plays a central place.
=; ~~~ Tn contrast, in Benedict's world manual labor was left to the slaves, for the Romans looked down on working with one's hands.
But once again the Rule is counter-cultural. Benedict himself, as always, draws on the Bible rather than the values of contemporary society, and there, of course, we find men and women playing their part as co-creators with God. The Hebrews were a working people, and Christ himself was a craftsman for the larger part of his life. Paul, to whom the early monastic writers turned for their directions about work, has a great deal to say about the need to work, both for self-support and in order to have something to share with those in need. The Desert Fathers, of course, also provided endless examples of the place of manual work both in their life and in their teachings. Here then are ''our fathers and the apostles'' (8), the role model for working with the hands.
Benedict's own approach to the subject of work neither idealizes nor denigrates it, neither makes it an exercise in asceticism nor therapy, but simply sees it as a necessary part of earning one's living. What I find fascinating is that right from the very opening of this chapter Benedict speaks of manual labor and prayerful reading in the same breath (which I take as a reminder that
my spiritual reading is hard, demanding work that I should take seriously). Ora et labora is in fact not a good summary of the monk's life; ora, labora, lege (pray, work, read) would be preferable. Monks are given their assigned tasks, the words repeated twice in verses 11 and 14, in order that the day may be well paced.
This allows one activity to flow into another, and there will then be a balance of work, reading, and prayer. To pray without ceasing remains the ultimate goal, prayer refreshed by the images-and ideas that times of reading bring to it, and the hours of labor giving further opportunity to ensure that prayer remains like some subterranean stream throughout the whole day.
Prayerful reading, /ectio divina, is linked with work in that opening sentence. It is a prominent part of the daily horarium.
Ideally, as in Lent, three hours were given to it, though at other times it was less. Prayer without study will become uninformed; study without prayer will become simply an intellectual exercise.
Without work both will become removed from reality. So each has to discipline the other, and again we see the inter-connectedness of Benedict's way of life. This is not just time for reading; it is reading of the Word. It is time for the monk to be present to the Scriptures so that he may feed on them and be molded by them. It is also a way of prayer that many others since, and not least lay people such as myself, have come to value greatly.
It is important not to see /ectio divina as one more technique or method to be grasped or acquired. It is essentially a process, and a gentle one. Yet it does have its rhythm and framework, and it is useful to see this as four steps or rungs.
The first is /ectio by which we read some short passage from the Bible, particularly from the psalms, reading slowly and carefully, perhaps aloud, really listening, almost as though hearing it anew.
Then comes meditatio, which is the seeking, finding a word or phrase that strikes us, touches us. We repeat it, reflect on it, come to grips with what it is saying to us personally. We do this urgently and with full attention because it is important, it is what
God wants to say to us today. One of the traditional ways of describing this step is to compare it to a cow chewing the cud, digesting it to get its full goodness, though I also like to think of it as a mother rocking her child back and forth, time and again.
The vital thing is that it is to and fro, to and fro, time and again, until it becomes like a heartbeat inside of one's own self.
For then the word touches the heart and we reach the third step, oratio. Almost without noticing we have moved from the mind into the heart, the feelings, the emotions. This is no longer thoughts or knowledge about God, using the mind or the imagination, for now we go beyond them. The goal of prayer is not thoughts or knowledge about God; it is being open so that God's love grasps us, takes hold of us. It is as though we now allow ourselves to be drawn to him as though with a magnet, and all the false self, with its games and facades, falls away and instead we surrender totally to God.
This brings us to the final step, contemplatio, in which we learn a new language, silence. We are content simply to be, standing in the presence of God. We let God take us beyond ourselves.
We have found God—or rather let ourselves be found by him.
As Abbot Marmion puts it: we read (/ectio) under the eye of God (meditatio) until the heart is touched (oratio) and leaps into flame
(contemplatio).
In that long second paragraph, Benedict goes to a lot of trouble to establish a schedule that is typically flexible and realistic in order that both prayerful reading and manual labor occupy periods of time that will change from season to season throughout the year and will fit in with the regular hours for saying the daily Office.
It is this movement from one to the other that most strikes me, for I find Benedict's concern to balance out a timetable so constructed that each day moves between work, reading, and prayer, since all are equally important. Discussion of manual work per se, therefore, occupies only a small proportion of this chapter, although traditionally it is always given the title ''The Daily Manual Labor.'' I feel that it is more useful to see it as an exploration of the right and proper use of time, in which manual work plays its necessary role in that holistic way of life that Benedict is drawing up for us throughout the Rule.
Work has to be done, it is a necessity, without it the community can neither live nor eat, nor have spare food or money to give away to others. This emphasis on the need to earn a living, to sustain the individual and the community, has little in common with what I find most of the time in today's work-oriented world where so much work is competitive, individualistic, about success and promotion and acclaim. This means that we tend to | judge the worth of the individual in relation to the sort of work they do; we weigh them on a scale of what are commonly regarded
125:
as inferior or superior jobs or careers. This would be utterly alien to Benedict, who never saw work as being for personal advancement, for success or profit or making a name for one's self. For him work is anonymous and corporate. The inter-changeability of tasks, which has been clearly set out in the earlier chapters on the kitchen and refectory, established this principle. Skill is certainly appreciated and care is taken, for example, in the choice of the reader who will edify the understanding of the text and do it justice (38,12). The themes of responsibility, reverence, and respect that have run so strongly through most of the immediately preceding chapters have insisted that everything is to be done with due attention and care. The end and purpose, however, of using one's God-given skill is not to become puffed up (57,2-3).
The end and purpose is God: ''So that in all things God may be glorified'' (57,9).
It is not, therefore, so much work as the responsible handling of time that concerns Benedict. The waste of time distresses him.
Verses 19-20 show how seriously he thinks about this and how severely he castigates it. What is really shocking to him is idleness. It comes into the opening maxim (and it is unusual for him to be so outright, so didactic), and in verse 18 it is spelled out: wasting time, idle talk, apathy. He does not want work under pressure, filling every moment. Indeed the moderation, the gentleness, is most important, caught in that nice small phrase ''without , overwhelming'' (24). There is very real gentleness in making allowances for those who are weak. When we tend so easily to become workaholic and competitive, I am glad to be told that work should never be allowed to become overwhelming and to be reminded of the importance of doing things with moderation.
The work that Benedict envisages by no means consists only of working in the field or garden or kitchen. There are many other tasks to be performed: the care of the sick, the teaching of children, and even the manual work itself would have been immensely varied, ranging from the making of pots to the very demanding work of copying manuscripts (I wonder how long it took Benedict to actually copy out his Rule by hand). That work should carry dignity was a strange and wonderful new development in the centuries that followed the writing of the Rule.
It was both by the book and by the plough that the early Benedictine communities conquered Europe. They brought to the | Europe of the Dark Ages the example of work that was civiliz-
ing, whether it was in the promotion of learning or in the colonizing of land. In addition, in the very way in which they handled their large estates they made a further extremely significant contribution: they showed themselves as pioneers in land use and management. Cultivation and husbandry often involved the clearing of land, diking and draining where it was needed, and the use of professional farming techniques. They also showed expertise in such matters as hydraulic engineering, designing and building systems of pipes and drains so that they could bring supplies of fresh water to their communities.
Benedict had taught them that work was a shared activity, part of the solidarity with which they lived together. With this in mind they adopted recent inventions and practiced the appropriate use of new technology as an exercise of responsible corporate stewardship. This vision of commitment to the shared common good, not simply in the handling of the land itself but also in the applying of new skills, speaks to me most urgently today. As I look around me I see an age of greed, when balance seems to be neglected and when the work of human hands seems to result in waste, exploitation, pollution, a denial of the covenant that God made with men and women to cherish and to nurture the earth for the good of all God's family.
That is why I am grateful for the statements about stewardship that I find from contemporary Benedictines. In Of All Good
Gifts, the American Benedictine sisters ask what we can do ina world that lacks any vision of the sacredness of creation or commitment to the dignity of life. They say:
Our answer is monastic stewardship: that we use what we are and what we have for the transformation of culture because creation is the Lord's and we are its keepers; we hold it on trust. We must remember that the earth is not so much inherited from our parents as borrowed from our children. We owe a debt to the next generation.
Or the community of St. Mary and St. Louis in St. Louis, founded from Ampleforth Abbey in England, and now an independent abbey:
Benedictines see creation as a gift of God to be loving nurtured so that it fulfils its purpose in serving the human family.
. They do not grasp. They try not to waste. They believe in having suffi-
cient but not the superfluous. They have the cautious optimism to believe that with the humble effort to understand and cooperate with the Creator's abundant gifts men and women can bring about on this planet a truly human life for all.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
It certainly will be demanding to live according to this ideal day after day after day. So Benedict follows chapter 48 by telling the monks (it is significant that this chapter is both highly individualistic and yet also one that involves ''the entire community'') not only that Lent is the model for the whole of life, but that the season of Lent itself brings an annual opportunity for extra effort.
The implication is that what happens in Lent also applies in principle throughout the year. The opening verses 2-5 have a definitely exhortatory ring about them. They sound quite like a homily; indeed there is a homily by St. Leo, the fifth-century pope, on Lent, which Benedict must certainly have known. Then, in verse 5 he addresses the individual need for prayer and abstinence. Once again we are shown the delicate balance between the individual and the community.
Since he is emphasizing special personal effort during Lent, Benedict has to guard against any development into undue individualism that wants to draw attention to itself. The abbot, therefore, must be the point of reference. The reward of any
Lenten undertaking has nothing to do with outward display but with the reward of the kingdom. The issue is one of motive. If I let it be known how much I fast, or give to charity, it becomes something public, perhaps even competitive. For me, as for the monk, fruitful participation in Lent is not marked by any external observance but by interior transformation; I think of the epistle of Ash Wednesday on rending our hearts and not our garments.
So also our joy must be an interior joy, just as the observances should be interior and not exterior. Lent points toward Easter.
There is a strong theology of joy in this chapter, and the word gaudium is used here twice, the only place in the Rule. The forty days before Easter are a time of looking forward ''with joy and
spiritual longing"' (7). Verse 6 tells us something very important about true spiritual joy: it is a gift of the Holy Spirit. There is a difference between a true, deep joyousness and the vapid hilarity that passes for joy, the superficial jolly cheerfulness that often covers up an inner hollowness. It is interesting to see that what
Benedict is condemning is idle joking and needless conversation, essentially superficial and shallow.
The paradox is that the joy of Lent is necessarily connected with sorrow, that it is a joy that flows from sorrow. Instead of the terrible guilt with which I have so often been inflicted, by my own conscience and by the Church, Benedict is talking of the sorrow that makes for joy, which is expressed in the monastic concept of compunction. Just as Lent and Easter are inseparable, so also are sorrow and joy. Tears and compunction of heart (4) express the experience of being touched or pricked (which is what the word means, punctio), as if by a dart of love. Compunction brings a sense of sharp pain, a stinging that I experience as | am touched, overwhelmed by this love, which reaches out to love and forgive and to end all that separates us. As I reflect what I am, my true state before God, and what I might be, what God wants me to be, I am aroused from my torpor, my willingness just to drift along, and I am stung into action. Compunction draws from me a positive response to the love of God flooding my life and drawing me on to fuller and better things.
Compunction is, therefore, a long way from the negative sort of guilt that can encourage soul-searching, obsessive regrets, and a dwelling on the past. This I know only too well can easily become sterile, a deadening inner monologue, which does not bring me the energy to change and to move forward. If compunction points me inward, it is not in order to trap me in yet more selfrecrimination and introspection. Rather it awakens in me a poignant sense of how false I have been to my own deepest and truest self, my own likeness to that loving Father in whose image I was created, and how I have disfigured that creation. Compunction is, therefore, as Michael Casey says, a dual sensitivity. It places before us both the reality of our sinful condition and the urgency of our desire to be totally possessed by God. It is precisely the comparison between what we are and what we could be that constitutes the triggering cause of compunction. ''It is an intimate sensation which touches us at our deepest level and often results in tears.''
Tears and compunction are never to be confined entirely to Lent. But the time of Lent is a ''sacrament.'' It shows us the symbol of the whole of our life on earth, a gift from Christ himself so that we may share in his sufferings and his passion and the joy of the new life of the resurrection.
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CHAPTER FIFTY
We have been shown the ideal, the opus Dei as the one important thing in the monastic life, and if necessity should dictate a breaking of the ordered pattern of life, monks are still to observe it faithfully—and yet Benedict adds with his customary gentleness and flexibility ''as best they can'' (4).
So monks are to carry their routine of prayer wherever they go, and traveling and working at a distance are no excuse for neglecting the work of God. I like Benedict telling them that they are to kneel out of reverence for God (3). This is not to be any hidden or apologetic saying of the Office but a public demonstration of their commitment to a life of prayer. As I move about, doing my ordinary work, I ask myself whether I too (making of course this same allowance, ''as best I can'') should have this sort of commitment to prayer in my own life.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Refectory and oratory, the common meal and the shared liturgy, have been yoked together in the life of the community. Meal times carry an almost sacred dimension, they are the act of the family, the sharing of food binds their common life. So the meal table tells us where we belong.
This chapter has a brutal ring about it, and it is not easy to see what the spiritual concern is that underlies Benedict's apparently extremely hard ruling. But if his underlying interest is in the good order, which brings the sense of belonging and having a place to stand, then the sharing of the meal becomes the sacramental seal of that. It is, therefore, something to be taken very seriously, however costly.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
'Heartfelt devotion'' (4) is an unfortunate translation of the lovely Latin phrase intentione cordis, which is the key to this chapter. This is the only time that it is used in the Rule, and it builds on the purity of heart of chapter 20 (3) and on compunction in chapter 49. Intention of heart is close in meaning to purity of heart, for both refer to stripping away. But while purity has perhaps rather a negative ring, intention suggests putting the heart in the right direction. /ntentio is a powerful word: it always signals movement, usually movement in a particular direction. Parry calls it the heart homing in on God. This involves leaving aside everything in order to return to one's center. It is the prayer that emanates from the deepest level of one's being.
The monk who prays with infentio cordis allows his heart to move to God by restricting any outside clamor or external activity.
This is the purpose of keeping the oratory simple and quiet, stripping away from it all that might clutter and distract (1,2). The prohibition of wordy prayers, verbose praying, is to free the heart from too much verbal clutter. Once again Benedict is making the connection of the interior with the exterior.
This also applies in my own life. What will help more than anything else, if I am to pray in the stillness of my heart, is to have a place set aside, a corner of the house, a simple icon and a candle—it really matters very little what its actual shape may be so long as it is kept as a place into which I can enter and find uncluttered space and silence.
Monastic spirituality is a spirituality of the heart. In this chapter Benedict adds, in a most striking and beautiful way, to what he has been telling me right from the start in the prologue. He understands heart in the scriptural sense as the core of the human being, the deepest and highest center from which I make contact
with God. He is reminding me again very forcibly of how vital this ''return to the heart'' is if my life is to be rooted in what he wants me to recognize must be its source and spring.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
It is only because I carry a heart of silence that I can welcome the guest. The chapter on the oratory of the monastery and the oratory of the heart lays the foundation for what Benedict now gives us, discussion of the exercise of hospitality. This is one of his most important chapters, for hospitality is always seen as a peculiarly Benedictine charism. He opens, as he so often does, with a short and beautiful maxim that lays down the foundational theological principle from which all the rest will flow. Whoever comes is to be received as Christ himself. This idea that Christ is to be received, welcomed, adored is stated no less than three times in this chapter (1; 6-7; 15), repeated at intervals in the course of the practical legislation for the care of guests. If this is what
Benedictine hospitality means, it is a lot easier to repeat that maxim than to live it out.
What does it mean to receive another as Christ? I find that the story of Benedict at Subiaco, which St. Gregory records in the Dialogues, gives me an illuminating glimpse. Benedict has been alone in the cave for three years, in silence and in solitude, when he is visited by a priest—sent specially by God, who wished Benedict to have company at Easter. The scene is charming and really very humorous. Benedict is so deep in prayer and so far away from everything that he has no idea that it is Easter, but to the priest's greeting he replies: ''Easter it is indeed since I have the joy of seeing you.'' In the face of the first person that he sees,
Benedict finds the firstfruits of the resurrection and of the new world to which he is called. I think it is possible to find quite a profound theological implication in his response, so I make it a question for myself: Do I also find the risen Christ in the face of the one who comes? Is this what is being asked of me in receiving the other as Christ?
Christ comes as the stranger. This is so time and again in the Bible where the Godhead is entertained by those who are unaware of who he is—whether it is by Abraham at Mamre or by the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. At the end of time, on the day of judgment, this will also be the question to any of us: Did you welcome me in the stranger? If I am to be ready I must remain alert, awake, not stumbling blindly along like those two on the way to Emmaus with eyes that do not really see, ears that do not really hear.
Benedict has, of course, been telling me this ever since the prologue. But then the whole of his teaching has been leading up to this point and is now brought into play. He has prepared me to welcome all, regardless of rank, and to treat each according to need, so that there is no uniformity, but consideration for weakness or infirmity. He has taught me about true humility and that helps me to be open to receive as well as to give. He has shown me that prayer and /ecfio are the essentials of life, and therefore it will be entirely natural to assume that these are as important to share with others as food or sleep.
It could be only too easy for this to remain on some theoretical level. Benedict wants to make it entirely practical. Step by step we are shown how the stranger is to be welcomed and received.
His first welcome will have come from the porter, as we shall see in chapter 66, who will give him a greeting and then announce his arrival to the community. The superior and the brothers meet him with ''all the courtesy of love'' (3), a well-chosen word that carries a sense of delicate love exercised with gentleness and good manners. The first thing they do is to pray together in order that they may be united in peace (4). Pax is a Benedictine watchword, but peace is never easy, and to exchange the kiss of peace must never be a facile empty gesture, for then it will be an evasion of the truth and thereby lose its true significance (5).
The balance is nicely kept between the spiritual and the material, and the guests are invited to share in the holistic way of life of the community. After the invitation to pray, the Scriptures are read for their instruction, and every kindness is shown to them, the Latin ''humanitas'' used here often means a meal. This is preceded by the ritual of pouring water on the hands and the washing of the feet. What that reference to humility means in verse
6 now becomes clear, for it is expressed in a ceremony that will recall Christ's own action at the shared meal of the Last Supper
when he stripped himself of those outer garments that denote place or rank, and in all simplicity knelt before each of his friends in turn. In verse 14 the monks are given a specific prayer to recite after the washing, ''God we have received your mercy,
."' from Psalm 47 (48). By implication the guest is considered ''the mercy of God,'' and in receiving the stranger we receive mercy from God. The gift we give is only what we have received.
There is to be a separate kitchen for guests, with specially assigned brothers working there, and a God-fearing brother is placed in charge of the guest quarters. Here indeed is that ''great care and concern'"' of verse 15 that sums up this hospitality so well.
But it might also seem that this warmth is lost by the apparently sharp change of tone in that final paragraph when Benedict specifically forbids the brothers to mix and talk with guests.
De Vogiié finds a curious contrast here between the opening of the chapter and its end, and some commentaries make much of this. Columba Cary-Elwes, for example, says that Benedict is in two minds about guests. But I see it otherwise. I find that Benedict is telling me to do two things at once, to hold two things in tension, and this is something that I really appreciate. There is this wonderfully full and generous reception, but there is also the withdrawal and standing back. What this final section makes very clear is, for me, one of the most valuable insights of this chapter.
Unless the monastery protects its enclosure, symbolized by the cloister, the warmth and the openness of its hospitality, symbolized by the porter at the open gates, becomes impossible.
It is precisely the sense that its own way of life has an integrity that must be respected, that the silence and the fasting is preserved, that ensures that it has something of value to give to the passing guest. I know that the same is true of my own experience. Unless
I have time to withdraw, unless I can preserve and protect the innermost space of my own life, I too become so drained and exhausted that I am not fully present to those who come. Benedict is establishing boundaries, just as he did in the case of the cellarer. As any good psychologist would tell us, this is one of the most essential lessons that we all need to learn.
This is true and responsible care for my own self. It is part of Benedict's total approach to life that all the time tells me about the handling of everything, human and non-human, with respect and reverence. This is caught once again when he says so delicately and beautifully toward the end of the chapter (21-22) that
"*the house of God,'' where the guests will be housed (the name is in itself significant), is to be in the care of wise men who will manage it wisely even down to the detail of adequate bedding.
Everyone and everything matters in the eyes of God.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
If all guests are to be welcome as Christ himself, then that surely applies as well to all the people in my life, whoever they may be. The irony is that it is often easier to feel warmth and generosity to those passing temporarily through my life, to the underprivileged and wounded and insecure, to those who need me, than it is to those who are close to me, to members of my own family, those with whom I live and work. Here jealousy, competitiveness, comparing and contrasting come in. In order to remove at least some of the externals that make outward distinctions between his monks, Benedict forbids the giving of gifts and favors.
Nothing separates one person from another more than the presents they receive, particularly from parents, inevitably reflecting their set of values and therefore showing, more than anything, class distinctions and questions of taste (ask anyone who went to boarding school). Some of his sternest teaching earlier on in the Rule had been about attitudes toward property and possessions in chapter 33, when he had invoked the devil, as he does again here.
In the preceding chapter Benedict has given us the example of Christ washing the disciples' feet as a model. The thought that seems to underlie this chapter is that of the passage from Ephesians from which the short quotation in verse 5 is taken, which opens with Paul's great outpouring about being worthy of the vocation to which we are called ''with all lowliness and meekness, with long suffering, forbearing one another in love.''
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
There is a string of words in this chapter that, although it is overtly about clothing and possessions, in fact describes the character of the Benedictine way of life. Since both clothes and | possessions make a statement about who we are and the way in which we think about ourselves, this should not really surprise us. Benedict is showing us, above all, a life of moderation and flexibility, never excessive, dramatic, or going to extremes. He uses the word "'necessary'' twice (5; 18), and ''needed'' once (2).
His concern is with having sufficient rather than superfluous (11).
He is not looking for undue hardship, deprivation, or abject poverty. He clearly legislates in order that all in the community may be given what they require, and the inclusion of the stylus and writing tablets in the list shows that he does not understand this narrowly.
Benedict is splendidly precise. Everything matters, down to the last detail. There is such loving and careful respect and care for clothes, in the way in which they are to be washed and stored after use. There is respect for the person, too. IIl-fitting clothes are unworthy and so there is care about size and fit, since (as I remember only too vividly from childhood miseries) having clothes that are too long or too short is extraordinarily bad for the morale. He picks up the theme of stewardship, and handling with a sense of responsibility. If there are special clothes lent out for use on a journey, they are to be returned, and when any become old and outworn they are to be handed on to those who can use them.
The allocation lies with the abbot, and Benedict reiterates what he has said before: there must be no complaining and no grumbling. Once again it is avarice and envy that are the real sins that must be rooted out. If the sentence from Acts that Benedict quotes
in verse 20 is put into context of the whole section of Acts from which it is taken, Acts 4:31-37, we see a community empowered by the Holy Spirit, for whom the sharing of all things in common is not the outcome of any imposed discipline but rather the result of the grace and power that was upon them. So it would seem that the underlying purpose of this chapter is that we all may, like the members of the early Church, be of ''one heart and ~ one mind,'' living with acceptance and contentment and escaping the evil of envy.
Benedict is looking for a certain flexibility in the pattern of the life that he is establishing in order that the community may be in touch with the local region and with different climates (1).
He expects that the monks will use ''what is available in the vicinity at a reasonable cost'' (7). This small point is significant.
Living in relationship with the actual place in which one finds oneself means being earthed in the immediate reality not only of time and seasons, but of the very ground itself.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
The previous chapter was about care for the outer since it mirrors the interior. Clothes, material possessions, food, sleep are all to be taken seriously as an important part of life. What applies to the community applies also to those who are visiting. Yet the life of the community must go undisturbed by constant intrusion. How is this to be handled? The head of the community is the representative figure who can act on behalf of the rest, and so it is the abbot who makes himself available and has a separate kitchen and table always accessible. Careful as ever of maintaining the principle of order, Benedict makes sure that if the abbot is absent there are others who will take his place so that the body will never be without its due head.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
By now Benedict's main message has been expressed clearly and in a number of different settings, but it remains essentially that the whole of life reflects the choice of God and the desire for the kingdom ''so that in all things God may be glorified (1
Pet 4:11)' (9). There is no question of a Spiritual life existing underground, closeted within the consciousness and not incarnated ~ in ordinary daily activity. Now when he comes to talk of the craftsmen and artisans in the monastery, we can see this message particularly clearly.
Benedict's idea seems to be that the monk gives glory to God ' precisely by not working as others do, for material gain or for popular success. This can easily escalate and become competitive, in a search for more money, a better reputation. There is inevitably a natural eagerness to exercise our talents, to work according to our Own wishes and desires, and he wants us to check this by making God the only end in view. Our skills are to be exercised with humility, with reverence, with restraint. In this way we shall show ourselves to be working in an entirely different field, noncompetitive and not concerned about either material gain or a personal reputation. The example of Ananias and Sapphira are held up as a terrible warning about the dangers of avarice, selfishness, greed, and he does not mince words about the heinousness of their sin (5-6).
But it is in the context of that passage from | Peter 4 from which Benedict has taken that final quotation (9) that I read and reflect on this chapter. For in that passage, verse 7 speaks of prayer, then 8 and 9 of charity and hospitality, then of the gifts given to each, and how we are to be good stewards of these. The theme of stewardship is at its fullest here, the stewardship of m skills and talents, just as much as the stewardship of all the ma-
terial things in my life. All that Benedict has been teaching me so lovingly and so patiently is gathered up in this prayer. ''That in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and dominion for ever and ever. Amen'' (1 Pet 4:11).
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
With the short phrase ''that in all things God may be glorified'' (57,9), Benedict sums up the whole of his way of life. This is another pivotal moment in the Rule. He has shown us his purpose and aim, and he has said much about the interior attitudes, the disposition of the heart, that he is looking for in those who would like to follow him. This is a serious undertaking. It is not to be entered upon lightly. The intending novice is expected to give it due reflection (14), prolonged reflection (16). There is no automatic entry. This time of waiting is a test of patience (3; 11), of persistence (3), and of perseverance (9). There is no attempt to hide the hardships and difficulties. The beginning already shows what the future will hold. So now the question that follows must be: Is it for you? Are you truly seeking God?
This is the nub of the matter. This is the end and purpose of life. It is nowhere more simply and beautifully expressed than by St. Anselm in chapter 1 of the Proslogion:
\ Now, my whole heart says to God, "IT seek your face, Lord, it is your face I seek''
O Lord my God, teach my heart where and how to seek you, where and how to find you...
It is the question of Psalm 26 (27). It is the basic question; it is simply what this is all about. If we have the desire to seek the face of God, then those words of the psalm go on to say:
'Teach me thy way, O Lord, and lead me in a plain path'' (Ps 26 [27]:8, 11). This is exactly what follows here: Benedict is laying out before me the path that will lead to God.
If this is so, if there is within me this deep desire for God, if I can truly say, ''I desire thee with my whole heart,'' then Bene-
dict establishes three tests to ascertain the inner state of mind, since, as he makes clear right from the very start of this chapter, the process of discernment is absolutely necessary (2) before the novice goes on to make his or her promises. I read them prayerfully for they are indeed penetrating questions, and they give me a measuring rod with which to face my own heart and discover my Own motives and intentions.
The first criterion is whether the novice shows sollicitudo, eagerness, zeal, for the opus Dei (7). Before going any further
I need to stop for a moment with that powerful and colorful word, '*zeal,'' which is one that can only too easily be absent from my life. I think of ardent desire. I imagine a burning and white hot flame, and I am once again made aware that Benedict is a man of passion, that he is writing out of a passionate and burning desire that we should all find God.
This zeal does not mean meticulousness about the details of saying the daily Office, but something much more spiritual. As Michael Casey reminds us, the ability to pray the Office well depends on the rest of the day being lived in fidelity to the call of grace. Prayer cannot be separate from life. When the Office degenerates into something less than prayer, the cause is generally found in the quality of life itself. If there is a burning desire, a flame that draws me into my times of prayer so that I am then totally present to God, this will not be some mere outward observance reluctantly undertaken, and the work of God will then flow out and nourish all my daily work. Fruitful participation in the opus Dei in order to find prayer in it must be a two-way thing: the sense of the presence of God funnels from daily life into prayer and nourishes it, but then that prayer in turn nourishes daily life. This is, of course, the opus Dei prayed in and through the community. For those of us who pray alone, it is important to remember that we too are praying in step with others, with the worldwide Church as it observes the liturgical pattern of the year, or with any specific community to which we may be connected.
The next criterion is obedience. \This should hardly be a surprise since it has from the very beginning been one of the most essential elements in the path by which Benedict is helping each of us to go to God. This is the way in which I follow the example of Christ and return to the Father. The bending of my will toward that as the end and aim of my life puts me in the right direc-
tion and keeps me on the straight path. This second test, therefore, asks me to look again at my intention and motive, my interior disposition. It is significant that it appears here in this section, whose tenor is the open-eyed, free, deliberate, and long-matured choice that the novice has to make. So obedience, therefore, cannot be blind when the critical faculties are being exercised in this way.
Third comes eagerness for opprobia, an awkward word, which is often unfortunately translated as ''humiliations,'' but which essentially carries connotations of negative, dreary, unattractive, or inglorious situations. It reminds me of the words ''lowest and most menial'' of the sixth step of humility. Yet Benedict has been telling us how important it is that things are well done and that people use their gifts and abilities. So he obviously does not intend life to be dull and limited, does not want daily tasks to be lifeless and dreary. But he knows, as well as I do, that life is inevitably, for much of the time, far from ideal and that we have to live with that reality: a less than wonderful marriage, a house that is far from spacious and beautiful, a job that is not really rewarding or fulfilling. So how do I handle the frustrations? the limitations? the disappointments? Trivial everyday misery can be
_the most deadening of experiences, and it can more easily than almost anything lead to resentment or bitterness. Here the novice is being told to accept these trials with eagerness, with that acceptance that will make them life-giving rather than life-denying, surely one of the more difficult things simply because it is so undramatic. Yet the ability to maintain patience and contentment under this sort of deadening pressure is one more way in which we follow Christ. If it feels like a crucifying self-denial, an apparent waste, I must remind myself that so, apparently, was much of Christ's own life. Perhaps I must be content to let that remain a mystery.
This triad of demands or tests of intention, which are foundational for the newcomer, have a very striking parallel with the spiritual program that Benedict set out in chapter 7, the Work of God corresponding to the first degree, obedience to degrees
2-4, and opprobia to degrees 5-7. I am here presented once again with demands that are penetrating and insightful and that are intended to help me in that process of growth in self-knowledge before God. Just as in chapter 7, this is not undertaken on one's own without support and guidance (7,55). The novice is put under
the guardianship of a senior monk chosen not for academic expertise but for his skill in winning souls, the art of trying to attract the newcomer to appropriate spiritual values, which can only be done gradually and gently. As Michael Casey comments, here is another indication of the horizontalism that pervades the Rule.
The community offers support to the novice in his struggles with these necessary hardships, giving him help and encouragement as he reshapes and reorients his life. I am grateful to be told that entry to this life is hard, demanding, I feel that it shows respect for my own self, and does not patronize me, as so often seems to happen when Christian discipleship is made too easy, trivialized, and presented in a facile and easy-going way.
The process of entry into the community is a slow one. As Benedict unfolds the pattern of the scheme that he has devised, we see that it is in order that the final decision may be freely and carefully considered. It is taking commitment seriously, in a way that is increasingly absent in today's society in any form of bond or relationships, not least in the undertaking of marriage. I see how careful Benedict is to establish that this commitment is entered into completely voluntarily, that it is deliberately considered over a lengthy period of time, and that it will be total. He proposes a twelve-month period of formation divided into two, six, and four months respectively, and the Rule is read through at the conclusion of each. The fact that the novices sleep and eat in a separate area is probably so that this may be a time of silence and solitude that will make easier the meditatio of verse 5.
The verb meditare was not a purely interior activity, but involved the repetition of a text aloud so that passages were said over and over again until they were known by heart. Once learned, these texts could then be repeated from memory without a book, not least during times of work or other activities. These texts were essentially biblical, and included, above all, the psalms. The goal of this kind of study was, therefore, far from being purely intellectual: it was more the appropriation of the Word so that it could be formative of one's life.
After this searching of motive and intention, and this long period of reflection, comes the final decision, made entirely freely, but with the knowledge that if the commitment is undertaken it is binding. We live in an age in which we shy away from commitment, we like to keep our options open. Henri Nouwen has written about how spending seven months with the Trappists in the
Abbey of the Genesee made him aware of how divided his heart had been and still was. He realized that while he wanted to love
God he also wanted to make a career. While he wanted to be a saint, he also wanted to enjoy the sensations of the sinner, and he concluded with his usual wry honesty and humor: "'No wonder that living becomes a tiring enterprise! The characteristic of a saint is, to borrow Kierkegaard's words, 'to will one thing.' Well,
I will more than one thing, am double-hearted, double-minded, and have a very divided loyalty."'
This chapter moves on to the paragraph that opens with verse 17 that describes the admission ceremony itself, and how the community will receive the new novice. It is a public commitment made in the oratory before the whole community in the presence of God and his saints. The horizontalism of the Rule was mentioned earlier, and now I see that it includes not only the support and prayers of the brothers and sisters actually physically present, but also of the whole company of saints. The newcomer is part of a great universal invisible body. This solemn sense of continuity and connectedness, of solidarity, of being inserted into a corporate whole that transcends temporal time, is reiterated by the fact that the written document is to remain permanently in the monastery. Even if the individual departs, the document will stay in its place with those who have gone before and those who will come after.
Three-part formulas occur throughout this chapter: how the novices are to study, eat, and sleep (5), there is a triad of tests
(7), and there are three readings of the Rule (9; 12; 13), along with a threefold repetition of the Suscipe (22), and finally a triple promise. Yet to speak as though there were three separate promises is misleading, for they cohere, and it is impossible to keep one without keeping the other two. They are not like the three evangelical counsels, poverty, chastity, and obedience, which can be symbolized in the three knots of a cord as with the Franciscans, for example. Rather, all three refer to the same commitment under three different but total aspects. Any one of these taken by itself—''obedience,'' ''conversion of life,'' ''stability''—could perfectly well serve as an all-embracing title for the whole enterprise, which is nothing less than a commitment to living a Godward life, seeking God,-and being found by God.
If we start with stability, we can look on this as the perspective with which to view everything else. Benedict puts stability first since without it the other two lose much of their meaning. If we
are to live our lives according to this commitment, we must be prepared to live it until the end, to death. If I know deeply and interiorly that this is where I stand, then that unleashes great energy and does away with the inner debate and uncertainty, that endless questioning, that so quickly becomes debilitating.
Although it is particularly associated with Benedict, the idea of stability has a long history within the monastic tradition, and it is, of course, deeply rooted in biblical understanding. ''Persevere until death,'' which Benedict quotes in the prologue, is taken from Philemon 2:8. The psalms make central the theme of steadfastness, which is another way of expressing stability: ''Renew a steadfast spirit within me.'' The ideal of stability runs through many of the sayings of the Desert Fathers, notably: ''Stay in your cell and your cell will teach you everything.'' Already there is this firm strand in the tradition that recommends stability as a spiritual help. But it had never before received such firm and clear handling and been given the central place with such strong sanctions as Benedict now assigns to it.
The novice who has read the Rule carefully, thoughtfully, and has meditated upon it, is in a good position to enter fully into what this understanding of stability means. It is essentially not something abstract or philosophical, but thoroughly practical, for Benedict is never a man to leave things in the air, particularly good intentions! He likes to make things concrete, specific. At the end of chapter 4, there is that short phrase that links stability with enclosure and the community: ''Now the workshop where we are to toil faithfully at all these tasks is the enclosure of the monastery and stability in the community"' (4,78). So a particular group of people, as much as some sacred geographical spot, shapes our, stability. Those vivid negative examples given in chapter 1 can help us to read Benedict's mind rather more clearly, for we see his castigation of the gyrovagues who are so deficient in stability that they spend their whole lives wandering, roaming, never stable, given up to their own wills. This physical instability resulted from, and expressed, their spiritual and psychological rootlessness, for far from being rooted in God and in the search for God, they were rooted in their own selfishness and self-seeking.
Ultimately, stability is internal and spiritual, concerned with the interior, inward disposition. So if I want to think about my own stability, I must ask myself where I am rooted. Am I stable and unwavering in my commitment to my search for God? What
militates against stability in my life are all my escape routes: my fantasies and my day dreams, my wandering memory and my wandering imagination, the romantic dreams of some better place, the promise of something better elsewhere. This is, of course, simply escapism, which means that I am not truly present to this moment, to the actual job in hand, to the people who surround me now. There are essential questions that cannot be evaded: Who am I and where am I? They are linked, for I cannot really know myself and know who I am unless I also know where I belong, unless I have some firm ground under my feet. Benedict as ever shows an excellent grasp of psychology.
''Where are you?'' That was the question that God asked Adam and Eve as he walked in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid in the bushes, ashamed of their nakedness and disobedience. As long as they chose to hide and evade this question, which is surely also the fundamental question for any for us, they could not meet God, nor have any relationship with God, not least the relationship of being chastized, punished, and then forgiven.
It is only when I stop running away, stand still, and look around me that I begin to see where my place is in the world. If I stand still long enough, I might then be able to explore the place where
I am, send down a few roots, let something grow, reach maturity, produce fruits from deep inside myself. This kind of fruit, this kind of ''producing,'' will probably no longer be the glittering fruits and sparkling trophies that I dreamed of in my earlier life, but more rich and satisfying and fulfilled fruition. I think of Christ in his farewell discourses telling his disciples to abide in the Father's love, and he asks the same of me, that I abide in him so that I may bear fruit.
The image of roots is one that I find immensely helpful. Just as a tree or a grain of wheat does not produce fruit unless it first puts its roots down into the earth, so also I cannot grow and become fruitful unless and until I sink down roots. The twelfthcentury Cistercian, the Blessed Guerric of Igny, has four sermons on St. Benedict in which he makes a parallel between living according to the Rule and living as Benedict did: both show us a life rooted in God. Benedict himself ''was like a tree planted by the living waters of divine wisdom. He is not only a model to us but has transmitted to us his way of life, so that if we live our lives wisely we live rooted in God.'"' The Rule is to help us to sink our roots in wisdom, and it all begins when we start to settle down
and take our time, see that we cannot do everything ourselves (which is humility) or do it at once, and, above all, when we practice the true silence that will help us to sink our roots in God.
''What good is a bird sitting on eggs who flies off and leaves her work unfinished? What plant can flower or bear fruit unless it is left in the place where it is planted?'' With such simple images
Guerric helps me to ask some important questions about the pattern of my life.
These images further help me in as much as they make a clear distinction between true stability, which is fruitful, and staticness, which is negative and unproductive, the wrong sort of standing still. Christ wants us to be alive, fruitful, drinking the living waters. To be standing as still as a dead tree stump is quite wrong.
There is the danger of inertia taking over, of getting trapped into the wrong kind of stability—that pseudostability that keeps me staying there when I should be getting out, so that even if I am physically present I am not alive, awake. I think of Christ turning to the disciples in the garden and asking them to stay awake to support him, and one another, during the struggle, to fight sleep and the forces of darkness. They failed him, as so often I fail through laziness, weakness, carelessness, and, perhaps most insidious of all, sheer inertia. If I took the Rule seriously, I should know that right from the start Benedict is asking for people who are open, alert, attentive, fully alive!
The image of fighting, fighting the forces of darkness further enriches the concept of stability. Benedict was a true Roman and the resonance of stare, ''to stand,'' would carry military connotations for him, as does that passage in Ephesians 6:13: ''Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand, stand therefore.
.'' By standing still I find where the real battle has to be fought, not the least with the forces within. Maturity comes from facing what has to be faced and not running away from all the dark and murky elements that lie in wait to attack us. ''It is by warfare in the soul that we make progress,' as one of the Desert Fathers puts it. The ancients also knew only too well the dangers of accidie, the condition of inner restlessness, inconsistency, and heedlessness. What this asks is the ability to hang on, to endure, even when there does not seem much prospect of the end of the road. It means holding on against the odds, being willing to keep on keeping on. This is a sort of constancy that
does not become either discouraged or cynical in the face of anxiety, boredom. Refusing to give up because I am in it for the long haul brings an entirely different perspective. In the end I am brought back, of course, to Christ himself and to his example, the willingness to endure faithfully and with patience, patientia, reminding me that this means both waiting and suffering. What makes this possible? The faithfulness of God. God is faithful to the covenant, and I know that I can rely on him. God's love endures forever. What I hold on to, what keeps me going through the bad times, is this certitude in the faithfulness of God. My stability is possible in the end because of the certain, guaranteed, steadfastness of God.
So the faithful father awaits the return home of the prodigal, just as each one of us also longs to come home, to cease wandering, to give up eating empty husks, to be back with the family in the place where we belong. That is something that Benedict touched on in the very first sentence of the Rule. I can now reflect on the many levels of meaning that the concept of being at home carries. He has shown me the importance of being at home in relation to place and to people, but more fundamentally in relation to my own inner self. ''What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves?'' Merton asks. I know that if I find God I will find myself; if I find my true self I will find God.
Those familiar words of Augustine, ''Late have I loved Thee!
And behold, Thou wert within and I was without, I was looking for Thee out there.
."' read in a modern translation ''Behold, You were within me and I was not at home." It is very easy to become a person who has an address but is never at home. But if lam absent from myself, how can I be there to open the door when Christ stands outside and knocks? Henri Nouwen reminds us that Christ is telling us, ''You have a home.
| am your home.
. Claim yourhome.
. It is right where you are.
. in your innermost being .
. in your heart.''
It is because I am at home in myself that I can also journey.
Having presented us with the promise to stay still and be rooted Benedict now turns to the second promise, conversatio morum>~ which carries the implication of journeying, moving forward, the quest. It is the one that makes the other possible. This is the paradox. It was something that Thomas Merton experienced in his own life. It was only because he knew that he had come home
when he entered the gates of the monastery at Gethsemani that he was able to set out on his journey, both the interior journey and then finally the journey to the East. This was the vow that he chose to talk about in Bangkok on the morning of December
10, 1968, the day that was to end with his unexpected death. He said that it was the most mysterious of all the vows:
When you stop and think a little about St. Benedict's concept of conversatio morum, that most mysterious of our vows, which is actually the most essential, I believe, it can be interpreted as a commitment to total inner transformation of one sort or another—a commitment to become a completely new man. It seems to me that that could be regarded as the end of the monastic life, and that no matter where one attempts to do this, that remains the essential thing.
Toward the end of that lecture Merton spoke of the Christian monastic view of reality, that ''if you once penetrate by detachment and purity of heart to the inner secret of the ground of your ordinary experience you attain to a liberty that nobody can touch.'' Here is a total transformation that will bring inner freedom.
The novice enters wholly, fully, and freely into the whole observance, the total way of life of the community. Conversatio was understood by the ancients to mean a definite way of life. In primitive monasticism, as Augustine Roberts reminds us, the first monks were convinced of the need for ''concrete practices as instruments or tools, to help to purify the soul, change the corners of one's heart from vice to virtue, and pass from virtue to God''
For Benedict the whole life that he outlines and legislates for in the Rule is this conversatio, life according to the school of the Lord's service, the chosen way of spiritual growth by which the monk hopes to purify his heart in dependence on Christ and thus
'deserve also to share in his kingdom"' (Prol., 50).
The promise that the novice is making is fidelity to this way of life. It means embracing the whole life of prayer and asceticism.
There are external renunciations, there are ascetical demands, but the exterior observances are not the end in themselves; the end is the interior conversion of heart, growth in the values of love, humility, purity of heart. The exterior conversion brings with it a way of life that facilitates a deeper, more interior conversion.
155.
If I think of how this applies to my own situation, it means that [ have to ask myself what way of life I freely choose. Am I prepared to make a total commitment and not pick and choose what pleases me? Am I prepared to follow this way to the end?
Benedict presents this way of life as a dynamic movement centered on Christ. He impresses the Rule with a sense of movement that comes across so strongly in those first paragraphs of the prologue: ''Set out on the way.
. run there.
. progress in this way of life.
. run in the path,"' and it will be caught again in the epilogue with the question ''Are you hastening toward your heavenly home?'' It is a battle as well. ''If you are ready to do battle .
. prepare our hearts and bodies for the battle. a Transformation and conversion mean commitment to a daily
"struggle against all those vices and inclinations that might take | "me away from Christ, which is, of course, nothing less than the "Commitment of my baptismal vows. I like the way in which one of the Desert Mothers puts it:
Amma Syncletica said: ''Great endeavors and hard struggles await those who are converted, but afterwards inexpressible joy. If you want to light a fire you are troubled at first by smoke, and your eyes pour water. But in the end you achieve your aim. Now it is written: 'Our God is a consuming fire.' So we must light the divine fire in us with tears and struggle.''
This means perseverance until the end. To say that I will journey on whatever the cost and wherever that may lead me is not to say that I believe I can do this through my own strength of will or strong sense of moral purpose. It shows my utter reliance on God. I am sure of the faithfulness of God, and my promise of stability is based on that. I cannot know the shape of events and circumstances that lie ahead, and I am therefore walking forward in darkness and uncertainty, holding the hand of God in trust that he will hold me up, keep me from stumbling. ''Forgetting what is behind me, and reaching out for that which lies ahead,
I press towards the goal to win the prize which is God's call to the life above, in Christ Jesus'' (Phil 3:13-14). Benedict does not let us forget the goal, nor is he is ashamed to remind us of the prize to be attained. There is always this long-range perspective.
The tools are handed out, and the harvest will be gathered in at the end of time. Finally, the day of judgment, which Benedict will never let us forget, puts our life into a long-term perspective.
The journey theme is as old as history itself, and there are many differing images. Once again Benedict touches on something that is primal, universal. The odyssey, the search for the holy grail, the quest have always captured the imagination. The call of Abraham is only too familiar, a prototype for many other calls to Tléave home. The medieval pilgrim sets out, probably with a group of like-minded pilgrims, to reach a shrine or a holy place.
The Celtic monks, however, felt the calling to become exiles for Christ, peregrini, setting out in coracles without oars, to be carried wherever the spirit might take them, so that they might find
"'the place of their resurrection''—that lovely phrase that gives me such delight as I say it to myself. Essentially this is the interior journey, a journey inward, and its goal is conversion of heart. When do we arrive? There is no stopping place in this life no matter how far along the road we may have come. If we refuse to journey on until the day of our death we are also refusing to be fully alive. To live with the promise of continual conversion, of metanioa, of turning away from all that will not lead us to Christ, is gospel teaching, and Benedict simply makes it a promise that we are to keep until the end of our lives.
The promise of obedience completes this commitment. The full meaning of obedience, therefore, is only found as part of the whole. It is not some ascetical extra, and again it is simply the way of the Gospel. Benedict has already had much to say on the subject, particularly in 5,13, where he gives the key text
John 6:38, the opposition between human and divine will, between my own self-will and that of the Father. The second crucial text, Luke
10:16, is used in chapters 5, 6, and 15 to establish obedience to a superior as the means of obedience to the Father. There are two streams of thought here. Benedict shows us that obedience is something mutual, shared, that we a// go together to the kingdom. So my obedience is mediated through a number of different sources, and at different levels. There is the obedience of the mind by which .
I am willing to learn from a spiritual director, from a father in God, from the tradition, from reading, from the community or those who share and shape my life. For obedience is not uncritical or blind. The whole purpose of chapter 58 is to ensure that when the novice comes to make this decision, it will be a clearly thought out choice that is taken with open eyes. Therefore there is this balance. I need the insights and the wisdom of others, but I make them my own.
I have to be willing, ready to hear. The word for obedience comes from the Latin ob-audiens meaning to listen, to listen intently. It is my openness and readiness to hear ''with the ear of the heart'' that Benedict wants. It is the disposition, the attitude, that matters. If there is merely outward conformity, then for Benedict obedience is utterly unacceptable, indeed worthless. A free, open, humble, and loving response to the will of God is at the heart of monastic obedience. It is, above all, love that makes this possible. It is something that I may forget, but if I do then the whole perspective gets lost. It is the image of the Father who stands there, waiting, offering unconditional love, acceptance, and forgiveness to the wayward son and daughter that is at once the goal and the end of the journey and at the same time the means by which I shall accomplish that journey.
It is through obedience that we return to the Father from whom we have strayed through disobedience. Benedict clearly tells us this early in the prologue. Once again I find myself in the place of the prodigal who is lost, has strayed, and is now, with Benedict's help, making the journey home. That there may well be a post-baptismal catechical homily underlying the prologue links monastic obedience to baptismal obedience. Do you turn to Christ? Those simple words are also quite terrifying. They are a question that I am asked at intervals throughout life, notably in the liturgy of the Easter Vigil. Once again it is only in the context of the paschal mystery that I can fully appreciate what is implied in my own obedience. If Christ is the model of obedience, he was obedient to his Father even unto death. When I think of the passion, I am left in no doubt at the costliness of following the Father's will, the loneliness, the anguish, the physical pain shown in the sweat and tears in the garden of Gethsemane. It is only in and through the obedience of Christ that I can also live out my own obedience. Christ is the example that I follow. Obedience is a sharing in the passion of Christ by patience, a mystery that I do not fully understand. But then perhaps that is right, for, as Daniel Rees reminds us, obedience is not a discipline, not a means for the smooth running of a well ordered life, it is a mystery at the heart of the redemption and of Christian life.
Moments after making these three promises the novice will be saying Suscipe me, ''Receive me.'' This is surrender, handing over. Traditionally the profession takes place at the offertory of a Eucharistic celebration, which makes the point very clearly.
These three promises are placed on the altar, thus symbolizing the voluntary act by which the novice offers himself or herself to God whose presence is represented by the altar. Then they recite Psalm 118 (119):116, praying that this gift may be acceptable. These words are a wonderful prayer. They are words that speak to any of us, and that we may find ourselves saying time and time again throughout our lives. ''Take me O Lord, accept me, receive me, uphold me.
.'' No one single word carries the full weight of meaning of the original. They are singing words, words like some Eastern koan, whose full meaning reveals itself as we live with them and change and grow ourselves. It is the fullness of my whole humanity, which Benedict has been helping me to acknowledge and to live with in honesty, that I am here offering to God. As I look back over the path along which Benedict has been leading me, I am aware of his concern for the whole person, not the person who hides or who plays games, or the half person, or the person whom the world encourages me to become.
In the familiar words of Irenaeus, ''The glory of God is the man [and the woman] fully alive.'' Benedict's concern, right from the start, was that we should all be wholly alive and take up that offer of life, good life. The self now offered on the altar whom I ask
God (or Christ, the word Domine is open to either) to receive is that true self.
As I stay with that word ''receive,'' it is its uses in Scripture that deepen its meaning. Benedict first used it in chapter 2, quoting from Romans 8 (''You have received the spirit of adoption'') and then in chapter 53 on the reception of guests (""'We have received your mercy in the midst of your temple''). So we receive
Christ in one another. The action now becomes a corporate one as the community repeats this verse three times in support of its new member. Then just as the novice has asked for God's acceptance (the personal reciprocal giving and receiving between the new member and God or Christ), so in turn he or she asks each single brother or sister for the same acceptance. It is because I | know myself accepted by God that I can also accept my brothers and my sisters. There is a profound insight here that I should not lightly pass over, and this is the relationship between the two acts.
It is my own acceptance of myself, before God, in all honesty and humility, that makes it possible for me to accept others in the same way.
How total this handing over is to be is shown in the instructions of the final paragraph of this long chapter. Everything is handed over, including the body itself—the phrase of verse 25, obviously taken from | Corinthians 7:4, makes an interesting analogy with marriage. Then, in a further symbolic act of dispossession, there is an exchange of clothing, so that clothes that are essentially personal and a mark of individuality are handed over, and the novice puts on clothing that is a mark of the new life.
Should things go wrong and he or she leaves the community, then they return to the clothing of their former life.
The vows, the promise made with God, remain with the community. I too have found that those promises, those words, have become deeply important to me in my own path of discipleship.
"'Suscipe me, receive me, accept me O Lord,"' are words that I pray wherever I am, and whatever happens to me. These promises depend on the promise of God. This is the hope, the certainty.
It is the knowledge of the utter and total dependability of God who will not fail in this promise that makes my own promise possible.
In my own life these three promises have become a point of reference, a lifeline, a survival kit. They are basic to my humanity: the need to stay still and not to try to escape from where I find myself; the need to journey on, to be ready for change, not to cling to the past; the need to listen, to hear and to be heard.
And they also help me with the making and the maintaining of relationships. They strengthen me when I want to run away, and they tell me about holding on, hanging on however difficult that may be. They remind me that relationships must not fossilize at some point in the past but be ready to change, even if that means a smashing of idols; they help me to listen, to listen totally to another and to find the voice of Christ in and through that person.
But above all they speak to me of Christ, Stability: Christ the Rock Conversatio morum: Christ the Way Obedience: Christ the Word.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
At first reading the historical context jars so much that it is difficult to approach this chapter prayerfully and find its relevance to my own life. The offering of sons by nobles or by the poor, as the traditional heading of this chapter puts it, could hardly seem more completely remote and absurd. Yet the central theme of offering (the word itself occurs three times, in verses
1, 2, and 4), which sets the keynote, picks up one of the important themes of the Rule.
That we possess nothing is an idea that Benedict has been hammering home, time and time again, in different forms and in differing situations throughout the Rule. He now applies it to children. We have the scriptural precedent in the example of Hannah in 1 Samuel who hands over her longed-for child, saying as she does so that he is now for the rest of his life loaned to the Lord.
Everything is on loan. That is what Benedict was saying about all the material things, tools and possessions. We were shown the total handing over of the whole self in chapter 58. Neither things, nor people, nor my own body are mine to possess, own, control.
This is easier to talk about, to think about, than to live out.
Benedict knows about compromises, about holding back, about having something in reserve in case it all becomes too costly. He also knows that the half-hearted way is no good. So he builds in the safeguards that will ensure a total commitment. It is interesting to see that he says that if there is a way left open, any escape route that would allow an alternative way of life for the child, this will lead to ''expectations that could deceive and ruin him'' (6), strong words and ones that obviously come from hardwon experience.
CHAPTER SIXTY
The last sentence of the previous chapter shows Benedict once more carefully eliminating distinctions between people. The poor are accepted in the same spirit as the rich. He continues with this train of thought but in the context of the priest and the layperson, a distinction that could easily become a division in the community.
The priest is not to expect any special consideration. He has to follow the full observance without mitigation, subject to the full discipline of the Rule. He should expect no advancement because of his priestly dignity, and he is not afforded entry too quickly. He is forced to demonstrate persistence like anyone else knocking at the door. In other words, there is to be no distinction of rank or status, no room for privilege of any sort. For anyone entering as a priest, it might be difficult to disengage from an earlier experience of the priesthood. There could be the danger of letting the past shape the present or determine the future, and that, of course, might weaken conversatio. Obedience, humility, and stability apply just as much to priests as they have done in earlier chapters to any officials of the monastery.
The very specific reference to obedience, subject to the discipline of the Rule (5), says that he is not to presume, not to grasp at power, but to behave and to act as the abbot bids, a clear reminder of the dangers of self-will or self-direction about which Benedict is always very firm. That the priest is to stand in line, metaphorically and literally, standing next to whomever it may be that he has entered with, is a clear outward demonstration of how he is to take his place as an ordinary member of the community (chapter 63 will simply place the priest in line by means of the date of entry). The pattern of the life that Benedict is establishing is monastic and lay, not diocesan or clerical. He does not want to develop institutions, whether parochial or episcopal. He
does not want to encourage any system. Rather he wants to build a family, a community, within which each individual may be formed in the heart and mind of Christ and may live out daily the teaching of the Gospel.
It is, of course, the interior intention that really concerns Benedict, and so there is this scrutiny of motive. The question that Benedict asks is, ''Friend, what have you come for?'' It was the question that Christ asked of Judas in the garden of Gethsemane.
The scriptural context is always illuminating about Benedict's mind, and I believe this is particularly true here. The scene in the garden tells us so much about what is expected of discipleship, teaches about obedience, keeping watch, continuing in prayer, and so on. We might recall the question when Christ turns to the one member of his small community who is not wholly committed. That question of his is one that I can well ask myself. How truly committed am I? Am I the faithful follower or the betrayer?
Am I here for the good things (the status, the security, the material comforts)? Am I here to play a role (the person with the money bags suggests the attraction of holding a particular niche in the community)? If I take this verse seriously, it could well challenge me to face some uncomfortable questions about the honesty of my motives and intentions.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
A visiting monk is in a rather different category from the ordinary visitor to the monastery, for he is at once the same and yet different. As Benedict describes his reception by the community in this chapter, the basic issue that he is dealing with is that of a reciprocal relationship, a balance and openness that is asking something of both sides.
What are the qualities that Benedict is looking for in the visiting monk? Humility and love and stability are mentioned as essential and necessary, all are elements that are familiar. But he also speaks of contentment, something implicit in his whole way of life that he now finds necessary to emphasize. ''He is content with the life as he finds it, .
. is simply content with what he finds"'
(2-3). It is rather unusual for Benedict to repeat himself so clumsily, and it seems that this is something really important for him.
The visiting monk is not to make excessive demands. Anyone who criticizes is discontented; anyone who asks for more than he or she finds can contaminate, can spread poisonous feelings. I feel that when Benedict speaks of ''wretched ways,'' miseria, which brings contamination (7), he can only be speaking from experience. It reminds me of the other times when he has used vivid language, uprooting and amputation, in order to prevent the spread of what might become a malignant growth, and again I notice that it is always attitudes that are contagious and have to be dealt with severely before they lead on to worse.
But those who receive the visitor are to be open, ready to listen. There is to be receiving as well as giving. There is to be acceptance of people who come from very different places (using this metaphorically as well as literally). There is to be willingness to hear ''reasonable criticisms or observations'' (4) and to learn from the example of others (9). So we are shown a complemen-
tarity of obligation, a balancing act by which a community, as also an individual, is to be open to new and different insights and understanding. In a world that builds barriers, puts up walls, keeps the other out, and is looking for certainty, we turn to the Rule and find a man who insists on balance, mutual respect, reciprocity, openness. Benedict's age was one of uncertainty, both political and religious, yet he refused to live with a closed mind. Once again
I find that a strictly practical situation becomes the means by which the Rule teaches me important truths. There is something gentle and unthreateningly prophetic here, a challenge to narrowness and closed minds, by which people build walls and refuse to listen to the other.
Both kinds of monks, the visiting and the resident, share in the service of the same Lord, both do battle for the same King
(10). Earlier on in the chapter Benedict has been strongly emphasizing contentment, the refusal to criticize. Yet now when he speaks of life as a battle he seems to be saying something opposite. Once again I am faced by the need to find a balance in which one thing will be a counterpoise to the other. There can be the wrong sort of contentment and acceptance, close to apathy
(accedie), by which I become lethargic, dispirited. The balancing of one thing against another brings a tension between opposites and helps me to live with contradictory forces so that they become energizing and life-giving.
The final question comes in the last verse (13) of the chapter:
Am I living out the Golden Rule (which Benedict does not give in its more familiar expression in Matthew but quotes the original form in Tobit)? But the issue is the same, it is this ideal of reciprocity, of mutuality, of giving and receiving, of balance and openness. After reading this chapter in which Benedict is giving such a wise criterion for the behavior of both those who give and those who receive, I find that it raises certain issues for me. Am
I content? Am I truly content? Am I open to receive as well as give? Do I try to keep balance and reciprocity playing in my life?
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
When any member of the community is given a special role to play, then at once there are dangers. They are summed up in the word ''arrogant,"' which comes in the final verse, and is spelled out at intervals in the opening paragraph: pride and conceit, lack _ of obedience, failure to live under discipline. Benedict goes on that simple phrase sums up the whole aim Mad Tarps of the Christian life. I find again here what has concerned him in chapter 60, that a person who enters the monastery with particular skills or training from the past might find it difficult to disengage, might therefore fail to grow in openness and, in particular, in the receiving and giving shown in the previous chapter.
In this chapter Benedict is concerned to help anyone who holds office, especially an office that carries expectations of particular
'holiness, to beware of role playing. They must not forget their essential place with the rest. The following chapter will place the priest in the ranks by reason of his date of entry. Much of what
Benedict is saying here points me back to what I have learned in his teaching on humility. It is written with priests in mind, but the principles apply to other situations and persons.
Despite the extreme reserve toward monastic priests in chapters 60 and 62, there is no sign of disrespect for the priesthood as such. The priest is allowed to stand next to the abbot, impart blessings, and and say. Mass (60,4). There is mention of their duties at the altar (6). It is generally agreed that Benedict's monks did not have daily Mass. The sacrament was probably taken before the monastic meal at a Communion service, and this was no doubt sO common as not to require comment. Most abbots were not priests, but they would arrange for monks to be ordained as they. were needed, ensuring that they remain firmly under internal control rather than that of the local bishop.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
Order has always been a basic concern for Benedict. As he looked out from his cave at Subiaco and saw a world in which the last remnants of Roman imperial order were breaking down, he saw the urgent need of helping people to bring order into their lives. He knew only too well that there must be both an inner and an outer order and that the two depend on one another. By this stage of the Rule, he has written about all the differing members of the community, from the abbot through those who hold any kind of office, whether temporary or permanent, to the ordinary members. He knows about unique gifts and talents and how not to level down a group of people into any dull conformity. If now he has to help all these varied people impose some sort of coherent framework on their working relationships, we may be sure that he had plenty of personal experience with the problems it raised. The Dialogues give some vivid glimpses of the tensions in the community at Monte Cassino with its range of widely varying backgrounds, experience, position, education, social and racial standing.
Taal ~ In this chapter Benedict is saying that what each member brings i in terms of past experience, status, education, wealth, and worldly success now counts for nothing. For it is the moment of entrance that determines place in the community. This is a strong symbolic statement about the new order in which the love of Christ and the values of the - Gospel will operate. The moment that counts is that of entry, of acceptance of the call, when in all T humility and openness to the future the novice prays Suscipe me, Domine.
That each and every person counts is seen in the attention given to the young (which 3,3 has already made clear). This is gospel teaching, where Jesus sets up a small child in the midst of the disciples. Yet the epistles also insist on the observance of certain social arrangements in which wives, children, and slaves are firmly
kept in their place. It is interesting to see how Benedict handles this; he manages to keep a balance between the two. Every person has his or her proper place, each is made aware of their "worth. ;
The tools in this delicate operation are respect and love (10), both familiar themes of the Rule. Benedict is not interested in any rules or the jurisdictional aspects of rank. At the end of the chapter
(17), he refers to Romans 12, and I find it revealing if I read this chapter in the context of that wonderful outpouring of Paul on the building up of the body 'of Christ.
For Paul starts with a verse that could be a description of the the entry of the novice into the community, ''present your bodies a sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God,'' and the succeeding verses speak of the gifts and the virtues of each as the many members become one: the individual giftedness of each separate son or daughter that Benedict has so continuously emphasized.
Recognition of this uniqueness is outwardly expressed in the way in which we greet one another, the most immediate way in which love and respect are lived out in daily life (10-13; 15; 16).
There is much practical insight here, for Benedict is both a good sociologist and a good psychologist. But it goes deeper. This is about the figure of Christ himself, present amongst us, symbolized by the abbot as the father who holds the place of Christ but is simultaneously the exemplar for each of us to find the face of Christ in all whom we see.
I take the words in verse 13, ''out of honor and love for Christ,'' as a text for myself. Ido not belong to any community, my life seems to consist of a succession of interlocking circles, family, work, interests, and I am also often on my own. But what
Benedict is saying can still apply. A competitive, success- -oriented, highly individualistic world needs love and respect more than ever.
He is giving us a basis for right relationships, the working out of an inter- -dependence and complementarity of one with another that can link us all into a mysterious, unseen communion with each other in and through the figure of Christ himself.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
The body has its head, the community has its leader. Here is a portrait of that head, with an exploration of the qualities needed in any leadership position. The opening sentences, however, about the selection of the abbot are confusing and imprecise, which is unusual for Benedict. This muddled start to the subject has given scholars a splendid opportunity to try to read what might really have been in his mind, what, for example,
"'sounder judgement"' (1) might involve. Behind these laconic statements, it is quite clear that it is to the Holy Spirit that all must look and that all these procedures are simply to be channels for that. What is at issue is that the motivation is pure ''zeal for God's honor'' (6).
The provisions in verses 4 and 5 that, if things do not go well with the election, then the wider Church of the region is to be called in to help gives us an interesting glimpse of the interaction of the monastic community with the wider Church. It is a reminder that the monastic community is in the Church and for the Church, and that relationship is a two-way thing. Those who live outside, whether they are officially connected with the hierarchical Church of the diocese or are simply the ordinary Christians around, both gain from and contribute to the monastic life. It is important not to forget that the institutional Church and monastic life have continually interacted one with the other. Monasticism began as a charismatic phenomenon outside the hierarchical structure of ecclesiastical authority, and at the time at which Benedict was writing the situation was still pretty fluid, with bishops exercising some control but with no clear-cut and universal pattern emerging.
As soon as he has dealt with the question of choice, Benedict turns to the real subject of this chapter:_the qualities demanded_ by the work of the abbot. Despite the precise nature of the sub-
ject, the chapter can still provide anyone in a position of authority, whether parent, teacher, priest, or business executive, with a theological description that is both wise and practical. The tasks that the abbot assigns will concern both ''God or the world"' (17), a nice summary of that holistic spirituality that Benedict has been giving us that does not separate the material and the spiritual.
The abbot is concerned with the whole of life, with sleep and food and drink and discipline and prayer, but not least with personal _ relationships. So now the question is: What sort of a man is this to be?
The description in verse 5 of ''a worthy steward in charge of God's house'' catches once again the theme of stewardship that — has been so important throughout the Rule and that carries the connotations of respect, reverence, and handling with care. As the portrait builds up, I begin to see what Benedict is looking for: a person who is gentle and compassionate. Mercy is mentioned three times (9; 10), and prudence twice (12; 14). When he comes to deal with faults, it is important to have the perspective that can separate the sin from the sinner (11). But it is equally important when things go wrong to face the truth. When it comes to the need to punish, there is a very nice picture of the abbot being beware not to rub too hard to remove the rust in case the vessel gets broken. This is for me a picture that catches so completely
Benedict's emphasis on gentleness, on compassion, on handling with care. But it is also surely more than that. In using that image of the person as a vessel, he is saying something incarnational.
Is he not telling us that each person is a Eucharistic vessel?
Compassion does not mean collusion, a failure to deal with faults." These, as we have already seen, call for correction and healing. Faults are to be pruned away with prudence and love (14).
The purpose is to promote the unique capabilities of every person in the way that best suits them, a delicate operation that equally well applies to any of us in our relations with others. It is beautifully caught in verse 19, ''He must so arrange everything that the strong have something to yearn for and the weak nothing to run from.'' Benedict chooses the example of Jacob as a man of gentledie in one day. In the passage from Genesis from which he takes the quotation in verse 18, we read of Jacob's gentle handling of tender children and the flocks that were with young, and how he said, "'I will lead on softly,"' a phrase that gives me peculiar delight.
The long list of negative qualities that comes in verse 16 is a total contrast to the moderation and discernment that he is hoping for. ''Excitable,
. extreme, obstinate, .
. never at rest'
(16). This picture of someone who is uncertain, ajar, not at home in themselves, strikes a chord with me. It catches so well what
I feel at those times when I am at war with myself. I know that this i is serious both for me and for others; so long as I am not at ease with myself and do not love and accept myself, I cannot hope to allow others to feel at ease or to feel loved and accepted.
Perhaps this is no more than the exercise of compassion that Benedict understands so well, which recognizes the worth of the individual and loves each one as they need to be loved. We should not miss the significance of the fact that Benedict again uses the suffering servant of Isaiah (13) as the model we are to follow.
It would be quite impossible to live out this ideal of the ser-. vant and the steward, able to love and cherish, if we were simply relying on our own inner resources. But Benedict reminds us that there are sources and springs of wisdom on which to draw, not least a treasury of knowledge (9). He quotes from that passage in Matthew's Gospel where Jesus speaks of the householder (a most appropriate image for this chapter) who brings out from his treasure what is old and what is new. We know already the importance that Benedict attached to reading and to prayerful reflection.
In chapter 73, the final chapter of the Rule, he will make it clear that he expects his followers to read further and to take into account the riches of the Fathers and the earlier monastic tradition, but above all to draw on the Bible: ''What page, what passage of the inspired books of the Old and New Testaments is not the truest of guides for human life?'' (73,3). Being subject to a rule could easily be static. As I read about the relationship of the abbot and the Rule I realize that what he is saying also applies to anyone ina position 'of authority and their relationship with the appropriate received wisdom of that role, whether that be a manual on good parenting or on personnel mangement. Whatever it may it is essential that it is vitalizing, not static. Everything in Benedict's way speaks of life and growth and progress.
The person and the law are thus manifest in the abbot and the Rule. Both principles of authority are sacred, and both must be held together. They point to the two aspects of Christ himself or otherwise the fullness of Christ is simply not present. For it
is, of course, always the presence of Christ himself that Benedict has in mind. Benedict's criteria for choosing the abbot, ''goodness of life and wisdom in teaching"' (2), gives a nice juxtaposition of living and learning held in balance. Here I find wise advice, which I might very easily miss, about the importance of the balance of heart and head held together.
It is the biblical images and resonances that bring out the real wealth and riches of this chapter and which enable me to read it prayerfully and to return to it again and again for insights to apply to my own life situation. Chapter 2 had the image of the abbot as shepherd, and now in verse 20 the image is that of the servant who gives grain at the proper time to his fellow servants.
Each of these words is pregnant with significance, but it is the role of the servant that sets the keynote. The quotation that follows verse 13 about keeping one's own frailty ever before one's eyes (a phrase I have taken from the translation by Luke Dysinger) and not crushing the bruised reed is taken from the suffering servant passage of Isaiah 42:1, which opens, ''Behold my servant whom I uphold.
."" The quotation from Matthew 24 that comes in the final verse (22) is taken from our Lord's discourse on being ready and faithful in watching, for that is what he will be looking for from his faithful and wise servant (Matt 24:45) when he comes to see how he has been taking care of the household. This is the servant who rules his household well and gives to his fellow servants grain, wheat. I like to find here an echo of the earlier Eucharistic implication of each one as a Eucharistic vessel. Finally ''the proper time'' (21), such a simple and short phrase, yet one that sums up the whole idea of the right ordering of time and space, the stewardship of the material as well as the personal, the holistic spirituality of this important chapter.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
This is the least prayerful chapter in the Rule. It is fairly bristling with tension. Perhaps because of his own personal experience, Benedict i is wary of the office of prior, probably because of the problems arising from the appointment by an outside authority and the dangers of a power struggle that it carries. The ideal, of course, is what we have been given in the previous chapter, acommunity of ''peace and love'"' (11). But Benedict is completely realistic about human nature and its weaknesses and what happens when the spirit of pride enters in.
When he lists the personal sins of the erring prior, it seems ceit and contempt. When there is this split Renee the head and one of the responsible members, it leads to a state of confusion in the whole community, becomes an open invitation to faction and disorder of every kind and to the envy, quarrels, slander, and rivalry that he lists in verse 7. He is worried that the abbot may get drawn into this maelstrom of violence and fears how destructive such conflicting aims and goals will become. This is the price that is paid for anyone putting his or her personal ends above the interests of the group. It is a dark warning against exploiting a position of power or authority for self-advancement to the detriment of the whole.
Benedict clearly cannot let such an evil and dangerous situation (10) go unchecked, and he lays down a number of parameters that are to operate. First, he reminds the community that decisionmaking lies with the abbot (though, of course, with all the safeguards that he has given in chapters 2 and 64). He allows the abbot to have deans to work under his direction, approving of them since a number is a safeguard against pride (13). If things go wrong there is a system of correction, carefully worked out
V/s)
in the final paragraph with the ultimate sanction that, if he still remains ''not a peaceful and obedient member of the community'' (21), he is to be expelled from it.
A split personality can be as dangerous to the corporate situation as to the individual. It is something that we can all be only too aware of around us. We can see it at work in a marriage where husband and wife are deeply at odds and damage the whole family, in a parish where people split into factions and tear apart the tissue of the congregation, and in a community caught in a power struggle and living off negative energy because it fails to deal with the underlying issues. But if Benedict knows how destructive divergent and centrifugal elements can be, he also knows the importance of accepting the wide range and variety of human nature and human experience. The question is how to hold these elements together and integrate them so that the whole body becomes lifegiving rather than life-denying. In the previous chapter Benedict has been showing us the role of the abbot holding the center with loving firmness. So that is what I now ask myself: Can the center hold? Where is the axis on which everything turns? If the abbot points me to Christ, it will be there that I shall find the creative force and power to make my relationships meaningful and lifegiving.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
This chapter is such an amazing contrast, for here Benedict writes with warmth and love and a gentle sense of humor. He gives a nice and funny picture of a sensible old man, who is competent to take a message and deliver a reply, who answers a knock or a call promptly, who has a room near the entrance, and who, because he is old, will not be tempted to go wandering off (1). (The Rule of the Master has an almost equally entertaining description of two decrepit brothers who have a cell near the gate so that they can open and close it, do what manual labor they can, feed the dogs and other animals, and keep a lamp lit near the gate.)
But Benedict's concern is not really with any of these externals.
It is not enough simply to be efficient about opening the door.
It is how it is done that counts. The porter er responds with love.
He calls out Deo gratias, 'Thank God"' that you have come. He asks the guest for a blessing, thereby tacitly saying that he also has has something to give. Benedict uses two short phrases here: ''the gentleness that comes from the fear of God,'' and ''the warmth of love'' (4).
This is one of the most delightful of the portraits in the Rule, and just because it is sketched in so slightly and so delicately, we should not miss its profound implications. The porter stands on the edge, based in the enclosure yet greeting the world outside.
So in him we are watching the holding together of desert and marketplace, cloister and world. What i is his attitude to the stranmeeting behvec Benedict and the priest on Easter Day that is recorded in the Dialogues. I have already thought about in the chapter on hospitality where Benedict says that we are to receive everyone who comes as Christ.
There are many themes in this chapter that carry implications for the way in which I live and relate to the world. Benedict is
at pains to make the point that the old man cannot wander off.
So this brings me back to the importance of stability, the neces-sity of not running around or running away, but instead staying in one place and facing whatever or whoever comes. In verses 6-7 the monastery is described as a virtually separate and selfcontained compound, able to feed itself with the essentials of bread and water and garden produce. I like to take this as an image of what the cloister can mean symbolically. The chapter on hospitality had shown the importance of the welcome of the open door upon the inner enclosure. Here I am reminded of the inner cloister, the inner garden, which needs tending throughout the year, the flowing water, the cultivation of various crafts. All these are very good symbols of how I should cultivate my own inner space and how it is from that that I can go out and greet the world.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
Here follows a chapter that discusses the relations of the inner and the outer. Brothers leave the monastery and need help to integrate that outer journey into their normal life of the enclosure. First, they are reminded that the heart and core of the monastic life is the opus Dei, and that it will continue in their absence. Prayer is the underlying continuum of life that keeps everything together; whether physically present or not, all are held in that prayer. That is a consoling thought for us too, wandering the face of the earth, but knowing that the opus Dei is continuing without ceasing, day and night, year after year, this great stream of praise into which our own faltering and broken prayer is inserted.
But there is also the more specific and immediate prayer that the brothers ask for as they set out on a journey. Journey prayers and blessings are as old as humankind. They are common to all early and primitive peoples. Celtic men and women, for example, would never dream of setting out on a journey, however short, without first asking God's blessing on the ground beneath their foot and his companionship along the way:
Bless to me, O God The earth beneath my foot, Bless to me, O God, The path whereon I go.
My walk this day with God, My walk this day with Christ, My walk this day with Spirit, The Threefold all-kindly.
The chapter goes on to look at the interface between the monastery and the world outside. The uneasiness that Benedict clearly
feels comes through clearly in what he is writing. That God's created order is good, matter is good, has been made abundantly
'clear, But not everything is good. Discernment is called for. Gossip "we and idle talk are amongst the most pernicious of sins, for tl they are a direct attack on the attitude of respect and reverence. Again it is the interior disposition that Benedict is forcing me to think about. Fantasy, daydreams, speculations—these are not the reality of God's world but come from the sick thoughts whirling around in the mind. It is this that Benedict has no use for. He knows not only that they are dangerous for the individual, but also that they can become contagious. Rumors get fired, wild ideas spread abroad, and these must be contained, so there are strict rules about this. It comes back to the sense of our inter-connectedness.
This is a corporate, shared spirituality. The abbot is the head, the center of the body, and evils can swarm "through that body if each member goes about wandering off at will. Again the 1 image is that of a journey that is willed, intended, and has a purpose, not going off like the gyrovague to fulfill one's own interests and concerns. We are part of a whole, with a responsibility toward the whole body, and not least to the head, the abbot, Christ.
It is the figure of Christ himself whom we are never to forget in Our journeying.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
I find it very interesting that at this stage in the Rule Benedict should return to subjects that he has looked at earlier, but with a subtle change of emphasis. We have already been told much about obedience, and not least those verses in 7,35-43, which make it quite clear that the monk is to obey, along with Christ, carrying his cross willingly. Although that absolute obedience must remain the ideal to which all are still committed, there may be times when it might have to be modified in the light of what day-to-day life _ is actually like. All the tasks and duties that have to be done and the complex network of relationships that are an inevitable part of community living have been looked at in careful detail in the subsequent chapters, and perhaps there may well be a wry note in verse 2 when Benedict speaks of ''the weight of the burden."'
Again it is a matter of the interior disposition. Obedience calls for acceptance, which grumbling in the heart, the inner murmuring, spoils. If there is a situation in which the monk wants to question this obedience it is the manner in which he does it that is. of the greatest importance. Benedict is very clear that it should be at an appropriate moment, with complete gentleness and patience, without pride. If the superior does not, however, countermand the order, then the monk is to obey (out of love) with confidence in the help of God, knowing that this is what is good for him. Benedict implies that it is a sacrifice to be accepted with joy. It is not, therefore, obedience in the wrong sense; it is simply trying to do this task as best he can for the love of God.
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
The translation of to defend as ''take under his wing'' helps me to understand better that phrase of the opening sentence that otherwise has an alien ring. Benedict is talking about taking sides in a way that not only does damage to the individual, but also promotes factions within the whole body. There is always a danger that I give or receive the wrong sort of friendship, and, under the guise of supporting another, I am in fact taking away the responsibility that everyone has of standing on their own two feet.
I like to see this as chastity in its fullest meaning of drawing back out of respect for the other's deepest and innermost self.
John Howard Griffin, who visited Merton in his hermitage, tells us that Merton used to focus on the people who came to see him just as much as on the material things that he photographed, but that he did so in such a way that allowed them to be themselves. He never tried to impose, to organize, or to control. This is the example that I need. It is often attractive to protect people from their own true selves, under the guise of helping them, and not least in counseling or spiritual direction. There are many ways that I may be subtly employing to make people dependent on me.
There is a passage in which Merton warns me about the dangers of invading the other rather than standing back in the face of the mystery that each of us is:
A person is a person insofar as each has a secret and is a solitude of their own that cannot be communicated to anyone else. I will love that which most makes them a person: the secrecy, the hiddenness, the solitude of their own individual being, which God alone can penetrate and understand.
Benedict has a deep belief and respect for each one of us as sons and daughters made in the image of God. It is up to each
of us to take due and proper responsibility for the handling of this amazing gift of our sonship or daughterhood. When I fail to face what has to be faced, or to grasp what has to be grasped, but instead try to find people who will support me (probably finding those who will listen to my story and encourage me to think that my cause is right), I have succumbed to a pernicious way of dealing with my problem. It is also one that tends to erode the good of any group, from the family outward, since, while I enjoy pouring out my story to the supporters and champions who will defend me, before long I may well begin to see my world as divided into factions: those who believe my story and those who do not.
CHAPTER SEVENTY
This rather strange chapter develops the idea of the honor and respect due to each and every one. The quotation from 1 Timothy _ comes from a chapter that has this as its theme, and that from Tobit, which is used for the third time, has its context in_4:19,
''Honor everyone.'' There must be this deep regard for each person's life in Christ, and it is absolutely wrong for anyone to presume to infringe it by flaring up and treating another unreasonably
(6). ''All outbreaks of self-assertiveness are to be avoided.'' This translation by Parry makes the point pretty clear. | must not ar- 'ogate to myself powers and authority that do not belong to me.
"5 t is only too easy to condemn another, and the open blow or a, the exclusion has really started with their condemnation in my own heart. That is a judging and a weighing that should lie with God alone. It is presumptuous to assume or to claim that I have the r right to deal with another. That right belongs to Christ or those in community, such as the abbot, who are in the place of Christ.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
The opening sentence is a loving statement in which Benedict calls obedience a blessing. There is a depth of meaning in the expression obedientiae bonum, which Benedict got from Cassian.
It carries the implication that obedience is a gift rather than a matter of duty. It is something that the good monk gives with gracious charity to his brother. The importance of obedience to God, to authority, and to our brothers and sisters is something that has concerned Benedict throughout the Rule. Obedience depends . on listening so totally and openly to the other that through them we discern the face, the voice of Christ himself. This i As the root of that obedience that we show to one another.
~ When Benedict says that the young should obey their elders with all love and concern (caritate et sollicitudine), he is using very expressive words. Solicitude suggests a deep and lively sensitivity toward the other, a delicate awareness of their needs, in other words, a love built on respect and concern. Giving in to one another and carrying out the will of the other through love is a manifestation of the love that Christ shows to us. Obedience is therefore presented in very positive terms.
The phrase ''this way of obedience'"' (2) reminds us once again that our life is a journey by which we progress to God. This is totally central to the way that Benedict wants to establish for us all. I feel that the reason he issues such stern safeguards is because he has himself so often watched things going wrong in the community. He knows that matters must be put right ''then and there, without delay'' (8). This is profoundly wise. The prostration on the ground may present an unacceptable picture, but the underlying ideal of total and immediate response is still valid.
'"'Clear and quick gestures of human sorrow and forgiveness,"' in Joan Chittister's words, are needed to heal the ruptures and the wounds before they mature and fester.
So love and growth are the key words in this chapter, and they lead us on directly to the penultimate chapter of the Rule that is Benedict's great panegyric on the art of loving.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
This chapter puts the rest of the Rule in perspective. Here, as John Eudes Bamberger has said, we find the essence, the deepest dimension, the core of the Rule. Here, just as in the prologue, we come closest to meeting the man himself, the interior
Benedict. We have followed the balance, the assurance of the tranquil and clear-sighted abbot who is an experienced legislator drawing up the whole body of material, the timetable, the duties, the officials, and the external goals that will allow his monks to live together i in harmony. But now when we see his concern with the inner dynamic of this life, this must tell us about himself, his own attitude and motives. This is the culmination of all that he been saying about the interior disposition of the heart. More important than attention to outward actions is attention to the inner sources of behavior. Benedict knows that it is possible to do good from a wrong motive. It is to the extent that his life is dominated
| by love that the monk is genuine or not. The real test of his authenticity is his selfless love. Here Benedict is taking us beyond structures.
Having shown us so carefully the regulations and the observances, all of which are certainly necessary and have their place, he now goes beyond them. This life that he wants us to follow is, in Michael Casey's words, ''one progressively saturated and transformed by love in all its variegated manifestations."'
So what does Benedict understand by zeal? We return to the theme of energy that he introduced in the prologue. He does not want a collection of passive ciphers, but a dynamic and alive people. This primary spiritual energy, which brings light and fire, passion and fervor, and which prevents what might otherwise be simply plodding, he calls a very ardent love. The Latin ferventis-~ simo amore suggests a burning, white-hot love.
The inspiration of the chapter is, as we would expect, totally biblical. Benedict refers to Romans 12 in verse 4, and it could well be that he had this in mind as he was writing and that it gave him the outline, for Romans 12;9-11 successively speaks of rejecting evil and embracing good, of mutual affection, of deference to others, and of unflagging zeal and service, all of which come precisely in that order here. The colon between verses 3 and 4 is important, for it leads on to the exploration of how that love is to be expressed and lived out. The chapter ends with a series of maxims that recapitulate the most important themes that he has touched on in the earlier pages, thus drawing the whole thing together.
Verse 4 brings i in the word "respect." Reverence and respect threads in the tapestry that Benedict has been weaving. Without respect there can be no acceptance of the other and no true love.
A fundamental respect for the uniqueness of others, respect for their freedom of thought and action, is something that Benedict has been showing me in different practical situations time and again. As he describes the building up of the life of the community, he makes it clear that this is something absolutely foundational. Genuine love is free from the exploitation or the manipulation of others. Where this is missing, love becomes a delusion, a subterfuge, a means to an end.
The patience and gentleness of verse 5 are again virtues that Benedict admires and that he has been encouraging. This is the opposite of that violence which is not limited to aggressive behavior but may be a reflection of the underlying violence of feel-_ ing that is expressed in the tone of voice or the glance, For of course zeal can be two-edged. It can become aggressive. The ''wicked zeal of bitterness'' (1) must refer to the rivalries and power games that can tear communities apart, the sort of competition that is unsuitable in the Body of Christ. If you must compete, he seems to say, at least compete in love!
Each of these successive maxims sums up, succinctly and neatly, all that I have been learning throughout the whole Rule.
If they had come earlier, I would not have had the practical examples of behavior in day-to-day situations that now give flesh to the bones. Each word that I read here carries some immediate resonance and reminds me of the context in which I first read it.
I now ask what "'respect,'' ''patience,'' ''pure love,'' and ''fear''
would mean if they were not shown to me in the context of the whole of the life that Benedict has laid out for me. For example, if the radical altruism of verse 7 (which is no more than Paul's teaching in Philemon 2:4 on preferring the welfare of others) had come earlier in the Rule, I might have read it as some abstract ethical demand and found it threatening. It is only when I have some secure sense of self, my true self, my real self, in which Benedict has been schooling me, and when I am certain of God's love for me, that I can receive this teaching. Without those two safeguards this command would be disastrous, a burying and a denial of my own self that becomes a form of alienation.
To recognize the full riches of the last two verses, I have to read them and remind myself of the echoes that they bring of earlier verses. For example, in 4,21 he told me to prefer nothing to the love of Christ and in 43,3 claimed that nothing is to be preferred to the Divine Office. If I now understand verse 11 as the love of Christ for each one of us, and that seems likely in the context of this chapter that is exploring relationships, then I am being brought very close now to the heart of the Christian mystery.
In these last two verses everything flows together in a tremendous affirmation of the place of Christ. Christ becomes the center of action in the culmination of this chapter that is also the culmination of the Rule. The nature of the community is determined by conformity to Christ's teachings, not to any other external or internal pressures. It is the relationship with Christ on which the strength of the life of the community depends. So now I have been given the spirit in which to read and re-read the Rule, meditate on it, interpret it, live it out. This daily growth into seeing and responding to the presence of Christ in each one, so that this interaction with one another means that we become the body of Christ, is the keystone of the life that Benedict wants to build up.
Unless this is made real and lived out in my daily life, I have been 1 reading just one more book of spirituality. But the Rule is not in that genre. It is a manual, a day-to-day practical manual to encourage me to make Christ's love the most immediate and practical reality in my life, and thus to live out the Gospel demands in a most ordinary, daily, and therefore inescapable way.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
At the end of chapter 66, which may, according to some authorities, have been the original ending of the Rule, Benedict says: ''We wish this rule to be read often in the community"' (8).
That, of course, applies to those living the monastic life, who will hear a short section of the Rule read aloud daily, or to Benedictine oblates who may commit themselves to the daily reading of — a passage. But for myself, and others like me who have no such formal obligation, it is also extremely wise. It is only as I stay with the text, pray with it, and read it time and time again that it becomes formative for my life. I need to treat it as I would /ectio, mulling it over, chewing it, getting the marrow as it were from what otherwise might appear as dry bones. a What strikes me immediately is Benedict's humility. I have followed him along his road to this point. I have seen the skill with which he has opened up the way and led me gently but firmly into the depths of my understanding of myself and of God's love for me. I have appreciated the sure grasp that he has shown in handling my spiritual formation. Yet he makes few claims for his own work and instead points me elsewhere. He points first of all to the Bible itself, to the Old and the New Testaments, to the Word itself as life-giving. What he promised in the prologue when he said that it was the Gospel which was to be our guide has been abundantly fulfilled. The Rule is saturated in the Bible. It echoes biblical passages, and it is shaped by scriptural images and resonances. Also, the ''holy catholic fathers'' are mentioned twice in verses 2 and 4 on either side of the biblical passages. They equally are guides leading us to God who is called the Creator here, which is unusual for Benedict. Their preaching and their teaching were always biblical, their theology saturated with biblical themes and concepts, and not least their emphasis on the cen-
tral themes of the Exodus in the Old Testament and the paschal mystery in the New.
The more detailed list that follows is fascinating for the way in which Benedict points to further reading in the Fathers in two different sources and practices. He points in one direction to the desert, eremetical tradition, the monastic way of Egypt, with its emphasis on the solitary, the ascetic life, and withdrawal. But then
Basil comes out of the cenobitic tradition, whose emphasis is on the community as the way, the monastic life as that of a family of brothers or sisters gathered around its head.
It might seem that we are being given a polarization of values: the solitary versus the community, the vertical versus the horizontal, the more ascetic versus the more humane. But Benedict himself, as we saw in the chapter on hospitality, is a man of open mind as well as open door and open heart. What Benedict is doing here is a subtle exercise. He is initiating a dialogue, a conversation, telling us to listen to two sources or streams within the monastic tradition, both of which carry validity and both of which speak to any one of us in our own Christian life. He is telling us that both these sets of values are good and that each has its role to play. If I think of this in relation to the makeup of my own inner landscape, I see that he is telling me to let two streams flow in so that I draw from both and let both interact. I need to see within myself the solitary, the ability to live with myself alone before God, just as much as I need to live in communion, in a relationship of connectedness with others. In this way I create a situation of dialectic.
In an age that seems to be increasingly looking for certainties, this idea of being open to differing, even divergent, aspects of the truth is asking for a refusal to be dogmatic, narrow, inflexible. These seemingly technical verses suddenly take on a great prophetic role. They draw us back to some of the most profound themes of the Rule, to listening, to openness to others, to continuing growth. But, above all, they draw us back to the paradox at the heart of the Gospel as at the heart of the Rule.
The very end, just like the prologue, is a lyrical piece of writing. ''Are you hastening toward your heavenly home?'"' (8). What a most wonderful thing to ask! The fullness of that question comes when I read these words in the context of those poetic images from Hebrews (4:11; 11:14-15) of seeking a country, and of that city that God has prepared for us, both images of home that capture
the imagination. The need to come home, the desire to be where I belong, is something that touches one of the deepest of chords in all human experience.
Here, at the very end, we return to the journey theme that opened the Rule, the way back to the Father from whom we have strayed. How neatly Benedict now ties the two together, the beginning and the end. Indeed there are such strong echoes of the prologue here that Benedict actually repeats that same phrase "'you will reach'' (9). For with Benedict I move forward all the time in hope, trusting in the mercy of God. With Benedict Iam com-_ mitted to continual conversion, to growth, to ongoing and neverending transformation. At one level this is unthreatening and reassuring, and I have the support and structure and rhythm of this life to uphold and support me. But at another level it is totally
. challenging. He is addressing the heart, the heart expanding with love, and that has no neat and tidy boundaries. If the focal point of Benedict's Rule is growth in the law of love, the love of Christ, how can I say in this life that I have ever fully arrived?
* Founded as it is on the Gospel, the Rule, like the Gospel itself, never grows old or goes out of fashion. Like the Gospel it is full of both urgency and compassion. As I reach its end, I realize that the text itself can never become an idol, for its purpose is all the time to point me beyond itself to the Gospel and to Christ.
Benedict has such a respect for each one of us, created as unique son or daughter, made in the image of Christ, that he shows a very real concern about stifling that God-given freedom and responsibility. This respect for my own self-worth puts a huge responsibility on me. It is up to me to respond or not. The Rule is addressed to the heart, to the disposition of the heart, and that can never become some closed system to be learned or acquired.
As Michael Casey says, Benedict is giving us ''not a series of prescribed actions but an invitation to remain alert to the challenge of the Word of God.'' And so the Rule remains something totally open-ended. Perhaps I should think of it presenting me with a series of open doors.
The Rule of Benedict is a way of life, a life-giving way. To encounter the text in all its fullness and complexity is like encountering a source and stream, always the same and yet always different, or like a tapestry where I follow first one thread and then
another and in doing so get different glimpses of the whole. I return to it time and time again throughout my life. Benedict and his practical manual of the love of Christ is always there to help me On my journey, the coming home of the prodigal to the loving embrace of the Father.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fry, Timothy, ed. RB 1980, The Rule of St. Benedict in Latin and English with Notes. Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1981.
There are a number of different translations of the Rule in English.
COMMENTARIES ON THE RULE
Cary-Elwes, Columba. Work and Prayer: The Rule of St. Benedict for Lay People. Trans. Catherine Wybourne. London: Burns & Oates,
1992.
Chittister, Joan. The Rule of Benedict: Insights for the Ages. New York:
Crossroad, 1992. de Vogiié, Adalbert. The Rule of St. Benedict: A Doctrinal and Spiritual Commentary. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1983.
Kardong, Terrence. Asking Benedict:
A Study Program on the Rule of St. Benedict for Classes and Private Use, Questions and Resource
Manual. Richardton, N. Dak.: Assumption Abbey Press, 1992.
. Together Unto Life Everlasting: An Introduction to the Rule of Benedict. Richardton, N. Dak.: Assumption Abbey Press, 1984.
Parry, David. Households of God: The Rule of St. Benedict with Explanations for Monks and Lay-People Today. Kalamazoo, Mich.:
Cistercian Publications, 1980.
Stead, Julian. St. Benedict: A Rule for Beginners. New Rochelle, N.Y.:
New City Press, 1993.
Tvedten, Benet. A Share in the Kingdom:
A Commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict for Oblates. Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press,
1989.
Vest, Norvene. Preferring Christ:
A Devotional Commentary and Workbook on the Rule of St. Benedict. Trans. Luke Dysinger. Trabuco
Canyon, Calif.: Source Books, 1990.
BOOKS ABOUT THE BENEDICTINE LIFE
Boulding, Maria, ed. A Touch of God: Eight Monastic Journeys. Still River, Mass.: St. Bede's Publications, 1982.
Kardong, Terrence. The Benedictines. Collegeville, Minn., Michael Glazier: The Liturgical Press, 1988.
Morris, Augustine. Oblates: Life with St. Benedict. Elmore Abbey, 1992.
Rees, Daniel, ed. Consider Your Call: A Theology of Monastic Life Today. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1980.
Roberts, Augustine. Centered on Christ: An Introduction to Monastic Profession. 2nd ed. Petersham, Mass.: St. Bede's Publications, 1993.
BOOKS THAT SHOW THE APPLICATION OF THE RULE IN
EVERY DAY LURE
Chittister, Joan. Wisdom Distilled from the Daily: Living the Rule of St. Benedict Today. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990. de Waal, Esther. Living with Contradiction, Further Reflections on the Rule of St. Benedict. London: Fount, Collins, 1988; and San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989.
. Seeking God: The Way of St. Benedict. London: Fount, Collins, 1984; and Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1985.
Taylor, Brian. Spirituality for Everyday Living: An Adaptation of the Rule of St. Benedict. Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1989.
NOTES AND REFERENCES
ABBREVIATIONS
A.B.R.
American Benedictine Review C. S. or C.S.Q.
Cistercian Studies, or Cistercian Studies Quarterly, Bulletin of Monastic Spirituality M. S.
Monastic Studies WES Word and Spirit.
A Monastic Review. St. Bede's Publications, Petersham, Massachusetts.
PREFACE I am still amazed at the way in which I first discovered the Rule. I was living in Canterbury, in a house that had been, in the Middle Ages, the prior's lodging of the great medieval Benedictine community. All around me were the remains of the buildings that had served their monastic life. I came to know and to love the great monastic Church. This encounter with such a powerful place led me to discover something of the life and the vision of the men who had built it. I had thought that I would pick up the Rule in order to increase my historical understanding. Instead it changed my life.
That monastic Church of Canterbury is the mother Church of the Anglican Communion, and I now came to realize just how great the extent to which its Benedictine roots have shaped Anglican life and worship. I found that the prior and monks became the dean and chapter
(which was why, as the wife of the dean, I found myself living a family life in the home of my husband's monastic predecessor). I found (what
I already half knew) that the daily saying of the Offices of morning and evening prayer in the cathedral represented the work of Thomas Cranmer, who, during the Reformation, shortened the seven monastic Offices into Matins and Evensong, so that, like the monks, the Anglicans sing the psalms and hear the Word of God daily. I found that the Anglican via media was nothing more than the Benedictine ideal of moderation and balance.
That simple little phrase ''the reduction of all life to a touch of God"' comes from Paschal Baumstein, ''Revisiting Anselm,'' C.S. QO. 28, 374
(1993) 218.
There has been considerable recent discussion of the lay character of monasticism, notably Todd Ridler, ''The Clericalization of Monasticism,'' Review for Religious (March-April 1990) 227-242. See also Kevin
W. Irwin, ''On Monastic Priesthood,'' A.B.R. 41:3 (September 1990) 225-262 and Eoin de Bhaldraithe, ''Daily Eucharist: The Need for an Early Church Paradigm,'' A.B.R. 41:4 (1990) 378-440.
I have recently come across something that Thomas Merton wrote about his priesthood, which I have found most interesting in this context. Always moving forward in his thinking and facing courageously new questions about himself and his vocation, he was, toward the end of his life, minimizing the importance of his priesthood. In a dialogue in October 1968 at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, when describing the monastic life as a lay movement that began in reaction to the integration of Christianity into the Roman Empire by Constantine, he said that a monk should not be a priest—and in looking back seemed to question his own ordination saying that he did not want to be a priest, but that he went along with it since it was ''part of the system.'' I take this as a sign of that openness of mind that makes him such a prophetic spokesman for the twentieth century, just as I feel that Benedict himself is always leading us into openness. This is to be found in Thomas Merton, Preview of the Asian Journey, ed. Walter H. Capps
(New York: Crossroads, 1989) 49, a point that I owe to an article by Richard E. Getty in C.S.Q. 28 3/4 (1993) 291, n. 35. I feel that this is at variance with what he felt at the time, as the reading of the Sign of Jonas suggests so vividly, but nevertheless I find this a most fascinating comment by the later Merton.
The letter of Thomas Merton to Fr. Ronald Boloff, O.S.B., was written on September 26, 1962, and is to be found in School of Charity, ed.
Patrick Hart (New York: Farrar, Stroux, Giroux, 1990) 147.
Michael Casey, whom I mention here is a Cistercian monk of Tarrawarra Abbey in Australia, has written widely on the monastic life, often in the journal Tjurunga, which appears in Australia. I have been fortunate enough to have been able to see the study notes on the Rule that he and David Tomlins produced for the Benedictine Union of Australia and New Zealand, Benedictine Studies, and references to either of them later on may very well be due to what I have read there and which is not generally available.
I have found that my increasing interest in the Celtic tradition has deepened and enriched my understanding and appreciation of the Rule.
Both take us back to the fullness of the Church in the fifth and sixth
centuries, behind the divisions and divides of the Enlightenment and the Reformation, the split between mind and feelings, word and image, East and West. The English title of my book A World Made Whole: Rediscovering the Celtic Tradition (London: Harper/Collins, 1991) is an expression of this, while in America the publishers have called it Every
Earthly Blessing: Celebrating a Spirituality of Creation (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Servant Publications, 1991).
NOTE ON THE TEXT
The translation on which this commentary is based is RB 1980: The Rule of St. Benedict in English, ed. Timothy Fry, (Collegeville, Minn.:
The Liturgical Press, 1981). As well as the short English translation, there is also a fuller edition, in Latin and English with notes and thematic indexes, which gives a most valuable introduction to the background and origins of its monastic context.
I have not gone deeply into the academic background, nor have I attempted to speak of that favorite topic of academic discussion, the relationship between the Rule of St. Benedict and the Rule of the Master, where the scholarship of Adalbert de Vogué, who first established the priority of RM, holds the field. I make no attempt to cover it in this book since, for those who are interested, there is a vast amount of recent scholarly research. My own interests are much more in seeing the Rule as a guide to life and prayer.
Claude Pfeifer, ''What does it mean to live 'According to the Rule'?"'
M.S. 5 (1968) 19-45.
PROLOGCE My understanding of the prologue owes much to Conferences on the Prologue to the Rule given by Damasus Winzen to the community of Mount Saviour Monastery, Pine City, New York, in the spring of 1960, and transcribed and edited by them for publication in 1975. What I say, for example, in the second paragraph about the levels of understanding of the word ''father,''? comes from him.
The Venite, Psalm 94 (95), is said daily as part of the Anglican order of Matins precisely for this reason, and it is one more expression of that continuity of the Anglican with the Benedictine tradition. The tragedy is that those responsible for the new service book, either not knowing or forgetting this, have shortened the psalm to omit the idea of the heart, which is so essential to it.
The Rembrandt painting so caught the imagination of Henri Nouwen that it directly inspired his book The Return of the Prodigal Son
(New York: Doubleday, 1992).
David Parry's translation and commentary first appeared in 1980 under the title Households of God: The Rule of St. Benedict with Explanations for Monks and Lay-People Today.
To read further on the many images of Christ in the Rule, see L.
Borias, ''Christ and the Monk,'' M.S. 10 (1974) 97-129.
The quotation from Daniel Rees is taken from Consider Your Call:
A Theology of the Monastic Life Today (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1980) 102. This book, written by members of the English Benedictine Congregation and edited by the prior of Downside, is one of the fullest and clearest discussions of monastic life and would be of the greatest help to anyone wishing to deepen their understanding of the subject.
Much of what I say in the paragraph which opens ''Our idea of Christ is therefore a glorious one.
.'' I owe to Damasus Winzen, Conferences on the Prologue to the Rule, 9-10.
The comments on verses 14-20 owe much to Augusta Raabe, ''Discernment of Spirits in the Prologue to the Rule of St. Benedict,'' ABR
23:4 (1972) 397-432.
The point about dashing the babies against the rock that is Christ is discussed in RB 1980, 475. The same verse, with the same interpretation, will come again in 4,50.
The comments on verse 45 and the use of the word schola come from an article by Adalbert de Vogtié, ''The Fatherhood of Christ,'' M.S. 5
(1968) 53.
ONE The two recent translations that I refer to toward the end of this chapter are those by Luke Dysinger in Norvene Vest, Preferring Christ: A Devotional Commentary and Workbook on the Rule of Saint Benedict
(Trabuco Canyon, Calif.: Source Books, 1990) and Catherine Wybourne in Columba Cary-Elwes, Work and Prayer: The Rule of St. Benedict for Lay People (London: Burns and Oates, 1992).
TWO The idea of the fatherhood of Christ (which comes in the third paragraph of this chapter) had been present in the Church since at least the second century. It had been more recently developed as a response to the Arian heresy when it became necessary to emphasize the divinity of Christ. See Adalbert de Vogiié, ''The Fatherhood of Christ.'' M.S. 5
(1968) 45-47. There is also a very useful discussion of this in RB 1980, 356ff. Appendix 2, 322-377, is devoted to a detailed study of the abbot.
A vivid idea of the tensions and strains of the society of Benedict's day is given by Jean Leclercq, ''The Problem of Social Class and Christology,''
W & S, 2 (1981) 33-51.
The story of the monk and the lamp is used by Henry Mayr-Harting, in his useful and illuminating short study The Venerable Bede, The Rule of St. Benedict, and Social Class (Jarrow lecture, 1976).
The parallel with Zen is explored in Diana Law, ''Zen Master and Benedictine Abbot,'' Tjurunga 19 (1980) 5-12.
Terrence Kardong devotes a chapter to the abbot in The Benedictines (Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1990) 116-137.
The phrases Christ-agent and Christ-life I also owe to Terrence Kardong, and are taken from his Asking Benedict, Resource Material,
C.1.a. This is a study program on the Rule for classes and private use, published by Assumption Abbey Press, Richardton, North Dakota, in two sections, one Questions and the other Resource Material.
Rembert Weakland has written on ''Growth through Authority,"
Tjurunga, 14 (1977) 75-92; the sentences that I quote come under the heading ''Growth in the Love of Christ: Purification of Motives,'' but the whole article is profoundly wise, simple, and practical.
The reference to the Merton quotation is No Man Is an Island (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co, 1955) 244.
On the question of divine justice see Terrence Kardong, ''Justice in the Rule of St. Benedict,'' Studia Monastica, 1982, XXIV, 43-73, especially 72.
THREE My opening remarks owe much to an article by Rembert Weakland, "Community in the Monastic Tradition,'' A.B.R. 26:3 (1975) 233-250.
In his article 'Growth through Authority,'' 7jurunga (1977) 14, Weakland quotes on page 85 a recent discussion that he had in Rome with Fr. Arrupe who said that the whole idea of discernment had started with Benedict, and the Jesuits had just picked it up from him. The idea of the monastic dream in relation to the abbot is discussed in Terrence
Kardong, ''The Abbot as Leader,'' A.B.R. 42:1 (March 1991) 53-71, but especially 64ff.
The quotation with which this chapter ends is again taken from Rembert Weakland, ''Growth through Authority,'' 86.
FOUR In trying to understand the pattern of this chapter I have been greatly helped by the article by Michael Casey, ''Stranger to Worldly Ways,"'
Tjurunga, 29 (1985), especially page 45 where he argues for the value of paying attention to the literary structures of a text.
The piece by Joan Greatrex, ''On ministering to 'certayne devoute and religiouse women': Bishop Fox and the Benedictine nuns of Winchester on the eve of the Dissolution,"' is to be found in Studies in Church
History, 27 (1990) 229ff. I owe to David Parry, Households of God, 33, what I have to say about the tools and the tool-box at the end of the third paragraph.
Philip Jebb contributed the chapter ''Wonder Is so Sudden a Gift'' to the collected essays A Touch of God: Eight Monastic Journeys, ed.
Maria Boulding (Still River, Mass.: St. Bede's Publications, 1982). What I quote on fasting can be found on pages 21-22.
The comment on verses 14-19 comes from Michael Casey, ''Stranger to Worldly Ways,'' 44. Verse 20 is from p. 43 of that article.
The quotation from St. Gregory's Dialogues is taken from Adalbert de Vogtié, ''Keep death before your eyes,'' M.S. 16 (1985) 25-38.
For a useful discussion of dashing the Babylonian babies on the rocks see RB 1980, 475.
When I say that I feel that Benedict has a sense of humor, I am thinking that he often shows an almost Zen-like sense of taking down the temperature, as at the end of chapter 7, which I feel can only come from aman who is not over serious or pompous. At the end of all those chapters on the organization of the liturgical code in chapter 18 he in effect says: ''Well, if you can do better yourself go on and do it."' I find his portrait in chapter 66 of the old man who is to serve as porter full of gentle humor.
The twelfth-century poem on tears can be found in G. Murphy, ed., Early Irish Lyrics, Eighth to Twelfth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956) 63. I included it in Every Earthly Blessing, 104.
FIVE.
The reference to Henri Nouwen comes from The Genesee Diary: Report from a Trappist Monastery (New York: Image Books, 1976) 64.
Leonard Vickers contributed the chapter ''On a Human Note'' to A Touch of God. What I quoted is to be found on pages 134-135.
I have been helped to understand these two scriptural references by what Terrence Kardong says in Asking Benedict, Resource Manual, 13.
There is much that is written on the subject of obedience, but I have been particularly grateful for Augustine Roberts, Centered on Christ
(Petersham, Mass.: St. Bede's, 1993) 88-104. Joan Chittister devotes one
chapter of Wisdom Distilled from the Rule to it. In Daniel Rees, ed., Consider Your Call, there is some extremely illuminating material on pages 189-205.
SIX Benedict uses two words that specifically mean silence, silentium (only four times and always with reference to the actual practice of silence, in a section on discipline and administration) and faciturnitas (which has the much deeper meaning of the virtue or the habit of silence). The second, used here, is definitely more positive: a love of keeping silent, having mastered the curbing of one's tongue.
The quotation from Bonhoeffer is from Life Together (London: SCM, 1954) 59-60, and I owe it to David Tomlins, ''The meaning and value of silence in Christian living,'' C.S. XVII:2 (1982) 173.
The point about the quotation from Proverbs was made by Norvene Vest, Preferring Christ:
A Devotional Commentary and Workbook on the Rule of St. Benedict (Trabuco Canyon: Source Books, 1991) 51.
SEVEN The Cistercian abbot to whom I am referring is Fr. Thomas Davis, abbot of the Abbey of New Clairvaux, California.
The quotation ''our rebirth .
.'' is taken from Daniel Rees, ed., Consider Your Call, 166. As also the phrase ''process of deliverance
. .,' 101, where the discussion of the ladder of humility is considered under the sub-heading ''St. Benedict and the call to freedom.''
Joan Chittister, The Rule of Benedict. Insights for the Ages (New York: Crossroad, 1992) 67.
There is an interesting scholarly debate over the understanding of quiet as it is used in the opening verse of the fourth step. Is facita an adjective qualifying conscientia or an adverb tacite? The scholars disagree. There is a useful discussion of this by David Tomlins in his section on patience in Benedictine Studies. McCann argues for the adjective, Wathen and de Vogiié for the adverb. But ''with a quiet mind holding fast to patience'' gives a slightly more inner approach and is certainly consonant with the scriptural reflections that make up this paragraph. It is also in key to the central motivation of love from Romans 8:37.
The quotation in the fifth step about the struggles that we hide is taken from Chittister, The Rule of Benedict, 69.
It was David Parry who drew my attention to the significance of Psalm 72 for appreciating the sixth step.
Jean Vanier: in step seven I am in particular thinking of how much we all owe to Community and Growth (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1979) where he writes with such compassion about the building up of community. Since then there have been many other books reflecting his experience of work with the L'Arche communities.
I owe the phrase that I use to describe the coda to Columba CaryElwes, Work and Prayer: The Rule of St. Benedict for Lay People (London: Burns & Oates, 1992) 57.
LIGHT The contrast is commonly made between the ars spiritualis of chapters 4 to 7 and the rather dry and mundane and technical discussion of chapter 8 as the opening of the liturgical code. This is how Kardong (Together Unto Life Everiasting: An Introduction to the Rule of Benedict
{Richardton, N.Dak.: Assumption Abbey Press, 1984] 69) speaks of it, but I want to challenge that and show what I believe is the continuity of thought here.
I owe the phrase about idealized blueprint to Michael Casey in Benedictine Studies.
The quotation at the end of the second paragraph is from Benedict Tvedten, A Share in the Kingdom (Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical
Press, 1989) 39.
What Merton says about the coming of the day is taken from Day of a Stranger. It is reprinted in Thomas McDonnell, ed., Thomas Merton Reader (New York: Image, 1974) 435.
NINE For a very full and clear discussion of the liturgical code see RB 1980, Appendix 3, 379-414. On the puzzle that the language presents and for a short summary of de Vogtié's theory of the Divine Office see Kardong,
Together Unto Life Everlasting, 70-73. There is a most interesting article by Borias, ''Benedict's Reverence for the Trinity,'' M.S. 17 (1986)
155ff.
A further note on the variant ways in which the psalms might be said: there were a number of different methods of performing psalmody in these early years. Sometimes they might be said or sung by the whole community, sometimes by one single voice while all the others listened, sometimes alternatively from side to side in choir, antiphonal style, sometimes the verses were interspersed by antiphons, etc.
Henri Nouwen, The Genesee Diary: Report from a Trappist Monastery (New York: Doubleday and Co., 1976) 100 (entry under August 2).
'The anguished suffering mind that had created them and had cried out to God in his suffering reflected much of our own condition."' Brian
Keenan, An Evil Cradling (London: Hutchinson, 1992) 187-188.
The Matthew Kelty quotation is from William O. Paulsell, ed., Sermons in a Monastery, Chapter Talks by Matthew Kelty (Kalamazoo:
Cistercian Publications, 1983) 10-11.
ELEVEN The quotation here comes from Terrence Kardong, Together Unto Life Everlasting, 76.
TWELVE The Native American quotation is to be found in T. C. McLuhan, Touch the Earth: A Self-Portrait of Indian Existence (New York:
Promontory Press, 1987) 36.
THIRTEEN The comments on Psalm 66 (67) and Psalm 50 (51) are by Joan Chittister, The Rule of Benedict, 81.
For a useful discussion on the covenant to continual forgiveness see Terrence Kardong, ''Repressed Anger in RB,'' 7jurunga, 20 (1980) 5-17.
The reference to the article by Henri Nouwen is ''Forgiveness: The Name of Love in a Wounded World,'' Weavings, VII (March/April 1992)
FOURTEEN The Celtic reference comes from the Welsh poet Waldo Williams, from the one volume that he published Dail Pren, Aberystwyth, 1957, 67.
SEVENTEEN
Cassian's Conferences, especially Conference ten with Abba Isaac, tell how he and his friend Germanus talked with Abba Isaac about prayer, and, when he felt that they were ready, he revealed to them (in a long discourse) the secret of continuous prayer, which was to repeat at all times
Deus in adjutorium meum intende. This type of prayer has always been more highly developed in the East until in our own day the Benedictine monk John Main has encouraged the use of the mantra in meditation
and his writings, lectures, and tapes, and those of Laurence Freeman, have made this a widely popular form of meditation.
EIGHTEEN What Henri Nouwen has to say about Compline is from the same day (August 2) that I quoted above.
NINETEEN Once again I am indebted to what Michael Casey, in his Benedictine Studies, has given me here.
TWENTY I am aware in writing about this chapter that some scholars see it as a treatise on private prayer, but I am following de Vogtié when he says that, for the ancients, the Office was by no means a mere declamation of texts. Silent prayer occupied a considerable place in it. The Rule of St. Benedict, a Doctrinal and Spiritual Commentary (Kalamazoo:
Cistercian Publications, 1983) 141. See also RB 1980, 412-413.
For the way in which these so-called prayer collects developed significantly in the fifth to seventh centuries, see RB 1980 412-413, though
Benedict makes no direct reference to them and they may not have been as common in monastic circles as they were in the cathedral tradition.
TWENTY-ONE
I owe the point about Jethro to de Vogtié, who points out that the same terms are found there, sapeins and conversationis. de Voguié, The Rule of St. Benedict, 267-270.
For the Adelbert van der Wielen reference see his article, "On Coresponsibility in RB,'' Tjurunga (1976) 11.
The comments on verse 5 come from what Kardong said on this chapter in the Resource Manual, 22-23.
TWENTY-THREE
Appendix 4 in RB 1980, pp. 415-436, deals with the disciplinary measures in the Rule. de Vogiié, The Rule of St. Benedict, 435. In addition, there is an interesting article by Julian Stead, ''The Penal Code of St. Benedict,"'
W & S, 6 (1984) 58-68.
TWENTY-FIVE
For a discussion of Benedict's use of 1 Cor 5:5 see RB 1980, 422-423.
TWENTY-SEVEN
This theme of human weakness is most sympathetically explored by Maria Boulding in Gateway to Hope: An Exploration of Failure (Petersham, Mass.: St. Bede's Publications, 1987) especially on p. 92.
THIRTY-ONE
The Wendell Berry quotation comes from The Gift of Good Land (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1981).
The comment on the verse from Matthew was made by Kardong in Resource Manual, 28. His article ''Benedict's Peaceable Kingdom,'' The Benedictines (Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1983) 28-44, is also extremely useful.
The book that I refer to is by Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer:
Ministry in Contemporary Society (Garden City, New York: Doubleday SiGo;, 1972):
THIRTY-TWO
In all that I say here I must acknowledge a very big debt to Judith Sutera, ''Stewardship and the Kingdom in RB 31-33,'' ABR 41:4 (1990)
348-357, an article that I found most illuminating and stimulating.
THIRTY-THREE
Kardong has some interesting things to say on Benedict's use and abuse of Scripture in 33.6 in Together Unto Life Everlasting, 94-95.
In studying this chapter I used Kardong's ''Poverty in RB 33-34,"'
C. S. XX (1985) 3, 185-254. There he tells us how much of what Benedict has to say on avarice is due to what Cassian teaches in J/nstitutes VII.
THIRTY-FOUR
The vigorous sentence about the consumerist society is taken from Kardong, ''Poverty in RB 33-34,'' 200, as is also what I say about the Pharisees, 197.
The transition section which follows this chapter is also due to Kardong. He suggests that we look on these two chapters as a hinge, or as he puts it, ''a carefully matched pair of diptych leaves.'' He discusses Benedict's dialectical editorial method, and the inclusive thinking that we meet in these two chapters.
THIRTY-FIVE
The comment of David Tomlins comes from Benedictine Studies.
The idea of the two New Testament scenes I owe to de Vogue, Doctrinal & Spiritual Commentary, 1983, 199.
THIRTY-SIX
Kardong, ''Patristic Sources for RB 36,' The Benedictines (Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, 1988) 2.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Much learned discussion continues to take place about the place of the Eucharist in early Benedictine life. Here it seems to me there is a simple statement that Mass and communion occur on Sunday, the start of the week.
FORTY In classical Rome the hemina was about half a pint, but the general concensus seems to be that the Rule's hemina may have been larger than the classical one. RB 1980 has an interesting note on p. 238-239.
FORTY-EIGHT
The point that ora, labora et lege is preferable is made by de Vogué, The Rule of St. Benedict, 242.
Of All Good Gifts is published by Benet Press, Erie, Penn.
FORTY-NINE
See Kardong, Together Unto Life Everlasting, 114-115.
I owe a great deal in my understanding of compunction to what Michael Casey has written on the subject. The sentence that I quote comes from Benedictine Studies.
FIFTY-TWO
The reference to Parry comes in David Parry, Households of God:
The Rule of St. Benedict with Explanations for Monks and Lay-People Today (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1980) 139.
FIFTY-THREE
A note on the kiss of peace. In the context of the Arian controversies of his day, Benedict would not have been able to pray with Arian visitors, and to give a kiss of peace would suggest that all was well when this was not so. Or are we to take this reference to ''delusions of the devil'' further? What might have been thought of as extreme or absurd a few years ago may not necessarily now be dismissed as so improbable
when some people feel that we cannot deny the presence of diabolical and evil forces.
I owe what I say about the recitation of the psalm verse after the washing of feet to Kardong, Together Unto Life Everlasting, 122.
FIFTY-SEVEN
I owe to Michael Casey the phrase about the spiritual life not being closeted underground.
FIFTY-EIGHT
The St. Anselm quotation is taken from Benedicta Ward, The Prayers and Meditations of St. Anselm (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973). The parallel between the triad of tests and the first seven steps of chapter
7 I owe to RB 1980, 448-449.
For what I have to say on meditatio see RB 1980, 446-447.
The Henri Nouwen quotation comes from Henri Nouwen, The Genesee Diary, 76-77.
There is a very good passage on stability in Daniel Rees, Consider Your Call, 141.
I owe the idea of taking the story of Adam and Eve in the garden to illustrate stability to Charles Cummings, Monastic Practices (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1987) 167.
For further exploration of that question that Merton asks about crossing the abyss that separates us from ourselves see my book A Seven Day
Journey with Thomas Merton, especially the chapter on the solitary self, which explores this theme further. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Servant Publications, 1993. Pp. 55-63.
The modern translation of those words of Augustine is by Barry Ulanov, but I have no reference.
Thomas Merton's talk at Bangkok is found in the Asian Journal (New York: New Directions, 1973) 337.
What Augustine Roberts has to say on conversatio is to be found in Centered on Christ: An Introduction to Monastic Profession, 2nd ed.
(Petersham, Mass.: St. Bede's Publications, 1993) 9.
The quote from Abbess Syncletica is from Thomas Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert: Sayings of the Desert Fathers of the Fourth Century
(New York: New Directions, 1970) 55.
The comment on obedience being a mystery at the heart of redemption is by Rees, Consider Your Call, 118.
See RB 1980, 451, for a most useful discussion of the historical background of monastic formation and profession.
SIXTY Most commentators insist that Benedict is quoting out of context in verse 4 (see Parry or RB 1980, n. 273). | am unconvinced. That surely would be out of character. That is why I have tried to develop its interpretation as central to Benedict's thinking.
SIXTY-TWO
There is considerable scholarly debate on the question of the Eucharist in the early Benedictine communities. The interpretation of 60,4 raises the issue of how to translate missa, for, as Kardong points out, missas tenere may be translated as ''conclude the prayers.'' Kardong, to whom
1 owe most of what I have been saying here, makes this point: the power of the bishop/priests is of a sacramental order; that of the abbot is charismatic. The first power comes from the Church; the second comes from the Holy Spirit.
See Kardong, Together Unto Life Everlasting, 130-134, and also the section in Resource Manual, 42-43.
SIXTY-FOUR
A useful summary of some of the alternative views on the choice and installation of the abbot may be found in RB 1980, 370-375.
The full reference to the comment of Gregory the Great reads: ''notable for its discernment and its clarity of language.'' This, says de Vogiié, is the quality that he had recognized particularly in chapter 58, but which he felt characterized the whole Rule. RB 1980, 77.
SIXTY-SEVEN
The journey blessings that I quote are taken from the collection that I edited of the Carmina Gadelica, Celtic Vision, Prayers and Blessings from the Outer Hebrides (London: Darton, Longman and Todd) 188.
In America published by St. Bede's Publications, Petersham, Mass., 1990.
SIXTY-NINE
The translation of the opening sentence is taken from that of Catherine Wybourne, trans., Work & Prayer: The Rule of St. Benedict for Lay
People by Columba Cary-Elwes.
John Howard Griffin tells us about Merton focusing on people in the introduction to his book A Hidden Wholeness: The Visual World
of Thomas Merton (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1979). That book is now unfortunately out of print. It is a theme that I also touched on in my book on Merton, A Seven Day Journey with Thomas Merton (Ann
Arbor, Mich.: Servant Publications, 1993), in which his photographs play an important part. In the chapter called ''The Demands of Love,"'' I give the quotation that I quote more briefly here, taken from No Man Is an Island (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1955) 244-245.
SEVENTY-TWO
The John Eudes Bamberger article is in 7jurunga 6 (1974) 3-13.
I also owe the point about bad zeal to Kardong, ''Benedict's Peaceable Kingdom,'' Benedictines, 1.
SEVENTY-THREE
Two articles have deepened my appreciation of this chapter. Thomas Keating, ''The two streams of coenobetic tradition in the Rule of St. Benedict,'' C.S. XI:4 (1976) 257-268, and Michael Casey, ''Ascetic and ecclesial reflections on RB 73.5,' Tjurunga (1985).
JG: t 1s author Esther de Waal's wish, with A Life-Giving Way: A Commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict, to put the Rule into the hands of every reader. f you would like to receive a free copy of the Rule (absolutely no charge or * obligation with purchase of A LifeGiving Way), simply fill in your name and address and send in this postage-paid card.
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1 UHI fil | if ii HA A LIFE-GIVING} tam A Commentary on the Rule ~~~ Esther de Waal in simple and practical terms, writing on how the Rule of St. Benedict has shaped her life, takes the reader chapter by chapter through the Rule.
She details how profoundly biblical it is and how this text, which has formed the way of life of Benedictines and other monastics since the sixth century, also serves as a guide for lay people of all denominations.
"Esther de Waal reminds us that St. Benedict was, in fact, a lay pevson. So the value of this book is that Esther is a lay person writing for lay people about what is the core of Bendictine spirituality. I believe that she has done something very important for all of us."
Cardinal Basil Hume Esther de Waal has lectured and published widely in monastic and Celtic spirituality. Her Seeking God: The Way of St. Benedict (Collins and The Liturgical
Press, 1984) continues to be a bestseller and has been widely translated. She has also published Living with Contradiction:
Further Reflections on the Rule; A World Made Whole: Rediscovering the Celtic Tradition; and A Seven Day Journey with Thomas Merton.
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