Chapter 49
been sent to instruct and console him. And he heard the angel saying: KDo you act in that way, and you shall be saved.' " This episode demonstrates how ancient is the monastic maxim, "Pray and Work," the Ora et Labora, which Benedictines have taken as their own. Manual labor at times also served to in tensify a hermit's asceticism, as he raveled his completed matting and began the work anew.
The Holy Rule adapted itself completely to the older monastic tradition in its conception and in its provisions concerning manual labor (cf. chaps, xli & xlvii). In no instance were the active labors of a monk allowed to pre judice his monastic and ascetic life, since it had been wholly subordinated to that general end. Although St. Benedict allotted much time to communal prayer and to reading, there still remained, as the liturgical requirements and the natural recurrence of the changing seasons dictated, from three to five hours of the day for manual labor. Like St. Augustine, St. Benedict no longer tolerated any occupation at manual labor during the periods of common pray er. In Egypt manual labor was the common practice; St. Basil still recog nized it; and Cassian recommended it explicitly (Institutes iv, 2). He put his recommendation in the form of a maxim from the desert fathers: "The labor ing monk is annoyed by one devil, but the idle monk is plagued by demons without number" (Institutes x, 23). (May we state here that the progressive monks of our own time have not shrunk from manual labor as often as the conditions of time and place required it of them. The history of both the American Cassinese and Swiss American Congregations can supply ample testimony. The translator)
FORTY-NINTH CHAPTER
The Observance of Lent Although the life of a monk should at all times be a Lenten observance, yet, since this virtue is the possession of only a few, we recommend that during these hallowed days we live our lives in great purity and thus atone for our negligences at other times.
This we shall do worthily if we refrain from all transgressions and apply ourselves to prayer with tears, to reading, to com punction of heart, and to abstinence.
During these days, therefore, let us add to the customary pensum of our bondservice: special prayers, (as well as) abstinence from food and drink, so that each one of us, in the joy of the Holy Spirit, freely offers to God something over and above his regular practice, that is, denies his body a little more of its food, its drink, its sleep; and (mortifies) his love of idle talk,
his (habit of) jesting, and so looks forward with spiritual long ing to holy Easter.
Let each one, nevertheless, lay before his abbot what he pro poses to do, and let it be done with his blessing and consent; for what is done without the spiritual father's permission will be imputed to presumption and vainglory, and will be without merit. Everything, then, is to be done with the consent of the abbot.1
Excursus.
The Pascal2Forty Days.—The purpose behind these forty days of Lent, at least so far as the monks were concerned, was a fuller rejection of the world and a more perfect oblation of oneself to the Lord, a fitting preparation for the great feast of Easter. That was also the aim of their monastic life of morti fication, of their renunciation of the world and its pleasures,. and of their struggles against personal passions and viefes. Many a desert father, however, fell into a quandary deciding what he shbuld offer up extra during these forty days of preparation for Easter. The Abbot Eladius ate as a rule only bread and salt. What should he do during these blessed days, when others restricted themselves to his own customary fare? He felt that he should also during this holy time place a "little extra trouble upon himself." So he resolved to im pose upon himself the practice of eating only while standing." Abbot Paul the Great (also known as Paul the Hermit) "began his Lent with a half pint of len tils, a small flask of water, and the task of weaving something and then ra- ' St. Pachomius left these voluntary practices of asceticism entirely to the discre tion of the individual.—Besides the very strict fast of the Lenten period, the Holy
Rule provides for two other seasons of fasting: for Wednesdays and Fridays from Pentecost to the 14th of September; then from the 14th of September until Lent.
On these days the single meal of the day was not taken until after the office of Nones, whereas during Lent it was postponed until after Vespers. In comparison with the fasting regulations which St. Caesarius of Arles, a contemporary of St.
Benedict, set up in his "Rule for Nuns," the Holy Rule simplified the periods of fast but intensified the fast itself. With St. Caesarius: from Pentecost until the first of September he left the matter of fasting to the discretion of the abbess.
From the first of September until the first of November, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays were days of fast. From the first of November until Christmas, every day except Saturdays, Sundays, and feast days were days of fasting. The seven days before the feast of Epiphany were fast days. From the feast of the Epiphany on (until Lent), Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays were again days of fasting.
In the fasting regulations which St. Benedict laid down in his Rule, it would have been superfluous to treat of the Advent fast, which was the custom, especially in Gaul. This is probably why in that connection, he did not mention either Christ mas or Epiphany. But from his silence concerning Advent and the two great feasts, it would not be admissible to conclude forthwith that he was not acquained with them. See Chapter xiv, comment #1).
2 (For "paschal" we would ordinarily use the term "pre-paschal." The author, however, would probably have us think of Lent and Easter as belonging to one grand divine scheme of penance and redemption. The translator)
veling what he had woven. Up until Easter itself he went into complete seclu sion." The famous abba, Macarius of Alexandria (f c. 408), heard that the monks of Pachomius at Tabennisi ate nothing that had been cooked during the entire Lenten period. He thereupon resolved that he himself, for the next seven years, would eat nothing that had been prepared over a fire; as a matter of fact, he took no food at all except a few dry beans that had been moistened and green herbs when he could find them (Palladius, Vitae Patrum xviii).
St. Benedict was full of admiration for the achievements of the ancient monks. He by no means rejected their ascetic accomplishments for his own religious, but he did place particular stress upon their interior conversion.
Under the term "abstinence," Rufinus of Aquileia (f 410), in his Historia Monachorum, understood the entire life of a monk with all its ascetic austeri ty. During the period of Lent, the monk of St. Benedict strove especially for that "purity of heart" out of which grows "purity of prayer." But "pure pray er" presupposes first of all perfect love. In the course of those forty days, he endeavored to bring to fruition in his life the objectives laid down before him in the fourth and seventh chapters of the Holy Rule. He tried to keep be fore his eyes during that time of preparation, the image of his suffering Lord, a picture that was exceedingly dear and familiar to primitive monachism.
When Pachomius gathered wood in his bare feet, they were often lacerated by the thorns of the desert floor. But "he bore this patiently and with a joyful heart, since it reminded him of the nails that were driven through the hands and feet of the Lord upon the Cross" (Second Life xii). St. Martin of Tours
(f 397) waved away a vision in which the Lord, as it seemed to him, appeared robed in purple and decked out in imperial splendor, because, as he said, "I cannot believe that Christ would come otherwise than in the way and in the form in which he had suffered, that is, showing the wounds of his crucifixion"
(Suplicius Severus, Life of St. Martin xxiv).
The monk's life is a following of the Crucified. After the liturgical forty days of fasting, there follows the joyful solemnity of Easter. After the "dur ance" of monastic life there follows the glory of the eternal Pasch with Christ.
As the monk longs for the coming of the liturgical Easter, so he yearns for the arrival of the everlasting one, when in the bliss of the Holy Spirit he may truly cry, "Abba Father." His ascetic expectations, so often accompanied by the most wearisome labor, will then find realization. In fact, all monastic ascetic ism has meaning only in relation to that hallowed Easter. The Cross of Lent and Good Friday shines most gloriously in the pascal splendor of the final fulfillment.
It is quite possible that the Lenten sermons of the holy Pontiff, St. Leo the Great (f 461), exerted their influence upon the composition of this 49th chapter.