*culture is not optional

St. Gregory's Abbey and Benedictine monasticism

Benedictine Living

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Although St. Benedict wrote his Rule for a monastic community which
would not be living the same kind of life as other Christians, the fact
that he was applying fundamental Christian values to his community
means that many of his teachings will have applications for all
Christians. In the historical survey, emphasis was placed on Benedict's
middle path between harsh asceticism and self-indulgence. There are
also many other ways in which Benedict shows his sense of balance. For
example, he stresses the need for his monks to be deeply involved in
the interpersonal relationships of community, but also to reserve
generous amounts of time for solitude in order to relate to God as
responsible individuals. He also demonstrates an uncanny balance
between a realistic appraisal of human behavior and an idealistic hope
for what people can become with the grace of God. Most significantly,
the basic rhythm of the monastic life of worship, study, and work, as
outlined in the Rule, is a particularly strong instance of St.
Benedict's sense of balance. St. Benedict also has challenging
teachings to offer us on such difficult matters as humility and
obedience. Each of these teachings can help us question the attitudes
and practices of our time.

The Rhythm of work, study, and prayer

Benedict makes it clear that living the Christian life means giving
worship pride of place when he says: "Let nothing be preferred to the
Work of God." When Benedict outlines the daily timetable, it is the
times of worship which provide the structure of the day. Everything
else is scheduled around the acts of corporate prayer. Moreover, the
sacred time, given over to God alone, is woven into the threads of
everything else a monk does to sanctify the whole day, so that each day
becomes a single tightly woven garment. Here we have a reversal of the
way time is usually structured—in fact, has to be structured—in
non-monastic settings. Most of the time, no matter how much we may
prefer prayer to everything else, our work controls our day, and prayer
is worked around our commitments. The monastic schedule reminds all
Christians of the true priorities, even when their daily timetables
simply cannot (and ought not) embody them.

The sense of balance in relation to worship, however, can only be
seen by noting the importance of work in the monastic life. To live a
life of worship alone is not Benedict's ideal at all. Rather, the ideal
is to worship and to work in such a way that the two form a unified
life devoted to God and one's neighbor. Work is not a distraction from
prayer. On the contrary, prayer must be grounded in concrete acts of
work which keep us in touch with the reality of the material world. We
need this grounding in material reality in order to keep in touch with
the reality of God who created the world. Moreover, putting work in the
context of a life of worship changes one's perspective on work. One
works for the sake of doing the job itself rather than primarily for
ulterior motives such as making money, necessary as that is for living
in the world, or making a name for oneself. Taking care in one's work,
in the way one handles tools can have a salutary effect on one's
interiority which opens the way to deeper prayer. Benedict demonstrates
his vision of prayer grounded in work most succinctly when he says that
the cellarer, the monk responsible for distributing the goods of the
monastery, "will regard all utensils and goods of the monastery as
sacred vessels of the altar."

Worship and work do not provide sufficient balance, however. Study
is also important. However, here the perspective on study is quite
different from what we normally experience in school. Benedict
envisions study as a means of growing close to God, not merely as
something one does just to get a diploma. This means that reading and
meditating on scripture and studying the classic texts on Christian
spirituality are fundamental to monastic study. More will be said about
prayerful reading of scripture in the section on Benedictine teaching
on prayer. The important thing to note here is that the more one can
get a feel for the love of God revealed in scripture, the more one can
judge how much of this love has been captured by other writers. Given
this foundation, there is a wide variety of reading from insightful
novels to historical studies to books on nuclear physics, which can
also draw one closer to God.

If we think of study as engaging the mind and work as engaging the
body in the spiritual life, then it is worship which engages the heart.
This is not to say that Benedict means to chop life up into three
compartments. Rather, Benedict would have us make these three
activities a unity forming a single life lived for the Lord. Our acts
of worship become a guide for living the rest of our lives, and we work
and study in such a way as to prepare ourselves for our acts of
worship.

Benedict's Realism

One of the constant dangers in monasticism is falling into the trap
of becoming over-achievers. Benedict was sufficiently aware of this
problem to temper his idealism with a realistic view of human nature.
In a time when so much idealism has broken down under the weight of the
harsh realities of today, we can take heart from the sober realism of
Benedict which never loses sight of high ideals. Benedict knew that
neither personal nor communal problems could be solved with the wave of
a magic wand. When we become frustrated from trying "instant solutions"
that don't work, we can take encouragement from Benedict's conviction
that we can become better people in the long run if only we be patient
with ourselves and with others.

There are many statements in his Rule where Benedict makes it clear
that he does not expect his monks to become automatically perfect when
they are given the monastic habit. On the contrary, he often gives the
impression that he expects things to go wrong. For example, when it is
time to get up in the morning for prayers, the monks are asked to
encourage one another "on account of the excuses of the sleepy."
Benedict goes on the say that a monk is late for the morning office if
he comes in after the recitation of Psalm 94, "for which reason it
should be recited as slowly as possible." Even so, St. Benedict
prescribes penalties for tardiness at the Divine Office which makes it
clear that he does not mean to be complacent about human failings.
Again, we have a combination of accepting human limitations while
goading his monks on to doing better.

That St. Benedict expects one's growth as a Christian to take time is the point of the third vow a Benedictine takes: conversatio morum.
This Latin phrase is difficult to translate, but the basic thrust of it
is that the monk promises to commit himself to the monastic life as an
ongoing process. He is not making an unrealistic promise that he will
become instantly perfect; he is making the realistic promise that he
will struggle to embody the monastic ideal throughout his life.

Just as monastic history has its ups and downs, so the most
conscientious monks experience the same rhythm of fervor and lassitude
in observance. A monastic vocation is not a fantasy life of serene
prayer which overlooks our common humanity. That would hardly be a
strong witness to the faith. Rather, it is a monk's struggle to live
rightly and to become ever more open to God's grace which gives the
monk something to share with others in the church and the world.

Obedience

The second vow a Benedictine takes is obedience to the Abbot and the
community. (The first vow is stability of place: the promise to live
out the monastic life in the monastery of his profession.) The virtue
of obedience is severely questioned today. The evils which have been
perpetrated by totalitarian governments, especially under Hitler and
Stalin, have made it clear that obedience can be used as a cloak for
the surrender of personal responsibility. Nonetheless, obedience is a
fundamental value enjoined by scripture. St. Benedict cites the word of
Jesus, "I have come not to do my own will but the will of Him who sent
me", (Jn. 6:38) to show that obedience is a central part of the
imitation of Christ. The fundamental value of obedience, though, is
that it offers us freedom from the tyranny of our own will. As St. Paul
pointed out so often in his epistles, our own will is free only when it
is yoked to God.

Nevertheless, Benedict teaches that only through obedience to others
can we learn to be obedient to God. However, this obedience is not a
matter of blindly doing what one is told. Rather, it is grounded in a
concern for the needs of others. Benedict's concept of obedience is
inseparable from his teaching on the kind of man an abbot should be.
Far from being a dictator, the abbot should be a good father who tries
to provide for his monks materially and spiritually in the spirit of
Christ. The abbot's obedience to the realities of a community's life is
essential to his claim to obedience from his monks.

Humility

The fundamental virtue for living the Christian life as Benedict
envisions it is humility. This virtue not a popular one today, but it
was so important to Benedict that we must reflect on it. To begin with,
humility is essential for the imitation of Christ. Benedict quotes
Phil. 2:6-11 where St. Paul celebrates the humility of Christ as the
example for all Christians to follow in their lives. Humility is the
disposition which opens the way to the act of repentance, so central to
progress in the Christian life. Humility is, in essence, a turning away
from the many fantasies we entertain concerning ourselves, the world
around us, and God; and a turning towards reality as God sees it.

The first step toward humility is the awareness of God's constant
presence. We must remember that we "are always seen by God in heaven,
that [our] actions everywhere are in God's sight and are reported by
the angels." Through humility, the monk is of the disposition to
receive truth, not only through the Word of God revealed in Scripture,
but also through God's revelations in daily community life. Thus, when
Benedict discusses matters of deportment, such as avoiding boisterous
laughter and keeping the eyes downcast, these are not simply rigid
commands for external behavior. Rather, Benedict is saying that when
one is humble, one does not have to "put on an act" to draw attention
to oneself. The virtue of humility is the virtue of acting naturally.

In an era when we have become sensitive to the destructive result of
growing up with a negative self-image, it may seem that humility can do
more harm than good. After all, we have discovered that it is hard to
function well in life and to relate to God when we don't feel
reasonably good about ourselves. However, if humility is primarily the
way to truth, then humility not only guards us against a swollen ego,
but a shrunken one as well. In humility we may learn that we are not
always as good as we think we are, but we also learn that we are also
not as bad as we think.

Next:  Benedictine Teaching on Prayer