CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 1
The Kinds of Monks // There are clearly four kinds of monks/' Cenobites are the kind St. Benedict favors most. Cenobites live in a family. The word "cenobite" means "common life." All families have a head, and within a family there are certain customs to which all the members conform. St. Benedict calls this "living under a rule and an abbot in a monastery." Everyone else calls it "living at home."
The second kind of monk is the hermit. This is the monk who has gone off to live by himself after having been formed by a community. He can leave the monastic family because he is "self-reliant now." Parents expect their children to reach an age of self-reliance. So does St. Benedict. "Thanks to the help and guidance of many, they are now trained to fight against the devil. They have built up their strength and go from the battle line in the ranks of their brothers to the single combat of the desert." We have all been formed by the family into which we were born or adopted. Parents, brothers, and sisters have all contributed to our development. When the time comes to face life on our own, however, we do not go to the desert. We go to work or to college. Children leave home one by one, and when the last one is out the door, it is the parents who have the desert experience. They are the ones who feel like hermits when the family is raised and gone.
18 The Rule, Chapter 1 Some people live alone because they have never married or because they have been left alone after the death of a spouse or the separation from one. No matter how intimate we are with neighbors and friends, we can never have the same relationship with them that we have had with the people in our own cenobium, our own family. If we become hermits by choice or by circumstance, St. Benedict tells us that we can count on God's assistance to see us through life.
Cenobites and hermits are, in St. Benedict's eyes, good monks. Beware, though, of sarabaites. They are "the most detestable kind of monks, who with no experience to guide them, no rule to try them as gold is tried in a furnace (Prov 27:21), have a character as soft as lead." With that said, can we imagine anything worse? St. Benedict changes his mind, however, when he describes the fourth kind of monks, the gyrovagues.
"In every way they are worse than sarabaites."
St. Benedict regards the sarabaites as anarchists. They live "two or three together, or even alone, without a shepherd, they pen themselves up in their own sheepfolds, not the Lord's." They don't live under an abbot and a rule. For a long time in this country, it has not been out of the ordinary for Benedictine monks to live outside the monastery. Parishes and missions are staffed by two or three monks or even one. A chaplain in a hospital or in the military is physically separated from his community. Benedictine women also find themselves engaged in work that removes them from their communities.
These monks and nuns are not sarabaites. The work they are performing is legitimate, and it is blessed by authority. I have never been stationed outside the monastery, but I daydream sometimes about an assignment elsewhere whenever I'm having a rotten day in the monastery. This is when I think like a sarabaite. Wouldn't it be nice to be far away from the abbot?
Just think of all the permissions I could presume. If I were away from the monastery, I wouldn't have to get out of bed so early
The Rule, Chapter 1 19 in the morning. There was a parish that our monastery staffed for ten years and then withdrew from because of a personnel shortage. I would have liked being sent there because the rectory was in the same block as the movie theater. "Their law is what they like to do, whatever strikes their fancy."
Whenever I think like a sarabaite, I'm considering my own personal pleasure and nothing else. I forget that the monks away from the monastery are not on vacation. Their work is demanding, and most often it does not end at five o'clock in the afternoon like mine does most days. I suppose you are also tempted to break away from the realities of your responsibilities. Wouldn't you like to call the office and tell them you're sick today? Sick of work. Wouldn't you like to pack your bags and get away from the screaming kids and the house that needs cleaning or the lawn that needs cutting? Oh, for the life of a sarabaite!
A sarabaite, in St. Benedict's day, would have been spotted immediately even if he hadn't been wearing a habit. "They clearly lie to God by their tonsure." A monk used to be identified by the crown of hair that was left encircling his shaved head. The monastic tonsure was a dead giveaway. Nowadays we let our hair grow, but we still have to be cautious about going to places where monks normally aren't seen, places where monks might show that they are "still loyal to the world by their actions"— the kind of world they are supposed to have abandoned. We can let our hair down only so far.
The gyrovague, the fourth kind of monk, is in a class about whom St. Benedict says, "it is better to keep silent than to speak." Gyrovagues, like sarabaites, lead a "disgraceful way of life." They spend "their entire lives drifting from region to region, staying as guests for three or four days in different monasteries." St. Benedict believes that a monk should stay in the monastery to which he has made a commitment. The monk who goes monastery hopping is making a nuisance of
20 The Rule, Chapter 1 himself. Fortunately, there are no genuine gyrovagues these days. Monk visitors are usually attending to some business or staying overnight while on a trip. Monasteries of men and women welcome their brothers and sisters from other Benedictine houses.
St. Benedict does not want to dwell on the matter of monks who give bad example. "Let us pass them by, then, and with the help of the Lord, proceed to draw up a plan for the strong kind, the cenobites." St. Benedict is writing a Rule for people who are willing to share a common experience. My profession of vows has bound me to a monastic family. I am a cenobite.
Like most of you, I have a family.
The Benedictine Oblate is associated with a particular community within the Order. This relationship with a particular house is a distinctive Benedictine characteristic. Benedictine monks and nuns profess the vow of stability, which binds them to their respective communities for life. This achieves a sense of solidarity and the very real experience of belonging to a family. A Benedictine monk or nun can visit another monastic house where customs and attitudes are familiar. He or she can even live there for a time but the visitor will know that it is not home. Oblates feel the same way about, their communities. An Oblate is at home in the community to which he or she has made oblation. Be at home in the monastic family that is yours. You, too, are a cenobite. Love your monastic family and be supportive of it in prayer.