Benedict presents the Rule Image via Wikipedia

As we finish the Prologue of St. Benedict’s Rule, the first chapter presents us with the typology of monks. We know immediately that there are good monks and bad monks, and that we want to be among the good monastics. The description of the sarabaites and the gyrovagues are so negative – even disgusting – that we want to do everything we can to avoid being classified with them.

Why include the bad monks?

It certainly seems odd to begin a monastic rule with brief descriptions of the “good” kind of monks and longer, emotionally powerful descriptions of the “bad” kind of monks. No one considers joining a monastery or adopting a monastic rule with the intention of being a “bad” monk! When I read Chapter 1 in light of the Prologue that we just finished, however, it makes more sense.

In the Prologue, Benedict clearly sees the monastic way of life in contrast to spiritual sloth or haphazard attention to God’s commandments. In Chapter 1, he makes it very clear that simply living in the monastery or making monastic promises does not guarantee that a person will grow in holiness. The descriptions of the “bad” monks are evidence of the need for what he is offering: a Rule that also defines responsibility within the community for upholding fervor for its practice.

Sarabaites and Gyrovagues

Were there really many monasteries and monks with completely slipshod practice, or wanderers imposing on hospitality throughout the land? Benedict’s biography, written by St. Pope Gregory the Great, describes at least one monastery of lazy monks. However, I think Benedict wrote this Chapter for his own monks, and for us, not so that we could exclude the “bad” monks from our communities – but so that we can recognize them in ourselves.

Over the length of a monastic life time, a person is likely to become slipshod in her practice or perhaps overly involved in a ministry or work that takes her away from the community life. I have certainly experienced both of these spiritual swamps; it is hard to recognize them and harder still to get out of them. If Benedict intended his Rule to be read regularly in community, this chapter would repeatedly confront each member of the community with the contrasting descriptions: am I living as one of the “strong” monks who build this community, or as a selfish sarabaite or a slapdash gyrovague?

Benedict also guards against the form of spiritual hubris that leads one to believe she would do better without the community – as a hermit. Just when a community is being most effective – when it highlights one’s shortcomings  – the idea that one could be more prayerful and calm and at peace as a hermit is likely to take hold. Acting on that idea can be spiritually destructive if it amplifies the spiritual shortcomings that are already evident. In his Rule, Benedict does not forbid or degrade the solitary monastic life. He simply identifies it for what it is:  a difficult and advanced spiritual practice not for beginners.  It makes sense only after a well lived cenobitic life.

How We Live The Rule of Benedict

What can we take away from Chapter 1? In addition to a warning against falling into spiritual sloth and wandering, Benedict gives us a clear statement that spiritual growth is not self-guided. Left to our own devices, we may well deceive ourselves about our spiritual state.  Yet he moderates the desert tradition of obedience to a single Abba: the monastic should be obedient to a Rule as well as to an Abbot, each tempering the authority of the other. The Rule should guide our actions, the Abbot and our fellow monastics should help us to live it better, and we owe a similar responsibility to them. Benedict is building a fence around our spiritual lives. Inside these guide rails, we choose our own actions and go about our work, both spiritual and temporal. When distraction or laziness or self-will would draw us outside, the Rule, the Abbot and the community guide us back inside.

So we end Chapter 1 with the recognition that we are, each of us, a sarabaite or a gyrovague– at least potentially. In the rest of the Rule, Benedict tells us how to avoid those despicable outcomes.

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Paule receiving her prayer books and apron - Ora et Labora

At Evening Prayer on January 6, our community was blessed with the entrance of a postulant, Paule Barbeau. A native of French Canada, Paule has been studying and working most recently in South Carolina.

Sister Lois places the Postulant Cross around Paule's neck

The Rite of Entrance as a Postulant marks the moment when a woman steps across the threshold into the Chapel – and into the the life of the monastery.

As an Affiliate, she visits and communicates with the Sisters, but it is not until the Postulant stage that she leaves behind her job, home, and previous way of life in to, in the old language that is still so accurate, “try her vocation” at the monastery.

After making her request to enter, the Prioress places a Benedictine cross around her neck, the symbol she will wear during her time as a postulant to show her membership with the community.  She is entrusted to the care of the Postulant Director, Sister Michelle, who tells her that this is a School of the Lord’s Service where we pray – and we work.

As symbols of this Benedictine spirituality, she receives her Prayer books from Sister Lois and an apron from Sister Michelle.  The community then proceeds in statio for Evening Prayer.

If you meet Paule on your next visit to the monastery, please greet her and welcome her into the community.

Someone at Blue Cloud Abbey compiled a Concordance to the Prologue of the Rule of Benedict.  That monk made a strong and profound statement about the Prologue:

“In the Prologue Benedict reveals his monastic theology. His choice of words and metaphors lights up his world of monastic values. The Prologue is, like Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, short but memorable. The Chapters that follow the Prologue are mere postscript.”

The Concordance helps us see the places, at least in the English translation, where Benedict has used the same word or drawn upon the same concept, more than once.  The citation in parentheses refers to the paragraph or verse in the Prologue.  For instance, it is revealing to look at the four times Benedict speaks of the good in the Prologue:

Good

turn away from evil and do good (P,4)
the Lord’s power brings about the good (P,5)
do not become elated over good deeds (P,5)
the good of all concerned, however, (P,8)

Image by Edith OSB via Flickr

The Sisters begin the reading of The Holy Rule at evening prayer tonight.  For many years, The Rule was read continuously – it still is in many communities – but St. Scholastica Monastery reads it aloud for alternate cycles.  Most of the Sisters have heard The Rule dozens of times.  Nonetheless, it is still a potent part of our prayer.  The words may be the same, but everything else changes.

The community is different

As we hear this cycle of The Rule, we will be without Sister Mary Odile and Sister Cabrini – two sisters who made the teachings visible, whose example sometimes made the impossible seem possible.  We listen alongside Linda and Elizabeth, our new postulants – and we hear The Rule differently as we think about them and about all our Sisters in initial formation.  How will they live this Rule into the future? How can we help?

Our relationships are different

One day, a few years ago, I rushed through a brief encounter with a colleague in order to get to Evening Prayer on time. She really wanted to talk about a tough time going on in her life, but I brushed aside the hints that she wanted to talk with a cheery “have a good evening!”  I slid into my seat in time to hear the reading from Chapter 4, The Tools of Good Works.

“Never give a hollow greeting of peace,”  the Sister read.

It hit me like an explosion.  Someone was troubled and I responded with “Have a good evening” – what kind of idiocy was that? One would think I had never heard The Rule before.  And, in fact, I had never heard it the way I did that night.

Our hearts are different

We are on a spiritual journey; even when we seem to stagnate, our hearts are changing.  We may hear something that encourages us in the way we are going, or challenges us to turn aside, or reminds us of something we want to think about.  Something that seemed impossible – who could do that! – may now seem to make more sense.  A section of The Rule that seemed harsh or forbidding may sound like firm guidance.

Read The Rule of Benedict as a word for you as an Oblate this day

You may be reading in a book.

You may be reading The Rule online by clicking on the “Today’s Reading” link

You may have an email subscription to the group Holy Rule that sends the reading and a reflection to you every day.

However you are reading The Rule, remember that you are reading it in community – the community of Oblates and the community of the Sisters of St. Scholastica Monastery.  It has a word for you, a word that fits the needs of this day – and a word that forms you in the midst of the community.

Write and share your thoughts

We grow in The Rule when we ponder it deeply.  For some people, that may involve writing in a journal or a poem, drawing.  For many, understanding of The Rule grows in sharing their thoughts with others.  Use the Comments feature of this post to share your thoughts and to respond to those of others.

Related articles

• +Sister Mary Odile Cahoon, R.I.P. (oblosb.wordpress.com)
• +Sister Cabrini Beauvais, requiescant in pace (oblosb.wordpress.com)
• Preparing to read The Rule (oblosb.wordpress.com)

This one who loves us is not only Benedict – although certainly he did want the monks to know of his love – we will see how often he commands them to love each other and the abbot to care for them tenderly. No, his constant quotation of Scripture let’s us know that this one who loves us is God, and we are hearing God’s instruction in this Rule.

More specifically, it is Christ who loves us, and to whom we are to listen. Benedict quotes the Psalms more than any book of the Bible. The church in his day read the Psalms as prophecy of the Messiah and as the voice of the Son. In The Rule we encounter instruction from Christ, through the Abbot Benedict who, as he said in his Rule, holds the place of Christ in the monastery.

As you prepare to read the text – for the first or tenth or fiftieth time – take on this stance of active attention, ready to hear Christ speak to you in a special way through this Rule.

Madonna, Sacro Speco, Subiaco, Italy (Photo by Edith OSB)

It has taken me a long time to get beyond my secular scientific mindset and its prejudices so that I can begin to understand and appreciate medieval religious art in which the Madonna is depicted with saints who lived hundreds of years later or much before.   Not until I think of kairos time and the Communion of Saints do I begin to understand.

Our guide at Sacro Speco told us that this fresco depicted St. Benedict with the Madonna, but I think he was wrong. (He was a young college student who had not been there long).  The large tau-T-cross on the cloak and the t-shaped staff are symbols of the Franciscans.  The saint on the left seems to be John the Baptist with animal skins tied around his waist.

The image invites us into Christmas in a different way.  John, the grown man, and this centuries-later saint simply stand and behold the wonder: a Virgin bore a child, and God came to dwell among us.  The fresco invites us to stand with them, to ponder and reverence the immensity of this mystery: God entering into the midst of the world as a small child.

The Church celebrates Christmas for 8 days, an octave.  There is wisdom in this.  On the festival day itself, families gather, people are busy, and there is much hubbub.  But as the Octave unfolds, take time to step away, like these saints, to gaze on the Virgin and her Child.  Accept the invitation to be with them in the stable, in flight to Egypt, in their home in Nazareth.  The fresco gathers us into the Mystery, across all time and space, of Emmanuel, God-With-Us.

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Cover via Amazon

As more people hear of lectio divina, thanks in part to Pope Benedict’s frequent mention it, the number of books written solely about lectio or which include a chapter about it are growing.  This list is not exhaustive, but it’s a good start.

• Sacred Reading: the Ancient Art of Lectio Divina by Michael Casey. Triumph books.
• Lectio Matters: Before the Burning Bush ( through the revelatory text of Scripture, nature and experience) by Mary Margaret Funk, OSB. Contiuum books.
• Like the Deer That Yearns by Salvatore Panimolle. St. Paul Publications.
• Lectio Divina: Renewing the Ancient Practice of Praying the Scriptures by M. Basil Pennington. The Crossroad Publishing Company.
• Foundations Last Forever: Lectio Divina – A Mode of Scripture Prayer by Jill Aigner, OSB.Priory Productions, 840 S. Main, Mt. Angel, Oregon Space 97362.
• Flowers in the Desert: a Spirituality of the Bible by Demetrius Dumm, OSB. St. Vincent Archabbey publications, 300 Fraser Purchase Rd., Latrobe, PA 15650.
• Celebration of Discipline: the Path to Spiritual Growth by Richard J Foster.  Harper San Francisco books.

Related articles

• Praying with Scripture (smallgroupseeds.wordpress.com)
• The Transforming Power of Lectio Divina: A Deeper Look at the Four Movements – Christine Valters Paintner (godspace.wordpress.com)

• Our topics this autumn have revolved around the basics of Benedictine spirituality and life.  Lectio divina is one of the most central and defining elements of that spirituality – and we can consider it in light of our discussion of communal prayer, the Benedictine greats, and especially the Monastic Instinct we talked about in September.
• On January 1, we begin reading The Rule straight through.  If we read it like a cookbook, we will miss its spiritual depth. If we read it as we would a modern book about spirituality, it will seem to us like a cookbook.  Only through the method of lectio divina do we find the depths of spirituality in the midst of this very practical rule.

Lectio Divina

The reading I am sending out by mail is about six pages long.  It is a single article, Accepting the Embrace of God:  The Ancient Art of Lectio Divina, written by Fr. Luke Dysinger of St. Andrew’s Abbey in Valyermo, California.  It is one of the best introductions I have ever seen:  clearly grounded in history, in theology, in Scripture, and in Benedictine practice – but written so that a lay person can understand.  I think he wrote it for the Oblates of his Abbey – and it’s had a life of its own since then.

Lectio and life

While lectio is a practice of reading usually done with Scripture or other sacred texts, Fr. Dysinger and others speak of other types of lectio – of mulling something slowly, waiting for God to speak to you.  At the end of the article, Fr. Dysinger speaks of a lectio on life – following the same steps and spirituality, but looking for God in the actions of your everyday life.  This is an especially good practice for Oblates: a way of living monastic spirituality in the midst of every day busyness.

If you’d like to get started reading before your copy comes in the mail, you can click on the link and read it online.

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Sister Cabrini at her 60th Jubilee, with Sister Gotharda

Sister Cabrini Beauvais went home to God today just as the community was beginning to celebrate teh Eucharist. She was just a few weeks shy of her 93rd birthday.

Sister Cabrini is well known to many, having taught in many schools, served as subprioress when Mother Martina was Prioress, and having ministered many years in Ely. She is special to many of the Sisters, including me, for whom she served as Postulant mistress. The first few months of life in the monastery can be very hard – so much to learn that it’s just one mistake after another. Sister Cabrini’s calm presence and joyful spirit helped more than one of us over those hurdles. She will be sorely missed.

Funeral arrangements are not yet available; I will post them as soon as I have the information.

Eternal rest, grant unto her, O Lord
and let perpetual light shine upon her.

May she rest in peace,
Amen.

May her soul and the souls of all the faithful departed,
through the mercy of God, rest in peace.
Amen.

Sister Edith
4 December 2011

I recently heard a new phrase – Occupy Advent.  I instantly knew what it meant.  It is not just a cute knock-off of the movements that are highlighting the worsening condition of many Americans – unemployed or underemployed, losing their homes, savings depleted.  Rather, it points to what is missing in many lives – times of prayer, a simple life style, generous giving to those in greater need – and to our hope in a God whose love is so great that it can save fallen humanity.

As I’ve written  on my personal blog, Advent is there, waiting to be occupied. Whether you resonate with the “occupy” language or the traditional statement to “watch and pray” – may this Advent be filled with an abundance of the simple blessings and joys.

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