NEWSLETTER 158 - DECEMBER 26, 2016

I suppose that a great many monasteries experience much fluster and flurry on Christmas Eve, as all the decorations are disinterred, assembled before or after being brought to the proper location, and then made to look beautiful. No doubt this causes some measure of bemusement to those neighbors who are jaded or tired by this “late” point of the season, the beginning of which has receded from the day after Thanksgiving to the day after Halloween. More and more I see the sorry point of a “Mad Magazine” cartoon of my youth, showing two gentlemen, clearly from the gaudily decorated houses on each side, standing on the sidewalk before a house lacking any decoration except a candle in the front window. Within the window could be seen a family gathered on the couch, with one parent reading from a Book. One of the two fellows outside, remarking on this lack of Christmas spirit, observed to the other, “I guess they aren’t very religious.” I wonder if there are folk who see monasteries undecorated until December 24 as similarly lacking in piety?

Be that as it may . . . My own Christmas Eve labors this year began about 2:45 A.M., a blessedly peaceful time (no competition for the elevator!) for bringing some dozens of poinsettias up to the church, unwrapping them, and eventually soaking the pots with water. Once this messy preliminary was completed with as little damage to the plants as clumsy senectitude permitted, I left matters in the hands of those who know how actually to decorate. This includes a couple dozen of the Abbey’s servers from our high school, who descend upon the house in the course of the morning to assist with the preparation of the church, community room, refectory, etc. Usually there is a mishap or two along the way – a recalcitrant tree falling over just as the final ornament is hung, that sort of thing – but by that point I am wandering in blissful oblivion, deaf to saws, hammers, unrefined screeches ("It’s falling!!!”), etc. Besides, amidst all the apparent chaos, the schola is in the church practicing, which is more beautiful than all the noise, and whoever is at the switchboard is explaining, for the hundredth time, that Midnight Mass begins at 9:00 P.M., which is more amusing. 

After the evening meal, the monks gather in the community room for the blessing of the Christmas tree there and the singing of carols. Our links to the community's ethnic heritage are acknowledged through the singing of two traditional Czech hymns. When I joined, there were still a number of monks born in the old country, who would wax teary-eyed at this point. The intervening forty years have seen the disappearance of those who grew up speaking Czech, but not (yet?) of the custom. I hope those listening in from eternity do not grow teary-eyed over our pronunciation!

 

NEWSLETTER 157 - DECEMBER 20, 2016

We once had a monk who served as butcher, and he sent to Cow Heaven one of the species who had ceased producing milk. Alas, what had not occurred to him was that there might be a reason for the non-productivity, for instance the twin calves she was carrying, and for whom the butchering process proved no less terminal than for the mother. Knowing the fury with which the monk serving as farm boss would respond to this damage to the monastery herd, Brother discovered in himself a sudden yearning for the work at our priory four hundred miles away in Wisconsin, and to that refuge he made tracks and remained for a year, by which time Father’s wrath had somewhat abated. I have good reason to believe this tale, having witnessed twenty years later this same Father administering an admonitory punch on the shoulder to this same Brother for some cause or another.

For the most part, however, overt physical violence of one monk towards another does not occur in contemporary monastic life. Indeed, a person incapable of controlling violent impulses is not likely to last long in a situation where there are (so it often seems) daily, if not hourly, circumstances that cry out for fierce reprisal. That a hypothetical monk who brings a dozen paper napkins to every meal, coughs over all while using only a couple, and so at the end of the meal returns the “pristine” ones to the napkin container – that this mythical being lives to a great age has to be a testimony either to supernatural charity or to a patient solicitude that whispers, “How long until someone else kills him?”

Seriously, though . . . our contemporary challenge is less murder and mayhem in the monastery than in discreet verbal assassination attempts, mockery or scorn of one another. Bad enough are the uncharitable – sometimes, calculatedly uncharitable – remarks that we might sling at the brethren. Worse are all the ways in which we indulge our peevishness in ways that seem unlikely to come back to bite us, since we share our nasty sentiments with only with a select few, those who will agree with us and add their own malice to the ugly mix. Rather than extend myself to correct my errant confrere charitably, I puff up myself by putting him down behind his back – and draw others into the mire.

Which is not to say that numerous, indeed heroic, acts of charity are not present in the monastery! They are, and sometimes remarkably so. But there is plentiful reason for Chapter 70 of St. Benedict’s Rule to warn us that heaven and earth do not await any of us to take up a flaming sword or handy cudgel to vindicate justice, no matter how outraged. God is in His Heaven and the monastery has a superior, both for a reason, and we are not called upon to take over for the one or the other. A little introspection should discover quite enough in my own life upon which any “thirst for righteousness” in me can plausibly declare war. 

Best wishes to all for a most Merry Christmas! In monastic moderation, of course!

NEWSLETTER 156 - DECEMBER 13, 2016

In the early part of the motion picture, “The Sound of Music,” a debate takes place in the monastery over the oft-distracted Sister Maria, a debate in the form of a song asking, “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?” One of the formation mistresses is severe in criticism, the other gushes in defense. Both are sincere and well-intentioned. But few of the viewers are likely influenced by the scene to sympathize with Sister Prosecutor, and indeed one can imagine some harsh judgments being formed about her. Sister Defense Attorney, on the other hand, comes across as understanding and benevolent. This, despite the fact that the remainder of the film demonstrates that, as regards monastic vocation, Sister Prosecutor is the one correct.

From which dynamic arises the problem that St. Benedict seeks to address in Chapter 69. Most of us prefer to think of ourselves as kind-hearted folk, loath to judge harshly, the ones looking out for the little guy, rescuing the sparrow with the broken wing. The idea of being protector and defender of those who need protection and defense has far greater sentimental attraction than the gruesome alternative of serving as grand inquisitor, as a finder of fault. A bearer of tales is assumed to have a private agenda, probably a despicable one, while one who covers over offenses and thinks only the best about others is far more likely to bear the pleasant burden of being thought Christ-like.

Be all this as it may, few communities are unaware of the complications created by some members acting as the patrons of others. Every attempt at honest discussion encounters obstacles, decision-making loses transparency, whispering and subterfuges increase. These are what Benedict wishes to outlaw, not patience and compassion. And of course we all understand this – when it’s someone else who decides to be a sponsor or guru! In such cases, our august disapproval is registered early and often. Our own protective instincts, however, arising as they do from only the highest of motives, of them we might not even be aware.

Benedict wants none of it, from me or my neighbor, from any motive whatsoever. Much as Chapter 68 advises the one objecting to an “impossible command” to present the case calmly and objectively, ideally as if one were speaking of a third party rather than of oneself, so also, when called upon to speak about another, we are to remember that charity and justice are not opposites, but two sides of the same Christian coin.

NEWSLETTER 155 - DECEMBER 5, 2016

One of the stellar chapters of Benedict’s Rule, according to every commentator I have read or heard, is Chapter 68, on how to handle what are perceived as impossible commands. The monk starts as he ends, with obedience, marked in the first verse by that word “suscipiat,” probably a deliberate allusion to the “suscipe” of the profession ceremony in Chapter 58. As the monk begged at his profession that God would accept and uphold him, so he must accept and uphold the commands of the one who represents Christ in the monastery. Calm and rational petition to the superior is permitted, and Benedict clearly foresees the possibility that sometimes the one in charge will need to retract or modify the original command. But if not, the monk is to obey – here as always, out of love.

So runs the theory! The applications thereof are sometimes imperfect. On an amusing note, one of the more pompous of my confreres, one however who possessed a saving humor on occasion, was once gently lampooned by an abbot who chided, “Father B loves broccoli.” Taking a moment away from the crossword puzzle that he found vastly more worthy of his attention than the lesser minds among whom an incomprehensible Providence had placed him, Father looked up with an air almost of curiosity and purred, “Is that a command, or a misstatement?”

Another time, however, this same man found himself assigned to teach a high school religion class, the inmates of which were even less tolerant of his self-defined infallibility than were the monks. One day, their antics were too much for him, and he simply placed his papers in his bag, walked out of the classroom and then the building, and with the students screaming from the windows, “Come back, Father! We’ll be good,” he marched down the front drive, across the street to the main abbey campus, and never returned, allowing the abbot who had made the assignment to pick up the pieces however he might.

Whether or not we indulge, there are probably few Benedictines never tempted to follow Father B’s dubious example, hardly a manifestation of fidelity to Chapter 68. A part of the reason, one we don’t care to admit, is that we lack the wit of Father on his better days, as when he parried skillfully the superior’s remark about broccoli! With apologies to Wordsworth, I have prayed less often to realize how I appear to others (it seems better not to know) than to be able to express intelligently what I want to say at the appropriate moment, rather than an hour or a day or a week or a month later! (In my experience, it rarely works to tell an abbot, “I could have saved you from another of your characteristic blunders if only I had thought to put things this way, better adapted to your limited and deficient understanding.”)

Sorry about missing last week’s newsletter! I had to move one of my offices to another part of the monastery, and it was astonishing, the amount of clutter I had to sort. How ever did it materialize?

NEWSLETTER 154 - NOVEMBER 22, 2016

While at Benedictine University’s branch campus in Mesa last week, I took part in what was called a “dialectic” on the Benedictine characteristic or hallmark of stability. I’d like to share here some of what I said:

“I know that if I ever go looking for my heart’s desire, I’ll never go further than my own back yard. For if it isn’t there, I never really lost it.” A quote, of course, from the American classic, The Wizard of Oz. A very sentimental scene in the film, as you recall, followed all but instantly by the culminating declaration, “Oh, Aunty Em, there’s no place like home.” Again, sentimental, but a nice summation of a common American feeling during the years when the motion picture was made. After returning from his First World War experiences in France, Captain Harry Truman wrote someone that Lady Liberty – that is, the Statue of Liberty – would have to turn around and look west if she ever wanted to see his face again. The future president was not able to keep that pledge, but many Americans of that time shared his feelings, that nothing that makes life worth living requires globe-trotting. The healthiest roots are sunk down in native, in familiar, soil. 

Times have changed, our society has changed. When I spoke here a year ago, I suggested that stability was the Benedictine vow the most counter-cultural in this time and place, far odder to the average American than either prayer or work, those other key Benedictine values. We have become a more mobile society, in every respect. The Abbey has a fine high school, Benet Academy, right across the street from our university campus in Lisle, but few of those students come to Benedictine. Nothing to do with academics, but these youngsters almost without exception are ready to spread their wings and go to schools far away from home. Physical stability is something they would more associate with rest homes for the aged.

Furthermore, few folk nowadays have only one or two entries on their resumes. Whereas St. Benedict’s society, and certainly the Rule he wrote, looked with suspicion upon career changes, today there are many who would regard a short resume as a weak one.

All of my monkish instincts rebel at that notion, one seeing no particular value in sinking down roots. But American society, I fear, will get along without paying much heed to my monkish instincts. So is there a way to speak about stability such that it does not appear a relic from a medieval and agricultural world that, whatever its merits, is not our own?

I think there is, if we look upon stability not only in physical terms (as important as those were to Benedict) but also as a pledge of perseverance in the task one has undertaken. A pledge, if we might return to the Wizard of Oz exegesis with which I began, not to spend too much of one’s life singing Dorothy’s lovely “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Or, to mention another classic, the hauntingly beautiful “There’s a Place for Us” from West Side Story. Somewhere – that is, somewhere else – we will find better people, more fulfilling work, more understanding bosses, whatever. Take your pick, your pick of all the ways in which our longing for a better life than now has us imagining that a change of scenery would make us feel better, be better. 

Now, there’s nothing wrong with our longing for improvement, indeed there rests at the heart of Christianity, perhaps of all religion, the sense that we were made for something better, that we are incomplete as we are, that we are somehow in exile. But the Christian belief, and so St. Benedict’s belief, is that what we need to fulfill our longing, our cravings, is not Hawaii, or even Chicago, but God. And God can be found where we are. If we spend our life supposing that only somewhere else will we find our heart’s desire, we might never see it right in our own back yard, as Dorothy realizes once she’s spent a motion picture away from it. Even putting the matter in purely secular terms, we might never reach our potential if we devote too much of our energy, give too much of our attention, to playing “what if” games in our mind. To running away from our problems, psychologically even before physically, rather than confronting those problems in the here and now.

So I think we can legitimately explore Benedict’s stability not only as the promise his monks make to be part of a specific community for life, but as an outlook on the human condition that counsels perseverance, attending to the task life has set before us (parallel at least to what Benedict calls the workshop, which can be seen as commitment as well as location), that would have us live in the present moment, not in either the past or the future as viewed through rose-colored glasses. A fellow named Matt Kosec, one of a number of modern business-orientated individuals who have become students of Benedict’s Rule because of fascination with it from an organizational development viewpoint, puts it this way:

While an organization cannot ask for a lifetime vow, [it] can ask for a here-and-now commitment. It is not an unreasonable request of employees to be honest, transparent, and committed to the mission of the organization – today.  

He then goes on to examine why often this request is made in vain. One major reason, he believes, is that the organization’s leaders fail to fulfill their part of what, for this purpose, we might call the vow of stability. If the leadership doesn’t commit, why should the employees? The point is illustrated by means of a discussion of the monastery CEO, the abbot:

The Abbot has absolute authority in managing the monastery. However, [Benedict] is careful to tell the Abbot this power should be used in moderation and cautiously. Most importantly, the Abbot is reminded that he is to provide for all of the needs of the monks, leaving them with no unreasonable want. The logic . . . is that if the monks’ needs are met they will be able to focus on the mission of the organization. Thus, while Benedictine monasticism does require a vow of stability from the monk, the organization also makes a reciprocal and equally important commitment.

The writer goes on to apply this principle to the leaders of other organizations, optimistically putting these managers into the category he calls “servant leaders”:

Like the Abbot of the monastery, the servant leader understands that he or she must strive always to help their constituents become . . . freer, wiser, and more autonomous. The would-be servant leader who finds himself or herself as a manager or CEO of a modern organization may not be able to provide for all the wants and needs of employees. Shrinking budget and shareholder expectations often make this impossible. However, this does not mean the leader cannot make a commitment to the employees always to have them in the forefront of mind. Vows are built on trust, and trust is earned. 
 
Like an abbot in Benedict’s thinking, a servant leader, in this writer’s approach, makes possible the equivalent of a vow of stability, the commitment of honestly, transparency, and dedication to the organization’s mission and to the people with whom one works – the servant leader does this by being honest, transparent, and committed himself or herself.

Commitment, dedication, honesty, transparency – these are words that have resonance still, even if stability does not, and I hope that in them the value of stability can still be seen – and lived.

NEWSLETTER 153 - NOVEMBER 15, 2016

A common theory of the Rule of Benedict’s construction, one that I have no reason to question, is that it originally ended, as does the Rule of the Master, with the chapter on the porter, the one who shuts the gate at the end, with the community safely inside. At some point, in this hypothesis, supplementary chapters were added by Benedict to deal with particular situations. 
    
The first of these almost seems to flow from the chapter on the porter (whether or not this was Benedict’s intent is another matter!). From the monks all being safely inside the monastery precincts, we proceed to consider those who are permitted or requested to saunter forth. No real question what Benedict thinks about their foray: they are both in danger and in themselves a potential danger to their confreres once they return. There may be a good reason for the trip – presumably he would not allow it otherwise – but Benedict probably never has far from mind the old saying from the Desert Fathers that a monk outside his cell (cloister) is like a fish outside water. In trouble!

Is the tradition correct in this regard? A few years ago, I heard a forcible rebuttal by a monk from another monastery who deplored the way in which he felt his community had turned in upon itself in recent decades. In earlier (postconciliar) times, the abbot had treated as almost an expectation the venturing forth of the monks from the monastery every Sunday afternoon. Living in a metropolitan area, there were many cultural opportunities awaiting a monk within an easy commute, and the entire community would be fertilized by the subsequent sharing of experiences on the part of the monks during the following days. This particular monk believed that there had been an impoverishment of community life with the retrieval of patterns that discouraged or even forbade these weekly excursions.

I cannot say I was altogether persuaded by this monk’s strong views, but the sincerity with which he offered them was manifest. Is to stay within one’s monastery as much as possible a virtue or a recipe for personal and communal stagnation? One can answer by saying, it depends upon individual motivations and choices, but I fear that begs the question. Benedict surely would be inclined to say that the only legitimate motivation for choosing to go outside is obedience to the abbot’s command. There are few Black Benedictines, I daresay, who confine their itineraries to what abbatial requests dictate. Do we know better than Benedict (and I do not mean to pose the question with the demand that we answer, of course not), or should our excursions require from us greater scrutiny and reflection?

As God’s good humor would provide, I reach the point at which I reflect upon travel exactly when I prepare to engage in a bit of it! Abbot Austin and I will be visiting our university’s branch campus in Mesa this Wednesday-Friday. And what am I to speak to the community there upon but – stability! As often with the monastic life, one could not make these things up!

NEWSLETTER 152 - NOVEMBER 8, 2016

St. Benedict would likely be displeased at the reaction in monastic refectories (at least in mine) when Chapter 66 of the Rule is read. Often there are chuckles at the directive that a wise or sensible old man be placed in the position of porter, a gentle ribbing of the fellow who actually has the job. For nowadays being porter is a responsible role, to be sure, but generally not one of an executive nature. Receptionists must be efficient and approachable, to be sure, but their task is primarily one of channeling information to those who actually make decisions.

Benedict’s porter was less a receptionist than (I think the term is used in modern organizational contexts) a gatekeeper, deciding whether and on what terms a visitor would gain entrance to the monastery. There was to be but one entrance to the monastic precincts, and the one charged with managing that entrance would determine whether or not to grant access. The peace of the community might ride on his decisions – or, put more positively, long before the abbot or guest-master was involved, the porter would show (or fail to show) the face of Christ to the person at the door. Chapter 58 of the Rule commands that aspirants to the community be kept waiting for some days – could this be interpreted to mean that the porter had also somewhat the role of vocation director, making the judgment as to whether or not the individual be brought inside and given a chance?

At St. Procopius, we have had porters whom one would not necessarily want to exercise the role of vocation director! One was an eccentric fellow whose English was as limited as his patience, and he would greet arrivals with a gruff, “What you want?” Telephoning to announce one’s arrival (or for any other purpose) might result only in hearing, “St. Procopius Abbey. Nobody is home.” <Click> Eventually, a better use of this monk’s talents was discovered, but one of his successors could also have set Olympic records for any sensitivity-deprived awards, calling a monk’s room to announce, with the guest standing right in front of him, “You have a visitor here. . . No, I don’t know the name. Kind of fat.” How is that for a good start to a visit?

Today, thanks be to God, we do have a monk as porter who far better shows the face of Christ to guests. What we also have, during the evening hours, are youngsters from our high school who have almost invariably impressed me with their poise and kindness in handling reception desk duties. It’s a job I would have loved as a high school student – for much of the time, one can do one’s homework while being paid! But on occasion the work involves dealing with very troubled souls, and I think it speaks well for our educational apostolate that rarely have these teenagers failed to handle the situations admirably. 

NEWSLETTER 151 - NOVEMBER 2, 2016

When one of our priors was appointed in the mid-twentieth century, his friends warned him that he would be no more than a high-class secretary for the abbot. After several years in office, he agreed that this prediction had been exactly on target! But in many respects, that was what was needed in the circumstances of those times. Abbot Prokop was competent in languages, but he thought in Czech, and to communicate his meaning, with proper nuance, a native-English speaker with access to the superior and some authority of his own was required. Moreover, though only elected at age seventy-five, this abbot had been running most of the affairs of the community almost since its foundation over fifty years before. His energy, alas, was not matched by his ability to organize paperwork, and so someone to sort and file was almost desperately needed. This prior, call him a secretary or whatever, met the contemporary needs of the community. 
    
Such indeed might have been Abbot Prokop’s conscious intention. On other occasions in our history (here no names shall be divulged!), priors have taken on a role other than what abbots had in mind, but again in accord with the felt needs of the community. One abbot seemed in the eyes of many monks to be distracted from the affairs of the house, another was of a nature with which many found it impossible to deal. In these situations the prior of the day took on therapeutic roles, binding up the wounds or providing some continuity of life when the abbot could or would not. I admit frankly that St. Benedict would be neither amused nor pleased by what I consider to have been surreptitious assistance to the abbots involved – he does not care at all for priors to become independent agents.

But Benedict does, at the end of this Chapter 65 where he casts aspersions throughout on the dubious creatures called priors and accepts the possibility that there might be a value in the office with very little grace indeed – Benedict does finish with an admonition to the abbot not to sin through excessive suspicion or jealousy. The poor prior might be doing the best he can to diagnose and meet the community’s needs, and it can happen that those deficiencies might arise from the abbot’s own failings. Indeed, Benedict could well have remembered at this point that any failings in the monastery are at least presumptively his own responsibility! 

NEWSLETTER 150 - OCTOBER 25, 2016

Often, I have observed, priors in monasteries (I suppose it would usually be the sub-prioresses in houses of women) feel caught in the middle. They think that nobody loves them. Well, one thing is certain: St. Benedict certainly doesn’t!

All right, that puts matters too harshly. But clearly the tone in Chapter 65 is one of wishing that the class of priors was an empty set. Benedict foresees little but trouble in having a single second-in-command and prefers instead to make use of multiple deans as assistants in guiding the community.  Any hint of the prior being looked upon as a sort of “second abbot” only reinforces the saint’s opposition to having such a being anywhere on the premises.

None of this would be odd in the context of the Rule of the Master, whose author to all appearances suffers from a suspicious nature, suspicious at times to the point of paranoia. Benedict’s Rule generally breathes a very different spirit. Why the shift here? The best guess I’ve seen – but it can be no more than a guess – is that Benedict endured a bad, a very bad, experience with a prior, one that soured him not only on the poltroon himself but in regard to the office as well. “Never again,” one can almost hear him grunt.

But then he stifles himself, as the old television series used to advise, and allows for a situation in which a community may, with all sorts of appropriate safeguards, request and receive a prior. Against Benedict’s better judgment, to be sure – but one of the truly great characteristics of our saint is that Benedict does not confuse his own judgment with the will of God, when polity or preference rather than discipleship is at issue. 

I am unaware of any contemporary monasteries that do altogether without a Number Two, whatever the title might be. Leaving aside the need to have someone in charge when the superior is away or indisposed, monasteries have too many trains that need to run on time, too many schedules that need to be constructed and distributed, to do without a coordinator who has at least some clout within the community. And, while the following is more an impression than anything pretending to be a fact, the greater risk today seems less a budding forth of “second abbots” than of nominal second-in-commands defining their responsibility as narrowly as possible, leaving to the abbot all the unpopular decisions. An intelligent English monk once offered the opinion that Benedictines tend towards anarchy by nature, and an age of radical autonomy (self-definition and all that) makes this leaning all the more pronounced. Not surprising if officials prefer bunkers to offices!

NEWSLETTER 149 - OCTOBER 18, 2016

It is a commonplace, and an apt one, to note that, in Chapter 64 of his Rule, St. Benedict softens the portrayal of the Abbot that in Chapter 2 he inherits from the Rule of the Master. In the later chapter, he follows instead St. Augustine’s model of the superior as the servant of all. The linkage of authority with service ultimately goes back, of course, to Jesus, notably in his triple command to Peter after the Resurrection, “Feed my lambs, feed my sheep.” 

In verse 15, Benedict softens even Augustine. While the great Bishop of Hippo had stated, “Although both things are necessary, it is better to be loved than to be feared,” Benedict retains only the main clause, ranking love above fear. A glance or two almost anywhere in the Rule assures the reader that Benedict intends that the monk respect his abbot and be quite aware of the abbot’s extensive authority to correct negligence and misbehavior. But, when advising the abbot on his duties, he takes no chances that a superior might feel entitled to concentrate on his role (necessary though it is) as a disciplinarian. Love must prevail, even (indeed, especially) in discipline. 

An essential virtue, here as so often in the Rule, is balance – also called prudence, also called discretion, also called common sense. What shall actually accomplish the end intended, how can this or that person, this or that situation, be helped? I believe it is Abbot Delatte’s commentary that quotes the old medieval adage:

Sanctus est? oret pro nobis.
Doctus est?doceat nobis.
Prudens est?regat nos.

Is he holy? Let him pray for us.
Is he learned? Let him teach us.
Is he prudent? Let him rule us.

I am sure that many communities have horror stories of the saintly sister, or the great monk-professor, falling victim to that version of Murphy’s Law that says: everyone is promoted to his or her level of incompetence. He was the nicest guy, or, she knew her own field subject like the back of her hand, are poor epitaphs for failed administrations. Prudence, Benedict teaches, is the best qualification for leadership.

NEWSLETTER 148 - OCTOBER 11, 2016

The first part of St. Benedict’s Chapter 64, dealing with the selection of a new abbot, has confused members of the Benedictine Order for close to fifteen hundred years! Given the rarity of unanimous choice by a community (after all, the poor soul being chosen should provide at least one dissenter), then we are left with the “healthier part” of the community, now matter how few in number, making the decision.

It’s clear enough (at least to me) why Benedict, who shares traditional Roman aversion to democracy in its rawest form, would want those of sounder judgment choosing the community’s leader. One can imagine even in our time, advanced and sophisticated as we surely are, that passion or propaganda of the wrong sort could mislead the less prudent into an unwise election. The problem, however, is: precisely how does one know who possesses sounder judgment? Back when I used to teach the Rule, I could assure novices that at St. Procopius such a question could not arise, since clearly those are of sounder judgment who agree with me. The sad fact that obtuse novices found this more comic than axiomatic says something of the difficulties involved.

After study of Terrence Kardong’s treatment of this passage, I’m inclined to the view that the community’s part in the process of choosing an abbot was in Benedict’s plan more consultative than deliberative. That is, the community was allowed to nominate a candidate to a higher authority, presumably the local bishop. Were one candidate put forward with moral unanimity, no doubt a prudent bishop would ratify the choice. If the community were seriously divided, then the bishop would have the option of going along with those whom he thinks have sounder judgment, even if they be less (possibly far less) than a majority. One indication of the bishop or others having a role in the abbot’s choice is the denunciation in Chapter 65 of the practice of having the same install the prior who installed the abbot – which arguably suggests outside involvement in the latter’s selection.

A remnant of this system (if this was indeed the one intended by Benedict) can be found in the requirement (at least in my congregation) that the presiding offer ratify an election before it takes effect. I am not aware of any elections that have not been ratified, but I do know that there have been occasions when this safeguard became a means by which a community could be brought to face unwelcome realities or resolve questions about an individual. My novice master used to tell us that if we possessed knowledge about a candidate that might seem uncharitable to reveal in a scrutinium, but could affect negatively the individual’s ability to govern, one solution might be to reveal it to the presiding officer, whose right to refuse ratification could quietly be used to bring about a withdrawal of an unsuitable candidacy with minimum hurt.

As is always the case with electoral systems, one could image a worse way!

NEWSLETTER 147 - OCTOBER 4, 2016

The importance that St. Benedict attaches to rank, in the chapters leading up to and including Chapter 63 of his Rule, strikes many nowadays as anachronistic, if not objectionable. To look upon rank as something inherent in a person, as something that is present for no other reason than that (to use Benedict’s own phrasing) he arrived at the monastery at the first hour of the day, rather than at the second, does not sound like a very good way to make the trains run on time or to encourage true growth in a person. Can not seniority be another name for rewarding senility or stodginess?

In truth, however, modern egalitarian sentiment should appreciate the way that Benedict uses rank based upon entrance as a means for breaking down the social distinctions that characterized Roman society. In a world where one’s social class was more or less indelibly stamped upon a person by the circumstances of birth, and then perpetuated by the manner of dress, to tell all coming to the monastery that the only distinction among them would be how long they have served God in the cloister, and that from least to greatest they would wear one style of dress, was no small advance in the way of appreciating the equality of each soul before God.

Which is not to say that, in theory or in practice, Benedict permits no hierarchy beyond that based upon length of membership in the community. There would be one called “lord and abbot.” Benedict reluctantly entertains the possibility of a prior. He provides for deans and for a cellarer who clearly has authority. He allows – with hesitations, yes, but he allows – an abbot to change a monk’s rank for goodness of life or the possession of clerical orders.

This last provision would in time lead to a major modification of rank within male Benedictine houses. Clerical monks would be assigned from their day of profession to a rank above those lacking orders – a twenty-year-old taking temporary vows ranked above a lay-brother who had been in the community sixty years. Given the practice of the time, the system had its own logic, since the young cleric would receive education at the minimum sufficient for ordination and in many cases extending to graduate degrees, while the lay-brother would have had no opportunity for more than limited technical training throughout his sixty years of profession.

All this changed following the Second Vatican Council. Rank came, apart from officials, again to depend upon entrance into the community, and the brothers were in most cases offered the option of solemn vows. Initial formation was largely equalized, more or less the same training given to each individual, irrespective of his academic abilities or interest in priesthood. 

The one remnant of the older system still remaining in most male communities is in the matter of titles. Monks are called “father” and “brother” not as Benedict envisioned, by rank, but by their clerical or non-clerical status. I stand under correction, but I do not believe any house uses Benedict’s system, whereby one calls one’s seniors “father” and one’s juniors “brother.” In practice, most communities now have some mixture of clerically-based titles and, in more informal circumstances, avoiding titles altogether.

While it’s not a matter over which I would go to the wall either way, as I’ve aged I have come to use titles more. In my experience, I have found that many junior monks are reluctant not to accord proper titles. So, if I avoid the title and call Athanasius just by his name, the result will be that he calls me by my title and I don’t call him by his, and thus I have created more of a class distinction by trying to be democratic or whatever than I would if I used titles. Who knows what I’ll be doing by the time I’m drooling, but, as I say, this is a matter on which my thinking has evolved with age – I hope, evolved intelligently! 

NEWSLETTER 146 - SEPTEMBER 27, 2016

Whatever St. Benedict might have intended with Chapter 62, on ordaining priests from within the community, the direction in which he moved male monasticism was momentous. Within a few centuries, the majority of monks were being ordained, and by the High Middle Ages, ordination was a requirement for full membership in a Benedictine monastery, a state of affairs that continued until the late 1960s. 

Today the question of ordination is generally a matter of discernment between a monk and his abbot. In another context, I was asked once to offer advice to one about to be ordained, and I share here the reflections that I inflicted upon the helpless audience of one:

1. You should always see priesthood as a great gift, one that carries with it great responsibilities. Never can anyone merit to share in Christ’s priesthood, but you have been given the chance to try – do so with whatever zeal you can muster. Remember to see this gift as an opportunity to do good, never as a career. 
    
2. Try never to feel sorry for yourself, especially when you do deserve pity, when you have been misunderstood, mistreated, neglected. Keep on doing the right thing, even when the world feels all wrong.

3. Resist the temptation to imagine that ordination will mean the end of problems. The only problem ordination ends is the question whether you’ll be ordained. Every other difficulty and temptation you had before remains stubbornly in place. Don’t be surprised if you suffer a post-ordination letdown. Accept it as a challenge to think through just what you were expecting – and then rethink those expectations!

4. Never look back, except as an educational exercise, always look ahead. You are going to make mistakes. Uttering an ill-considered thought that persuades the congregation that you are a fool, an idiot, or a knave. Alienating three-quarters of those listening to your sermon without knowing it until afterwards. Realizing later what you should have said to a penitent, but failed to.
Learn, don’t brood. Discover how a self-deprecating remark will win forgiveness for unintentional blunders. 

5. The best priest in the world on his very best day is only a channel of grace, not its source. Don’t assume the need to intervene if someone totally misunderstands your homily and takes away a lesson you never intended to teach – and is better for it! God is in charge, sometimes it is better just to watch – and be surprised.

6. Avoid the celebration of daily Mass as rarely as possible. I don’t say that a compulsion to offer Mass should be a threat hanging over you at 11:30 P.M. on a hopeless busy day. But there should be a priority given to this greatest of prayers.

7. Accept the rubrics for what they are. In the words of a friend from another monastery, rubrics “protect you from them, and them from you.” We are speaking to God for the community, in the words given us by the community. Rarely should there be additions, and never subtractions. The Mass is not the priest’s private variety show.

8. Four points on preaching I learned from others:

9. Realize that you won’t touch every person present with every sermon. You cannot meet every need of every person in a congregation. Sometimes, the folk in the pews are just preoccupied, for reasons that make perfect sense in the context of their own journeys. Your latest insight might be wonderful, but not everyone is going to notice, no matter what you do

10. While you have and you deserve no time off from being a priest, you do need time to rest. Find that time, find good ways to compensate for the stress. Otherwise, you’ll stumble into bad ways of compensation. If you do, hit the reset button – fast! Never regard an objectively sinful act as something you have coming to you because of all the good you do most of the time. Life does not work like that – nor should it!

NEWSLETTER 145 - SEPTEMBER 20, 2016

Though in the first chapter of his Rule, St. Benedict waxes quite vehement on the topic of wandering monks – those contemptible gyrovagues – when he writes Chapter 61 he is notably milder, since here he is dealing less with concepts than with real human beings, whose situations are each unique and who need to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. A troublesome guest is not to be endured; an abbot should never poach from a monastery in the vicinity; but there are still occasions when something might be learned from a stranger’s observations, and when a monastery might benefit by persuading the person to remain.

To some degree, Terrence Kardong has noted, the same logic is at the basis of the system of visitations that the monastic world has long since developed. Fresh eyes might well see matters more clearly than those that have endured a situation long enough that even the scandalous fails to surprise or arouse opposition. From another angle, an outsider might be in a better position to point out that the “issues” that so roil the brethren more resemble molehills than mountains. Visitators are not infallible or impeccable, but the judgment of the Church and of the monastic world is that more good than harm is done by the prodding that a visitation provides.

Modern communications and canon law have largely eliminated the possibility of entertaining or accepting a monk from an “unknown” abbey. In my own house’s experience, our proximity to the Chicago airports and our sponsorship of a university next door has given us the opportunity to host visiting monks for longer or shorter stays. Abbot Timothy Kelly of happy memory spent with us a sabbatical year after completing his term of office at St. John’s Abbey. Other recent long-term guests have included Abbot Timothy Wright of Ampleforth and Prior Martin Boler of Mount Saviour. A number of monks from nearby St. Bede Abbey have lived here while pursuing academic degrees, and two are with us right now.

Transfers are rarer. Several monks came to us from St. Vincent Archabbey in the late 1930s and early 1940s because of our adoption of the Benedictine Chinese Mission. Father Odilo Crkva, who died one year ago, was stranded in Rome by the Communist suppression of Emaus Abbey in 1950. For close to a decade thereafter, he continued studies and work in Italy, but he then accepted our invitation to come to St. Procopius, and he at last transferred stability in 1968. We certainly derived great benefit from his fidelity to Benedictine life and faithfulness in carrying out the tasks he was assigned. 

NEWSLETTER 144 - SEPTEMBER 13, 2016

Every four years the abbots of the Benedictine confederation gather at the Order’s college in Rome, Sant’Anselmo, for the Congress of Abbots. Beyond fellowship and an educational component, a major reason for the gathering is to consider the affairs of Sant’Anselmo itself. Lacking a permanent community, this school and residence in Rome is one of the few cooperative works of a decentralized order – which tends not to handle cooperative ventures well! Without wishing to allege any failings at Sant’Anselmo (I am an alumnus, after all!), it is fair to say that providing for the institution’s personnel and finances has been a perennial challenge. 

Those difficulties have been exacerbated by the diminution or disappearance of the lay brother vocation. German-speaking lay brothers long provided an essential corps of workers for Sant’Anselmo. As late as 1978, when I began studies, there were still half-a-dozen on the staff. One by one, they disappeared over the years and were not replaced. It’s possible, of course, to hire others to do the work, but this markedly increases the overhead expense.

The one ultimately charged with the responsibility for drawing monastic faculty and students to Rome, and for balancing the budget, is the prelate known as the Abbot Primate. The office was created in the 1890s, at the wish of Pope Leo XIII, who sponsored the establishment of Sant’Anselmo and desired that the Benedictines have a sort of general in Rome in the way that the more modern orders do. The abbots of that day accepted the Holy Father’s wishes – up to a point! Lest this new official have so much time on his hands that he start meddling in the affairs of individual monasteries, he was put in charge of Sant’Anselmo, quite enough to keep anyone gainfully (or at least fully) occupied.

Over the last twelve decades, the role of the Abbot Primate has evolved in two ways beyond his primary task. He has, to some degree, become the Order’s representative to the Roman Curia as a whole, especially during such processes as the development of the 1983 Code of Canon Law. And, especially since the 1960s when air travel made this possible, he has served as the representative of the Benedictine world to individual houses on major occasions. For example, when my community celebrated its centenary in 1985, the Abbot Primate of that day was present to congratulate us on behalf of the Order.

For the last sixteen years or so, Abbot Primate Notker Wolf has been most conscientious in this ministry of presence, flying about a quarter-million miles a year. Which comes out to about 750 miles a day! He made known to this year’s Congress his wish not to be chosen again, and so a major part of the assembly’s deliberations this past week was over the qualities needed in a successor (absolutely nothing more is desired of the new Primate than total perfection) and then the election. The man chosen was Abbot Gregory Polan of Conception Abbey in Missouri. He’s been to St. Procopius a few times, most recently last spring, and I well understand the abbots’ selection. Please keep him in your prayers, as he undertakes a new stage in his journey to God!

NEWSLETTER 143 - SEPTEMBER 6, 2016

Every Benedictine house with a history of the priest and brother class system that existed before the Second Vatican Council would have tales of the sometimes amicable, sometimes turbulent, relations between the two groups. I share here a few from an article in the American Benedictine Review that I published a dozen years ago on the lay brother vocation at my monastery.  

In the late 1960s, our Abbot Daniel learned in a conversation with Brother Matthew Netreba that “at some time in our history there was a great deal of tension among the brothers who felt that the fathers had all the best of it.” The Council of Seniors in 1919 needed to consider the request of two brothers to begin studies for the priesthood. The quick conclusion: “all those present were of the opinion not to start something like that.”  A house legend has it that several brothers aspiring to clerical status were informed that they would need to study Latin under Father Cosmas, whose set up a regimen such that all involved dropped out after a lesson or two. 

As for Brother Matthew, well in his seventies when the abbot spoke to him, he later came to think “that they were wrong and that doing manual labor is the most satisfying thing he could do, especially since he sees the fathers with so many problems and tensions.” Yet half-a-dozen years later, this monk jovially remarked to me that, if no work were desired, one could not do better than to become a priest. I then had to try to reconcile that sentiment with the aphorism of one of the reverend fathers: “Brother may work from sun to sun, but Father’s work is never done!”

And indeed one or two of the fathers might have suggested that they would have had fewer “problems and tensions” had they not been obliged to deal with the brothers! In some unintentionally amusing pages of recollections written down later in life, Father Alphonse, Abbey procurator all the way from September 1934 until March 1935, complained that when he wanted to improve the feed of the chickens, Brother Pius went behind his back to the abbot, who then told Father not to interfere in an area where Brother undoubtedly knew best. When Father tried to take that advice to heart, in regard to the purchase of new animals for the herd, he was sternly informed by the brother in charge of the cows that it was the procurator’s job to obtain a new bull, while another who looked after the pigs let him know that he also had the responsibility of buying a new boar. In fairness, it should be added that priests who actually knew something about agriculture had far fewer difficulties with the hard-working brothers on the farm. 

No doubt, on the part of the brothers, there was good-natured jesting about the incapacity of the fathers in general to get anything practical done without calling in the brothers. When the rector of the seminary decided to improve the Abbey’s home-made golf course during the 1930s, the students (more or less voluntarily) supplied the manpower necessary for the many hours of work involved. But they needed Brother Andrew’s expertise to transform an old truck into something suitable for hauling material and to assemble a pump for the well dug nearby; Brother Alphonse’s assistance to bring a tractor to haul the truck out of the mud into which the seminarians had driven it; and both tools and instruction from Brother Procopius for constructing the stone clubhouse put up next to the course. Instructions to the contrary notwithstanding, the Abbey porter, Brother Maurus, was often inspired to send visitors over to see the priests and seminarians doing a bit of real work. A young priest would recall his administrative duties being gently interrupted by Brother Stephen, who would appear at the door and say something like, “Get out of here. Come to the garden and help me or help me mow the lawn. A young man like you should be doing some real manual work. It’s too dreary in the office.” 

And yet . . . when I came to the community in the mid-1970s, it was noticeable that, whenever a question was asked about the holy men of the monastery from years past, the same names (e.g., Brother Stephen) were put forward by priests and brothers alike. To some degree, clearly, the clerical and non-clerical sections of the community lived in different worlds, but there was a sense of mission that transcended the differences. Our biologist Father Edmund collaborated closely with Brother Andrew in building an astronomical observatory, and another renowned scientist on the College faculty would in the years after the Second World War learn the wisdom of consulting with another talented mechanic, Brother Anthony, upon the proper way to set up his experiments. Father William, also a physicist, relied heavily on Brother Andrew for organizing the delivery and distribution of the many truck-loads of war surplus material obtained after 1945.

In our present circumstances, without the European division of youth into classical and vocational educational tracks that all but guaranteed that those coming into a monastery would be tracked accordingly, the world I have been describing would be all but impossible to reproduce. I saw only the tail end of it, since the lay brothers of former days were ageing by the time I joined. But it was a distinctive world, and I was happy to have the opportunity, in the article mentioned, to capture a bit of its atmosphere.

NEWSLETTER 142 - AUGUST 30, 2016

Just last week, in the monastic history class that I teach our novices, the question came up, whether St. Benedict himself was a priest. One of the novices had been corrected a day or two earlier when he had said that we really don’t know, corrected by another confrere who asserted that we do know that Benedict was not ordained. I assured that novice that, in my opinion, his answer had been the correct one.

I then went on to instance the confrere’s assertion to the contrary as an example of the way that the preconceptions of an age affect the way historical evidence is assessed. Until a little over fifty years ago, almost all Benedictines would have assumed, or read the evidence as indicating, that Benedict was an ordained priest. The reason being that, in male Benedictine communities of the time, one had to be a priest even to be a full member of the house. Monasticism was looked upon in an explicitly clerical way, and those members not destined for ordination were set apart in an altogether different category, that of “lay brothers” – not clerics, therefore not full members, no matter how important or valued their assistance with the community’s work. In the climate of the times, it was natural to assume, and read the evidence as affirming, that the founder of all this must “of course” have been then what his sons were now – that is, a cleric.

In the course of the 1960s and ever since, the centuries-old pattern of clerical Benedictine monasticism was opened up first to question, then to modification. First on a scholarly level, by those who for both theological and historical reasons questioned whether male monasticism always had been or always should be a clerical institution. Then, in the post-conciliar period, the Holy See removed the clerical requirement for male Benedictines. Since then, clerical status has been deemed less a sine qua non than an option (and one sometimes regarded with suspicion or hostility). The spirit of the times unsurprisingly moved quickly from the demonstration that Benedict need not have been a priest to a proclivity to assert that “of course” he was not.

The prejudice has changed, the evidence has not. Personally I regard the matter as an open one. Were I to look only at the Rule, I’d be inclined to say there is a decent chance that Benedict was not a priest. Were I to look only at the Dialogues, I’d say he probably was ordained. But in neither case is the conclusion inescapable, and taking the evidence together, one is entitled to say we really cannot be sure either way. Or one can answer the question according to one’s preferences – as monks always have and continue to do!

NEWSLETTER 141 - AUGUST 23, 2016

Only in an indirect manner does St. Benedict come to talk about priests in the monastery, as he makes his way over the course of six chapters from the arrival of novices to considerations of rank within the community.

Chapter 58 speaks of the reception to be accorded to newcomers in general, how they are to be trained, how they are to profess vows. The next three chapters deal with “special cases” among new arrivals: first children; then priests; and finally monks from another monastery. The last two of these – priests and stranger-monks – have implications for rank. Discussing all this probably made it seem natural to take up the case, in Chapter 62, of one promoted to the priesthood from within the community – how does this affect the man’s rank? And all this chatter about rank concludes with Benedict taking up that matter directly in Chapter 63.

In the fifty post-conciliar years, most male monasteries have experienced among those entering the community a variety of approaches to the question of monastic ordination. Some regard priesthood very much in the old style of clerical novices, as the natural culmination of monastic training. Others regard it as a good option for those who feel called that way. Others believe there should be strict community discernment of those who feel so called, sometimes with the addition that those chosen should be few, no more than are required to attend to the community’s sacramental needs. And others make little effort to hide their conviction that priests are an alien element in a community, and priesthood a dystopian deformation of the monastic charism.

But, from the staunchly clerical to the fervently anti-clerical, I don’t believe I’ve encountered a new monk who has not chuckled when told of the old saying from the Desert Fathers, that a monk should flee the approach of women and bishops. The implication being, of course, that either category has designs with ominous implications for a monk’s vocation. Not very fair and not very charitable when stated so globally – but the point being made is not hard to grasp, in a twenty-first century monastery no less than in previous millennia. Having priests in a community is bound to have community implications. 

Just one of these to conclude this week’s reflections, an anecdotal implication that now more resembles an historical tidbit. As in many houses, at St. Procopius a usual job for postulants and novices is to assist with sacristy duties – as well as being a necessary and often unpopular chore, it’s a very good way to learn about the liturgy that so fills a monk’s life. Back in the mid-1970s, this duty still meant providing, every evening, the water and wine for about ten private Masses that would take place early the next morning. If one were in the sacristy area about an hour before Lauds, one could watch the constant movement of the old Fathers into our side altar cubicles, joined by the old Brothers who would serve those Masses. The youthful candidate-monk, if he chose to survive, learned quickly which priests desired more, which less, wine; which might show up later in the morning, and whose altar had better not have its water and wine removed; not to mention the one priest stationed outside the house who had to have a maniple supplied when he was home! One need not be an abbot to be aware, very early on, that a monastery indeed possesses “a variety of characters”! 

NEWSLETTER 140 - AUGUST 16, 2016

Some years ago, Anthony Esolen, writing in Touchstone, played around with the proposition, what might the world have been, had Jesus never lived? What if He had never walked the earth, never spoke the words recorded in the Gospel accounts, never founded the Church that ever since has preached the Gospel? 

The key loss, he suggests, considering matters only from a secular point of view, would have been the notion, and all growing out of the notion, of compassion for one’s neighbor, no matter how useless that neighbor to self and to society. Jesus teaches that, before God, all human distinctions of class and status and wealth and learning melt away, and the only difference between the aristocrat, the philosopher, and the lowliest chattel or wage slave is the manner in which each responds to the summons of the Gospel. 

Whatever the failings, and they have been many, of Christians and the societies formed by them, there is little reason to think that, without the Gospel, the world would enjoy today the concern for the rights of each man and woman, no matter how poor and marginalized, the hope for just government, just to all its citizens, and the concern for the oppressed that cares not about the social utility of any person or group. As the writer concludes: wipe out from consciousness the conviction that the meek who shall inherit the earth, that the peacemakers shall see God, that to the poor shall belong the Kingdom of God, that where sin abounds, so does God’s grace – wipe all that out, and just try to convince yourself that the human proclivity to worship power, joined with modern technology, would not have made, would not be making, of our planet a vastly more unpleasant place than it is.

Some historians have suggested that what we probably look upon as the curious practice, if not the abomination, of child-oblation was in part a Christianization of the ancient pagan practice of exposing unwanted children. Rather than abandon children for which you cannot or will not care, monasteries said, give them to us. Allow us to raise them, educate them, and offer them a way of life that we think good and holy. 

There are cases where all turned out well. The Venerable Bede was quite pleased to record that he came to the monastery at age seven. Other times, undoubtedly, the children felt trapped, especially when they were permitted to profess vows long before they fully understood the implications. No doubt there were hardships for communities in trying to act as nurseries, kindergartens, and elementary schools, as well as houses of silence and reflection! The Cistercians, generally so desirous of following the letter of St. Benedict’s Rule, hesitated not at all in dropping child-oblation. Bit by bit, in the subsequent centuries, the Church and the monastic world followed, and today Chapter 59 of the Rule is close to a dead letter.

No doubt, rightly so. Even if in a secular manner, society as a whole has recognized the need to care for unwanted children, and Christian communities have other ways of doing this work than bringing the children to monastery doors! But when we read the Rule and come across Chapter 59, we do well to remember that it grew out of the best motives in the world, out of the love for neighbor Jesus taught, out of the faith-filled conviction that what was done for even the least and most miserable infant, was done for Christ. 

NEWSLETTER 139 - AUGUST 9, 2016

By happy chance, today is the anniversary of my own profession of vows, in the year of grace 1975. No doubt as has been the case with many others over the centuries, my lived experience of the occasion was more in terms of completion (I’m out of novitiate!) than of entering into a new way of life (that had been more my feeling fourteen months earlier, walking through the monastery doors). I have no prominent memory of pondering the vows and their implications – from the admittedly limited perspective of this novice, the vows merely ratified on paper what I had doing anyway during what St. Benedict himself calls the prolonged period of probation that is novitiate.
    
Those novices, past or future, less dullard by nature and inclination than myself and so better attuned to the thought of Benedict sketched out in the Rule’s Chapter 58, would see the day of profession not as a graduation (release?) but as a commitment to live, not as a generic “monk,” but as a cenobite. For the three vows professed by a disciple of St. Benedict can be seen as a pledge to fulfill what Benedict sets down in his very definition of a cenobite:

Carrying along the thought from Archabbot Kurt’s article discussed last week, we might recall that a medieval commentator, Bernard of Monte Cassino, noted that Benedict's vows served to distinguish his cenobites:

As I say, little or none of this was present in my thoughts when I took vows, and probably many other newly-professed would have to admit the same. Fortunately, returning to the Rule over and again, as a Benedictine does just by showing up for the meals at which it is read, allows us the opportunity to make up in our later years the deficiencies of our youth! 

NEWSLETTER 138 - AUGUST 2, 2016

Twenty-two years ago [American Benedictine Review, September 1994, pp. 303-320], Archabbot Kurt Stasiak (who this year was raised to that rank at St. Meinrad Archabbey) published an article entitled, “Four Kinds of Monks: Four Obstacles to Seeking God.”  The piece can be considered a lectio of the first chapter of St. Benedict’s Rule.  Not in the sense of exploring the historical realities behind Benedict’s classification, but rather with a view to seeing how each of these tendencies can be present today in communities and individuals. 

The world lacks today, as far as I know, any who call themselves sarabaites.  But are not the characteristics Benedict found in sarabaites present in and among us when we are unwilling to be taught by others?  Unwilling to acknowledge that we have something to learn?  Unwilling to test our ideas and perceptions through the questioning and challenging of others?  If we insist on defining monastic life on our own terms, if whenever challenged we demand to be “left alone,” if we manifest not the slightest curiosity about spiritual or intellectual growth?  Bad enough for an individual, but worse if we associate only with those with whom we are comfortable, not least because they will never challenge us.

As opposed to sarabaites, monks do occasionally (and usually humorously) refer to themselves or others as gyrovagues!  The human pleasure of travel exists among monks no less than in the world, and no doubt can be indulged too freely.  But spiritually we can be gyrovagues without ever crossing the monastery threshold, simply by being constantly on the go within ourselves, never settling down to do what we ought.  One of our former abbots would jest about this or that individual spending his whole life always on the verge of starting to work!  Endless preparation with no action can exist also in our spiritual journeys.  Excuses never lacking, always a sense of something else that must be done before we get around to conversion.

Benedict obviously and notoriously likes cenobites!  The possibility of friendship and intimacy is one of the rewards of Benedictine life, and there is no reason to regret that state of affairs.  Unless these become the reward, the raison d’etre, of the life.  If friendship and intimacy become benefits to which we suppose we have a right, if we are so devoted to these goods that time alone with God seems an unattractive prospect by comparison, well, then we have gone sadly astray.  

On the other hand, if I make myself into the sort of hermit who uses solitude as a “safe place” rather than as an opportunity to seek God, if I pursue seclusion as an escape from community, if I escape into myself so as to spared the bruises and disillusionments of common life, if I dismiss others because they are weak and deprive them of my fraternal charity and support, then I am distorting badly the search for God.  
 
Plenty of room in this article for many examinations of conscience!

NEWSLETTER 137 - JULY 26, 2016

As students of the Rule are endlessly – and correctly – reminded, St. Benedict was by nature a compassionate man, eager to help his disciples advance towards God. Kindness is the tone we find at the end of the Prologue, as he assures the reader, the beginner: 

In a given case we may have to arrange things a bit strictly to correct vice or preserve charity. When that happens, do not immediately take fright and flee the path of salvation, which can only be narrow at its outset. But as we progress in the monastic life and in faith, our hearts will swell with the unspeakable sweetness of love, enabling us to race along the way of God’s commandments. [47-49] 

Compare that encouragement with the tone of Chapter 58, where Benedict actually deals with recruitment and formation:

One must presume that the strictness and even suspicion Benedict exhibits towards the prospective monk is the fruit of bitter experience, that he had suffered disappointment in individual cases. Whereas in other parts of the Rule Benedict raises the possibility of the already-professed members constituting an unruly flock frustrating the best efforts of the abbot, here in Chapter 58 he makes no allowance for the possibility of disillusionment on the part of the newcomer, of shock over seeing the community in action, with all its failings and even sins unveiled. Why not?

I suspect the logic behind Benedict’s words is:

Overly simplistic? No doubt. Holy Church would no doubt say so, for legal mechanisms exist by which a monk can request a transfer to a more observant house, if the monk thinks he has found one. But just as he does not wish to make entrance into the community too easy, Benedict declines to facilitate anyone justifying departure by blaming the community that the person freely chose to enter. 

NEWSLETTER 136 - JULY 19, 2016

Some remarkable and revealing lines from a Latin manuscript of monks in Spain around the year 1100: “The work of writing makes one lose his sight, it hunches his back, it breaks ribs and bothers the stomach, it pains the kidneys and causes aches throughout the body. Therefore, you, the reader, turn the pages carefully and keep your fingers from the letters, because just as hail destroys the field, the useless reader erases the text and destroys the book.”

Doesn’t do much for the glamour of the scriptorium! But it is a good reminder that a craft, such as copying books, which one might think of as relatively leisurely and pleasant – certainly by comparison with field-work – is still capable of causing aches and pains to monastic body parts. And all, apparently, for an audience that oft fails to show appreciation for the sacrifices the artist makes to produce an object of worth, that cannot be bothered to take precautions that will help to preserve the book or other artifact.

How would St. Benedict read the grumpy scribe’s remarks? Sympathetically as to the practical side (books cost money and are moreover intended for repeated use, so they need to be treated with care), but at least a little critical about the attitude. The decision by Benedict in Chapter 57 to allow talented artisans to practice their craft is somewhat innovative, hence for Benedict an occasion of nervousness. The craftsman ought not to become puffed up or possessive about his achievements – and no more than in any other workshop should the staff of the scriptorium make a big deal about hard work or self-sacrifice. A “useless reader,” like a sick brother, ought to be borne with patiently, not denounced!

The command that monks sell their products for a bit lower than the going price can come across strangely in a modern economy. Where goods are superabundant, as often happens in our society, then underselling can become a technique for destroying the competition. Is Benedict being here a shrewd businessman? No. In an economy of scarcity, such as was the ancient world in general and the war-ravaged Italy of the sixth century in particular, to follow Benedict’s directive of selling at less than the going price has the effect of making the object affordable for more consumers. The monks are preserved from avarice at the same time as the poor are offered a greater opportunity to meet their needs on a limited income.

NEWSLETTER 135 - JULY 12, 2016

When St. Benedict speaks in Chapter 58 of the Rule about accepting new members to the monastery, and about their taking vows after a year of novitiate, it is very clear what all this should mean for the one entering. There takes place a break from the world, a prolonged period of reflection, and a solemn commitment to submit to the discipline that the Rule imposes. In every way he can devise and set forth, Benedict wants to impress upon the individual the total separation from the past and the new path being chosen through monastic profession, a commitment of the rest of one’s life to the goodness Benedict believes can be found in the cloister.

Benedict does not say so much about what new arrivals in the monastery, what profession of vows, ought to mean to the rest of the community. Perhaps he should have. I suspect that in every age monks can come to take their life for granted, can think in terms of its comfortable or irritating routines, the habits good or bad by which one makes one’s way through the horarium. Even if I am reasonably content and reasonably observant (and all the more so if I am not), the adventure of the journey to God can be lost in the humdrum details of daily existence to the point that I need a retreat (if not a crisis) to remind myself that I really am on a journey, what ought to be an intensely exciting one.

Therefore, an occasion such as entrance into novitiate or profession of vows should be the occasion not only of satisfaction that some welcome reinforcements are joining the ranks, but also of joy that the life we have chosen continues to strike others as a good one, worth exploring or adopting.  This, in turn, should help to remind us of the need, the moral imperative, of engaging willingly and fully in the search for God that now some others have decided to make with us.

These past few days have offered us at St. Procopius precisely this opportunity for reinvigoration. On Sunday evening, Br. Benedict (Kenneth) Preston and Br. John (Mark) Karmia entered novitiate, receiving from Abbot Austin their new names. On Monday, Br. Elias (Mark) Dicosola made his first profession of vows. Each of these men is in his forties, so it’s not as if we are being overrun with young folk (which would be a nice problem, to be sure!). But their presence, and the commitments they are exploring and deepening, is no less a statement that the Rule offers something good, and wholesome, and worth consideration, that the way to eternal life charted fifteen hundred years ago by Benedict does not fail to attract, even in the twenty-first century.

NEWSLETTER 134 - JUNE 29, 2016

In our ancient tradition, every Benedictine monastery is autonomous, governed by an abbot elected by the monks themselves. That’s the way things “are supposed to be”! By and large, Holy Church endorses that principle and seeks to protect it. But Benedict himself warns in Chapter 64 about exceptional cases of a rogue abbot, or a rogue community choosing a man unwilling or unable to curb violations of monastic principles. There needs to be some means of intervention in such cases.

Thus the gradual development of monastic congregations, that in various ways can help monasteries keep to their spiritual purpose. The most frequent assistance being that of visitations, when monks from the outside spend a few days with a community, observe its life, talk to its members, and then offer commendations or corrections as seems appropriate.

Nobody much minds commendations! But corrections can be quite another thing. Communities or their abbots might lack the will or even the desire to accept constructive criticism. Consequently there needs to be some sort of oversight from a higher authority. Thence comes the institution of an Abbot President and the General Chapter, which are granted in law the right to intervene. Not arbitrarily. Certainly not often. Ideally never! But the fact that we all hope never to operate a fire extinguisher does not mean we are in no need of the device. The same applies to congregational structures.

Those structures are maintained in my congregation by triennial meetings of the General Chapter, which elect Abbots President for six-year terms and a Council for him, composed of two reigning abbots and two other monks, elected for three-year terms. That body will then meet once or twice a year to consider that state of all the monasteries and if any sort of assistance or intervention is required. 

The 1995 decision of the American Cassinese Congregation to make 75, rather than 65, the retirement age for abbots has had an implication that only played out fully this year. Given the responsibilities that the Abbot President must sometimes assume, it has been increasingly difficult for the role to be filled by a reigning abbot. So the practice had been to elect a retired abbot to that position. However, with abbots continuing to reign until 75, the pool of retired abbots with health good enough to assume a six-year burden is obviously reduced.

Therefore, the congregation has been preparing for what in fact took place last week, the election of a non-abbot to the role of Abbot President. The choice fell upon Father Elias Lorenzo, a monk of St. Mary’s Abbey in Morristown, NJ, who has been serving as Prior of Sant’Anselmo, the Benedictine college in Rome. He was blessed as abbot the same day, the Archabbot of St. Vincent Archabbey presiding. All rather sudden – for him, especially! – but the result of a new situation requiring a new response.

NEWSLETTER 133 - JUNE 7, 2016

I once wrote an article for the American Benedictine Review on the lay brother vocation as formerly lived in my monastery. The primary title given it was “The Builders of the Community,” recognizing the simple fact that, without the practical knowledge of construction and machinery that these men contributed, far less would have been accomplished. Academic degrees are well and good, but these would have had no outlet for education or research had there not been selfless craftsmen to assist first in the construction and then in the operation of a campus.

So it is altogether congenial to read in the Rule’s Chapter 57 that the talent of skilled craftsmen may be employed for the good of the monastery. Whether in the sixth century or the twenty-first, a community can be financially and artistically blessed by those skilled in the work of their hands. Works of beauty, moreover, can lift up the heart to God and so can assist the monks’ verbal or mental efforts to follow and help others follow the way of Christ Jesus. Good art, fine craftsmanship, on their own merits must generally be considered as great benefits.

Compared to earlier monastic rules, St. Benedict is fairly liberal in allowing craftsmen to use their talents. But he almost nervously hedges this permission with cautions, lest the good that the monk-artisan does get in the way of his spiritual growth. An artisan might take a deeply personal, exclusive pride in the work; might make demands to be treated as an artist rather than as a monk; might look upon other calls on his time as unwarranted intrusions. In Benedict’s thinking, no benefit is truly a blessing if it leaves the artisan less of a monk. 

Especially in smaller communities, I would suppose, where the superior has fewer options to shift around personnel, there is a real risk of fiefdoms developing to the detriment of community life. This is not a threat, I hasten to say, restricted to those talented in arts or crafts! The management of a kitchen, the operations of a treasurer’s office, can all become an individual’s turf, with all manner of “no trespassing” signs. We had once a monk known as “the abbot of the refectory.” Nominally, his job was no more than to set tables for meals. But that included placing each monk’s napkin at his place – and the good God help any wayward abbot, not to mention members of lesser species, who dared absent himself from a meal without informing the refectorian! You no show up, you no get napkin – until due satisfaction is made. Now everyone laughs at this memory, but I doubt they all did “in the day”!

June will be a perfect storm for me of events outside the monastery. First giving a retreat in Virginia; then our congregational General Chapter in North Carolina; then a family celebration of a golden wedding anniversary. As well as, I fear, creating havoc in our (that is, my) treasurer’s office, this will mean a several-week hiatus for this newsletter. Best wishes to all for a good start to the summer!

NEWSLETTER 132 - MAY 31, 2016

A curious situation arises from the Rule’s Chapter 56. If the abbot is always to eat with the guests in a separate location, and if (as Chapter 53 tells us) guests are never wanting in the monastery, then it would seem to follow that the abbot shall hardly ever eat with the monks! Could such be St. Benedict’s intent?

At least in this chapter, it would appear so. The value being taught is clear enough: the one who represents Christ in the monastery is the one who is present to those whom we receive as Christ. Moreover, having the abbot serve as the primary filter for whatever (good or ill) guests bring into the monastery would preserve the monks from unhealthy worldly concerns or temptations. The odds of the guests’ needs being neglected by the guest-master or procurator is surely reduced by the abbot having regular contact.

But what about the monks, the members of the community for whom the abbot is supposed to be a spiritual father? Well, it should be remembered that in Benedict’s conception the abbot is by and large much more present throughout the day than in fact abbots have become. In many monasteries, the meals are the only occasions when one is likely to encounter the abbot outside a formal liturgical saying. Not uncommon is it to see monks trying to have a word with the abbot or prior before or after the meal, these being the best times to do so without making a formal appointment. 

In Benedict’s time, the segregation of the abbot in his work space and the monks in theirs would probably have been far less pronounced. The abbot might work with the monks, and even if not the procurator would be overseeing their labor and reporting thereupon to the abbot. In Benedict’s mind, the abbot was, on the whole, more in touch with the day-to-day work of the monks than is usually the case today. To whatever extent this is true, the frequent absence of the superior from the common table would matter less than we might think. 

Still, the disappearance (I wonder if there are any exceptions, houses where the superior habitually eats in a separate location with guests?) of this practice does not seem a reason for any great regret! Indeed, communities where members and guests eat together often find that mutual edification is the result. 

NEWSLETTER 131 - MAY 24, 2016

Living as I do in the State of Illinois, financial corruption is generally far from my mind (it’s safer that way). But one cannot read much history without encountering situations in which political support is purchased with little favors, with the right sort of social invitations, with fixing the odd traffic ticket, or even with discreetly-distributed envelopes of cash. If one makes the right people happy, if one offers to everyone, great or small, the hope that a helpful boost up the ladder might come his or her way, if all this is combined with tacit warning that to make waves might be costly if ever help is needed – these practices can foster peace of a sort, not at all to be confused with justice.

The grosser forms of corruption are generally absent from monasteries. No one passes out cash during elections, quid pro quo deals are rarely spelled out in too disgraceful a fashion. But there are reasons, based on St. Benedict’s keen knowledge of human nature, why the abbot is warned frequently in the Rule not to be a respecter of persons. The abbot is entitled to discriminate – indeed, he is told that he must discriminate, must treat each individual as will best bring that person along to God. But the discrimination must be based upon the Gospel, not the social register, or political considerations.

Similarly, Chapter 55 of the Rule insists that, in order to prevent private ownership, or better to assure that there is no excuse for what Benedict regards as a major vice, the abbot must see to it that all the legitimate needs of the monks are supplied them. If he fails in this, then Benedict seems quite sure that the monks will fend for themselves, will seek either internal or external patrons, and so not only covert private ownership but also corruption will enter the cloister. And the responsibility shall fall squarely on the shoulders of the negligent abbot, who by failing to be a good shepherd has invited wolves to ravage the flock.

I recall that my novice-master’s commentary on Chapter 55 suggested that it would be legitimate, in the world of the 1970s, to understand Benedict’s provision of writing materials to include a typewriter in the cell of a monk who is a student or teacher. Should that provision now extend to the provision of computers, with internet access? I daresay that this is one of the most discussed topics within and among monasteries at the present time. On the one hand, the scholar-monk can be severely-handicapped by not having the best tools readily accessible. On the other hand, bringing the internet into the monastic cell can easily translate into bringing the world inside as well, prominently including some of the more tawdry aspects of our age (e.g., internet pornography).  As long as I’m adventurously “daresaying”, I’ll add the opinion that most superiors today are in a real quandary over this issue. 

NEWSLETTER 130 - MAY 17, 2016

Two further comments on the matter of habits and their suitability in the present age, two comments of a merely historical nature. History always has some degree of pertinence, of course, but I think the two items below would point in diverse directions, as regards a decision on the habit.

I have sometimes heard it suggested that Benedictines in earlier ages dressed like everyone else, and therefore it’s hardly unreasonable that we should do the same, that there’s no logic in our retaining a style of dress from another era. There’s some measure of truth in this, in that all sorts of possibilities as to attire come about when one has synthetic material, elasticity, zippers, etc. However, as to the major point, that monks and sisters used to dress like everyone else, the contention is quite erroneous. No one dressed like everyone else in the ancient and medieval worlds! Far more than is the case today, when a multi-millionaire might spend most of his time in jeans if he feels like it, in other ages one’s dress tended to proclaim to one and all one’s social status and occupation. Had styles been all but indistinguishable between monastic and other occupations, there would have been no reason for St. Benedict to make such a point in 
Chapter 58 about the monk being divested of his worldly garments, which however are to be retained should he return to the world. 
    
On the other hand, as noted by Abbot Delatte’s classic commentary on the Rule, Benedict uses the same words (“We think it suffices”) as regards clothing as he does when he deals with food. Therefore, proposes Delatte, the same principles should govern clothing as govern the monastic diet. Our clothing, like our food, should be simple, cheap, easy to obtain, and reduced to a minimum. Is this the case with the traditional monastic habit, for men or for women? Fewer and fewer communities have internal expertise in tailoring. If the habit must be obtained from a religious clothing firm, the expense can be daunting. Even if the community can afford the money, the statement being made could arguably be a problematic one, the identity being proclaimed more one of wealth than of renunciation.

At St. Procopius, we are blessed with a very fine seamstress who has been very happy to expand her sewing knowledge well beyond that which a mother of seven children normally acquires! Thus we’re able to produce habits at a reasonable cost, and so we can avoid all discussion of the matter. Which suits everyone just fine! 

NEWSLETTER 129 - MAY 10, 2016

A few years ago, I was a skeptical participant in a group of Benedictines, women and men alike, discussing the future of monasticism, specifically, what could be done to draw vocations. At one point, the question was asked, phrased in such a way that it meant to challenge, whether the communities represented were open enough to change in ways that would make them more attractive to those discerning a vocation. While opinions varied as to the answer, the implication was that we certainly ought to be willing to change. 

Hampered by this clinging desire to see my next birthday, I chose to remain silent. But what I wanted to say was: “You really don’t mean that, nor perhaps should you. Let’s take just the single example of dress, the clothing of a community member. In theory, probably none of us here today would say that a particular style of dress is a sine qua non for a Benedictine’s salvation or even authenticity. 

“But consider this. The males here present belong to a community where the traditional habit is still worn. Were a young man to come and announce his intention never to wear what he deems a relic of the Dark Ages, he would have to change his mind, rather quickly, or find another place to live.

“Similarly with the women. Were an aspirant to come and announce her intention of wearing, on all occasions she deems appropriate, a traditional habit, or even a veil, would she be admitted? I think not. 

“In both cases, a point of view – not a matter of faith or morals – would be permitted to override any and all considerations of openness to change. Each community involved would think it was operating totally within its rights to insist upon conformity with the standing practice of the community. Fine. But let us not then pretend to regard openness to change as the supreme desideratum.” 

Nice thing about a newsletter, one can make a point without immediate fear of decapitation or defenestration! Humor apart, it is interesting the way in which dress – specifically, to wear or not to wear a habit – has become, at least for many in the United States, a very “hot button” issue. Between communities, there might be a measure of tolerance, or at least a truce. Within communities, however, how much? 

NEWSLETTER 128 - MAY 3, 2016

Last Tuesday, we were honored to have Dr. Timothy O’Malley of the University of Notre Dame give an address in our church on the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. The next day, he wrote in a blog about his visit to the monastery. Some excerpts:

“Before the talk, I was invited to pray at Mass, as well as eat dinner with the monks in the refectory. At Mass, I watched as the monks entered the Abbey Church, some using walkers to make their way to the choir. The last monk to enter was blind, moving slowly with his walker down the sloped church. The eyes of every monk was watching him not with a sense of impatience but attentive to any needs that he might have during his journey to the choir. Individual monks, unbeknownst to their aged confrere, moved slowly out of the way, making space for their brother in Christ. At dinner, the subtle dance of making space continued. The monks knew where to sit at table. They knew who was to pray, and when he was to lead prayer. They slowly told their guests what to do, never in a demanding way, but with a spirit of love. They waited for their after meal prayer until the very last person finished eating.

“Benedictine hospitality is not some broad pedagogical idea. It’s not a principle that defines what it means to be a Benedictine institution. Rather, it is a series of embodied practices that forms the monk over the course of a lifetime to make space for the guest. They pray the Office together, with no voice standing out above the others. They eat dinner in specific places. They set the table in a specific way. And in these practices that make a monk, they always ensure that there is space for the guest among them. They learn, through an embodied spiritual formation, that not all space is theirs. Not all time is theirs. Everything is gift from God. . . . 

“Hospitality . . . is not something that we can simply state in a mission statement. Instead, Christian hospitality is the lifelong project of making space for the Christ who comes and comes and comes again.”

I was more gratified than I can say to read Dr. O’Malley’s favorable remarks. It’s not always evident to ourselves that we treat guests – or one another – as well as he perceived. Or that we sing in such unison! Even if, however, we were on no more than unusually good behavior that day, the value of his observations on what Benedictine hospitality should be remains intact.

NEWSLETTER 127 - APRIL 26, 2016

Chapter 54 of St. Benedict’s Rule is almost bound to seem petty to readers of twenty-first-century America – perhaps it seemed petty no less to readers of sixth-century Italy! But those late Romans would likely have understood better its intent: not to be cruel to the bereaved mother wishing to knit a pair of socks for her absent son; not to stretch the monk’s faithfulness to the limits by having him watch his mother’s gift reduced from an act of love to a financial transaction (we’ll save the monastery money by giving these donated socks to the one whose socks most need replacing); rather, the intent is segregate the monk from the powerful ties of family that permeated ancient life, and to do this by telling both him and his family, from the start, that the son is now part of a new household, the household of God, whose rules must take precedence over any and every familial tie. The availability of the family as a back-up to the Providence of God that the monastery is intended to represent can end up gutting any serious reliance upon that Providence.

Twenty-first century American monasticism (maybe it happened in sixth-century Italy as well?) often turns a blind eye to minor infractions of the precepts of this chapter. Monks are rarely interrogated by abbot or procurator over the provenance of their socks! One can imagine a hard-pressed procurator being secretly relieved that Brother X or Sister Y has some of his or her personal expenses covered by family generosity. If there be a major capital campaign at hand, community members might even be encouraged to solicit family contributions. If friends of the monastery in general are to be asked for help, why not the members’ families?

All very reasonable, one might say. And perhaps it is, so long as we do not deceive ourselves, so long as we take some necessary precautions, in regard to the strings that might be attached to gifts, and not only those from family members. Obviously, those generous to us have a right to be thanked and appropriately recognized. But the authority of the superior, we must not allow to be undermined, and no less must we watch that the bonds of community not be disrupted by permitting those possessing affluent family or friends to live in a manner impossible for the generality of the community – and perhaps undesirable to boot. 

NEWSLETTER 126 - APRIL 19, 2016

Table service in the Rule of St. Benedict is rotated on a weekly service – table service, that is, for the monastic refectory. Given that this table service very likely includes the preparation of the meals, the monastic cuisine would vary considerably from week to week, depending upon the ability and the industry of those on duty.

Not so in the guest house. To the kitchen there, Benedict assigns two brothers for a year, two brothers “who can fulfill this task well.” That is, the meals of the guests are placed in competent hands! The monastic community is expected in charity to tolerate poorly-prepared food from time to time, but when it comes to guests, Benedict wants us to remember that a hospitable reception requires that meals as well as bedding must be sufficient and attractive, must be in the hands of wise persons who will manage matters wisely.

Few monasteries nowadays have separate kitchens for guests, a circumstance no doubt related to the fact that few assign cooking duties at random among the monks! Most houses engage the services of professionals when it comes to the preparation of meals, and a minimum of competence is expected. Few guests (at least few guests who did not expect that roast beef would be served on Good Friday) depart from the monastery hungry or dissatisfied with what they have been given to eat.

More likely to be a problem in our times is the possible lack of electronic “amenities.” I recall the mild chaos at my house the first time a guest needed internet facilities to call up and print out a boarding pass!  We managed, but it seemed as if we required “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men” to do so. Most folk now seem to handle such arrangements on their mobile devices, but that brings us into the realm of connectivity for said mobile devices. Unless the guest is happily inspired to begin where he or she must end – with the Abbot’s secretary and a select few others – the result of questions can be some very dense looks from very bemused monks who had thought themselves proficient in communications by only being ten or fifteen years out of date!  Someday someone with talent shall write an amusing play about it all. 

NEWSLETTER 125 - APRIL 12, 2016

Last Friday in our Abbey Church there took place the installation of Dr. Michael Brophy as President of Benedictine University. In the homily at the Mass of the Holy Spirit, Abbot Austin recounted the tale of the leper Naaman coming before the prophet of Elisha, hoping to be cured. At first, though, he rebelled at Nathan’s command to wash in the Jordan River. Why was he offended at the request? Abbot Austin explains, and then goes on to apply the lesson to Catholic education in what I think is a very useful way:

“What Elisha suggests is too simple, too plain. It doesn’t meet Naaman’s expectations. But Naaman’s servants reason with him, telling him to do it – all the more because it is so simple. So, he does and he is cured of his leprosy. Naaman at first had not been able to recognize the gift right in front of him. It was too simple, too plain – not according to his idea of things.

“This speaks – I would say – to the mission of Catholic universities. The intellectual life, the life of the mind, is a wonderful thing: to seek what is true, to have discussions and conversations about such things with colleagues and peers – these are the things we are blessed to do on our campuses. In this intellectual life, we seek the truth, we seek wisdom. But what if the Truth and Wisdom itself took on human flesh and stood before us? That is of course what Christians believe: that the Truth we seek became a human being like us: Jesus Christ. 

“Now, the intellectual can be like Naaman. Naaman sought a cure; the intellectual seeks the truth. The cure was put before Naaman so simply, in a plain ordinary fashion. Naaman’s first reaction was to reject it as too simple. The Truth is put before the intellectual so simply, in the plain, ordinary garb of human nature. Like Naaman, the intellectual can reject this as too simple.

“To accept the Truth itself, now become a human being, is to believe in Jesus Christ. It is to have faith. Yet smart people (and this has been true throughout history) struggle with this. Faith can seem too simple, too plain. So, they reject it.

“One of the great thinkers in history was St. Augustine – a very smart person. But for all his smarts, he admits that at first, as a young adult, he was too proud to practice faith. That was for simple people, for rustics. He would rely only on the mind, only on reason. So he tried to do before his conversion. Yet he wrote his great works, the ones that continue to contribute to theology, philosophy, history, law, and other topics, after he accepted faith.

“The mission of a Catholic university is based in faith. It’s based on faith in Jesus Christ and His message as it comes down to us through the Church. Now, I know that such a statement can be qualified and nuanced. And that’s all good. It’s what we do as academics. But still, I submit, it is true that the mission of a Catholic university rests on faith in Jesus as the Truth become human and whose message continues through the Church. Take away the Catholic faith, and you no longer have Catholic education. This faith accepts that the Truth, which we seek, has become a human being.
 
“For many smart people, this is a paradox. The faith is too simple, too rustic; for them, being smart means being sophisticated and complex. Yet Catholic education embraces this paradox – or what seems to be a paradox to many. 

“Faith is in a way simple. This is not to say that it is easy, but in a way it is simple. Because the proposal of faith is simple, humility is required to accept it. Catholic education, if it is true, has the humility to accept faith.

“But there is another very, very important point to make with this. The Catholic tradition does not say that faith is the same as understanding. It does not say that faith is a substitute for understanding. It does say that faith helps us to achieve understanding. It even says that faith seeks understanding.

“Of course, in the Catholic view, there is no opposition between faith and understanding. In 2001, the great moral philosopher, Elizabeth Anscombe, died. She was a profound Catholic thinker, who was born in Ireland and taught in England. It is said that C. S. Lewis never lost a debate except to her. She was brilliant.

“But I remember reading an odd article about her upon her death. The article said that she had the faith of ‘a devout French peasant’! This was not a compliment and the article presented it as an enigma: How could someone so smart and intellectual have such a devout faith? But from a Catholic perspective, there is nothing odd about it. Faith helps, strengthens, and supports the intellectual endeavor.

“I said that faith requires humility and, so, perhaps the following image could be used. Saints have noted that if you want to build a high building, you need to make the foundations deeper. And if a tree is to grow higher, it needs to sink its roots deeper. Having the humility of faith is the foundation; it is sinking deep roots in the ground. Reaching high into the sky, that is the attainment of understanding. 

“This, I would suggest, is at the heart of a Catholic university. Going deep in the humility of faith; reaching high into the sky through understanding. 

“Today we pray for Dr. Brophy as he leads Benedictine University in this mission. And we pray for the whole Benedictine University community, that rooted in the Truth made flesh, it may seek and indeed attain ever greater understanding and wisdom.”

NEWSLETTER 124 - APRIL 5, 2016

Benedictine monasteries are justly renowned for their hospitality, the initial credit usually being given to Chapter 53 of St. Benedict’s Rule. The Rule’s “openness to the other” has occasionally been exaggerated in modern times, the general tone of humble welcome given to visitors being allowed to obscure Benedict’s warning that the kiss of peace must not precede prayer. It’s not at all clear that the visitor would even be received if he or she could not join in orthodox Christian prayer – at the least, the tone of the reception would change.  

Adalbert de Vogue notes another contrast, a bit amusing, that “book-ends” this chapter. Early on, we receive the command that guests are to be welcomed as Christ – at the close, the monk is sternly advised to have nothing to do with them! Has Christ been forgotten? Not really, but the difference in tone manifests the tension that pervades this chapter, between receptivity to those whom God sends to our door, and caution that what comes inside not be allowed to disrupt the monastic life of the community. Even without in the least intending to do so, guests have the potential to create challenges. I’m sure that it is not only in modern times that the refectory has heard a wry chuckle or two when it is read that guests are never lacking in a monastery! 

Vogue’s contention is that the separation element – protecting the life from outside interference – has a logical priority. Separation from the world makes our life what it is and we cannot allow the attitudes and the ways of the world to follow us inside. Indeed, those who visit for the right reason expect us to be different, wish to find something within the monastery walls other than what they would at a Holiday Inn.

All this is true. But, as so often in the Rule, balance is required (oh, why does Benedict require this of us so often?). It is one thing to say that the integrity of the life must be protected, quite another to demand that my comfort zone be deemed sacrosanct. A monastery that in the attitude of its members conveys the message to guests, “We really wish that you were not here, and now that you are, that you would go away as soon as possible,” is indeed saying something about how it welcomes Christ, something not very meritorious. I do not believe I have ever seen a monastery as a whole where this comes across, but as to the attitude of individual members, well, I think this could be a matter for community examination of conscience far more often than it is. We can so easily forget that we are not the owners of the monastery, merely stewards for the One to whom it does belong.

NEWSLETTER 123 - MARCH 29, 2016

From Joseph Pieper’s The Philosophical Act:

To wonder is not to know fully, not to conceive absolutely; it means not to know what is behind it all; it means, as Aquinas says, “that the cause of our wonder is hidden from us.” And so, to wonder is not to know, not to know fully, not to be able to conceive. To conceive a thing, to possess comprehensive and exhaustive knowledge of a thing, is to cease to wonder. It cannot therefore be said that God “wonders” – because the knowledge of God is perfect. But furthermore, to wonder is not merely not to know; it means to be inwardly aware and sure that one does not know, and that one understands oneself in not knowing. And yet it is not the ignorance of resignation. On the contrary, to wonder is to be on the way, in via; it certainly means to be struck dumb, momentarily, but equally it means that one is searching for the truth. In the Summa Theologica wonder is defined as the “desiderium sciendi,” the longing for knowledge, an active desire for knowledge. Although to wonder means, as we have said, not to know, it does not mean that we are, in a kind of despair, resigned to ignorance. Out of wonder, says Aristotle, comes joy. In this he was followed by the Middle Ages: “omnis admirabilia sunt delectabilia,” so that joy and wonder are produced by the same things. Perhaps one might risk the following proposition: Wherever there is spiritual joy, wonder will also be found; and wherever the capacity for joy exists the capacity for wonder will be found. The joy that accompanies wonder is the joy of the beginner, of that mind and spirit that is always open to what is fresh, new, and as yet unknown.

While Pieper’s observations pertain to Christian prayer of every sort, in every season, they seem to me especially valuable to recall in the days of Easter, when like the women at the tomb, like the disciples gathered in the upper room, we gaze with joy, we are struck dumb, by something so great that wonder, if not the only possible response, surely seems the most appropriate!

We were gladdened at St. Procopius by the presence of three young men at our Paschal Triduum discernment retreat. Two of them ended up chatting by the Easter Fire until 3:00 A.M. on Sunday morning, truly an exemplary instance of wonder, though not one that I expect I shall ever be able to imitate!

NEWSLETTER 122 - MARCH 23, 2016

Throughout Benedictine history, monasteries have often failed to live up fully to the prescriptions of the Rule. In thought, in word, and in deed. Still, those of us with hearts other than totally hardened have been aware of our communal and individual failings and quite ready to beat our breasts with words to the effect, “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.” Not always quite so ready to amend those failings, but still, willing to acknowledge, think about, and (often) regret them. Even when we offer excuses, we’re admitting there’s something that needs excusing!

Probably low on the examination of conscience scale have been those occasions, or even structural decisions, that set aside St. Benedict’s wish in Chapter 52 that the oratory be what it is called and nothing else be done or kept there. It sounds so obvious, and it’s a room that receives much use already. No need, one would think, to add more.

Ah, but it’s often the largest single room in the monastery. It’s not in the cloister. It has either chairs or banks of pews, pointed in one direction. It has a sound system or at least was built to have good acoustics. It’s usually front and center in the monastery architecture, location known as well as any to the local population. Many good folk think, it’s right purty.

Just to speak of my own monastery, over the years our church has hosted graduation events, concerts, talks by such luminaries as Francis Cardinal George and (now) Bishop Robert Barron. When very large groups have come for tours, the church might be enlisted as a place to seat them while general comments about the life are delivered. 

Nothing morally objectionable in the list. In some cases (the two talks listed above assuredly included), morally uplifting. Often with an element of prayer involved or at least attached. Any reason to raise concerns? No definitive answer from this source, but I do think there reason to be grateful that we read this chapter several times a year, and have a chance thereby to be reminded of a principle that can easily glide out of consciousness.

Best wishes for a blessed celebration of the Paschal Triduum!

NEWSLETTER 121 - MARCH 15, 2016

We used to have a monk who loved to preach. However, it would not have been safe to say that in his presence! His own notion was that he was just remarking upon the obvious, sizing things up correctly and speaking the truth, without fear or favor. Not everyone agreed with this self-characterization, or the smug note of moral superiority that generally accompanied his pronouncements, but to him negative reaction was proof positive that his message was hitting home. He never let up, even past his ninetieth birthday.

Since this monk did a lot of chauffeuring of confreres to parishes or airports, more of us had occasion to be his audience than might have chosen the role voluntarily. Once, being driven to an airport, I realized that I was going to be learning about the appropriateness of monks accepting dinner invitations. Oh boy, thought I, and hunkered down in my seat, awaiting “incoming.”

Instead, I learned not to be sure that I could infallibly predict what this fellow (or anyone else, I daresay) really thought, without having first taken the trouble to listen. He said that, while monks can eat out too much or for the wrong reasons, he really was not upset at the practice. People invited monks, he thought, because they wanted good advice from someone worthy of trust, and he knew a number of monks to have done much good through the counsel they would impart on what might seem mere social occasions.  It was often a way, he believed, of practicing charity.

Some of my astonishment arose out of a sense from earlier conversations that this confrere was generally of the opinion that most of the monks (myself probably included) could best serve the City of God (or the City of Man, for that matter) by voluntary self-committal to desert islands where none would be contaminated by their stupidity or turpitude! I’m still not sure of the overall coherence of his verbal Epistles to the Procopians, but I inevitably think of his words when considering Chapter 51 of the Rule of St. Benedict.

Benedict clearly wanted meals taken outside the monastery to be held to the minimum, and he takes a negative view of accepting spur-of-the-moment invitations. Generosity of that sort, be it ever so innocent in intent, offers a competition with community life that strikes him as unhealthy for the monk’s soul. Not at all difficult is it, after reading Chapter 51, to understand his negative reaction to Scholastica’s wish to prolong their final encounter. We know how on that occasion God intervened in such a manner as to confirm my confrere’s intuition that sometimes a greater good can justify an apparent exception to the letter of the Rule.

NEWSLETTER 120 - MARCH 8, 2016

Interesting, that while St. Benedict in Chapter 50 of the Rule asks of those monks away from the monastery that they kneel while praying the Divine Office, he never mentions this posture when describing the Work of God in the oratory. Probably there’s a concern that, in contrast to the community setting, in the presence of the abbot and seniors, where a monk has reason to fear correction if he is irreverent, an occasion when the monk prays privately or with a small group of companions is more susceptible to an overly casual approach. Kneeling is intended to assist in creating a consciously prayerful state of mind. 

Though we memorize many fewer of the psalms than did Benedict’s monks (if any at all!), we are assisted in remaining faithful to our individual obligation to pray the hours not only by the possibility that breviaries afford, but nowadays by the omnipresent internet. I had a pleasant reminder of that last week. I had decided to attend an evening talk on a monastic theme at our university, but I only remembered my intention to pray Vespers early while I was already on my way to the school. I had not brought my breviary along, so I resigned myself to making up the hour at what would have been for me a decidedly sleepy time. But then I realized that I was early enough on campus that I had a chance to find and pray Vespers on-line, and I gratefully availed myself of the opportunity.

Those of a younger generation, such as my abbot, need not depend on a lucky or providential inspiration to take advantage of the potentialities of the digital age! Often when we have been traveling together to vocation events, one of us will suggest praying the Office. Then, while I’m trying to remember where my breviary is packed, he’ll have already the proper hour on the tiny screen. I believe I’ve mentioned before how impressed I’ve been at FOCUS conferences by the number of college-age folk who gather to pray the hours, almost invariably with smart-phones and the like. 

Would Benedict approve? My supposition is that he would rejoice at the possibilities modern technology affords, while expressing a caution or two that we not catch the Office on the fly, in the midst of surfing, one stop along the way. Reverence or irreverence arises from within us, not from the media we employ, but we need to be aware of the risks, as well as of the rewards, of whatever means we use to spend some time with God.

NEWSLETTER 119 - MARCH 1, 2016

A monk’s  “propria voluntas” – his own will – is not regarded in a very positive light by St. Benedict’s Rule. With the invaluable exception of Chapter 49, on the observance of Lent. There, in verse 7, the monk is encouraged to offer God something beyond what the Rule requires, and to offer this “of his own free will with the joy of the Holy Spirit.” Here I am allowed and encouraged to exercise a bit of initiative – and to be happy about doing so. The image of God that this presents might be likened to that of a mother delighted to acclaim her toddler’s drawing as the most beautiful piece of art her eyes have ever seen.

Yes indeed, Benedict might agree. But note that he then hastens to provide each and every follower of the Rule with a salutary reality check, lest we abuse this permitted exercise of self-will. We must obtain from the superior explicit approval for what we propose to offer God, and if we do not, then whatever we do, no matter how meritorious in se, will be accounted “presumption and vainglory.” The “joy of the Holy Spirit” is not in any respect an escape from obedience, but a deeper and more personal cooperation with the listening to God that is at the heart of obedience.

Tomorrow marks 131 years since monks of St. Vincent Abbey took over a parish in Chicago and began a new priory that took as its own the parish’s patron, St. Procopius. The first Benedictine pastor, John Nepomucene Jaeger, later the first abbot of the monastery, had his anniversary of death just last Saturday. His own story serves, I think, to illustrate St. Benedict’s teaching on Lent.

Come to America as a youngster, he had little education beyond street English. Following the advice of a Redemptorist spiritual director, at the age of twenty he wrote to ask the Benedictines in Pennsylvania whether he might come as a lay brother candidate. The answer was affirmative. He then let his thoughts run wild in a second letter – could he even study for the priesthood? He received in reply a one-sentence telegram: “If you desire to be a humble and obedient monk, come.” Give yourself fully, that is – let God through your superiors take care of the rest of the script.

NEWSLETTER 118 - FEBRUARY 23, 2016

Last Wednesday, we accepted two men into our postulancy program, and with our 
Br. Elias we now have three living on the novitiate floor. Three would not have been a particularly impressive number in the decades up through the 1950s, but more recent times have posed challenges, for St. Procopius and for most other monastic communities of this country, in the area of recruitment. So right now a total of three in the early stages of formation looks mighty fine indeed!

I recall two occasions during my earlier years here when we had a total of six, if one combined postulancy and novitiate totals. The retention rate was not so hot – in each case, only one of the six is still present in the community. But what I wish to reflect upon is not the outcome, or the reason or reasons for the outcome, but rather the sense of joy and optimism that the arrival of new members occasioned in the abbey.

New membership implies that people on the outside perceive something good enough in the house and the life that they want to be part of it. That in turn allows the monks an opportunity to reflect upon whatever negativity has crept into their own thinking and to realize that, all faults and failings incumbent upon partaking in human nature notwithstanding, the monastery of their profession is really not so bad a place after all. It becomes remotely possible, furthermore, to look upon the current leadership of the community as something other than one of the more singular successes of demonic trickery in all of salvation history. Ideally, the situation could (not to exaggerate the likelihood, but I’ve seen it happen) even help individuals look to being better examples of the monastic life so as to encourage the new-comers in their first fervor. Not to make too fine a point of it, to have others join our life suggests that being happy here is not necessarily proof of a softening of the brain!

I can hardly deny (nor would wish to) that the arrival of new members can stir less pleasant aspirations on the part of established members. It is quite possible that I look upon recruits as objects that can be used to make my life easier, either by turning these individuals into servants, or by demanding they be used as my replacement in whatever assignments I don’t much like, or (worst of all) by manipulating them in some fashion to serve as my emotional support system. I doubt if there are many formation directors in Benedictine houses who, even though they know better theoretically, have not at least silently longed for the separate houses of formation to be found among orders with a provincial system of government.      

But that’s not how the Benedictine polity works. The benefits of becoming integrated and assimilated into the unique charism of one’s own community are so great that even the risks that exposure to my faults entails are deemed bearable. Or at least are borne! Please pray with us that those now in formation are spared the potential weaknesses of the formation system and instead are helped in their necessary discernment of whether this life is for them.

NEWSLETTER 117 - FEBRUARY 16, 2016

I recall one of the few disruptions of silence in the remarkable motion picture on the Carthusians, Into the Great Silence, featuring a discussion about the practice of preceding common meals with a ritual hand-washing at an old faucet near the refectory.  The question being, whether this was still necessary or appropriate, given modern hygienic practices that entail most people washing hands frequently throughout the day.  One monk jokingly comments that he has no problem washing his hands another time, he just forgets to get them dirty in the first place.

Many monks besides myself must have grimly chuckled or cheerfully grimaced when hearing that crack.  Manual labor, in most Benedictine houses, finds a part in the daily horarium of few monks.  For many of us, it’s a positive rarity.  There are many good reasons for this:  academic and administrative duties can easily fill a person’s schedule, to the point that manual labor can become more of a self-indulgence than a contribution.  Financially, it can sometimes (perhaps a wee bit less often than we suppose) make perfect sense to hire people to help with tasks that would drain the time and energy of those expensively trained to be competent in other areas.  

Chapter 49 of the Rule indicates that at least heavy manual labor (e.g., harvesting crops) was not ordinarily expected of the monks of St. Benedict’s day.  Nevertheless, he includes a stern reminder that this is not because monks are “above” heavy work, a reminder phrased in nostalgic tomes reminiscent of other remarks to be found in Benedict’s Rule.  Just as monks of our deplorable epoch cannot manage     to pray the Psalter in one day [18:25] or do without their wine [40:6], so they need to be coaxed to live by the work of their own hands (if absolutely necessary), for then they are truly monks [48:8].   And yet, Benedict goes on [48:9], never should the weakness of individuals be ignored.  A high standard is set before us, lest we be proud; but, as the old canonical maxim has it, the salvation of souls needs to be the Abbot’s, and the monastery’s, first concern. 

NEWSLETTER 116 - FEBRUARY 9, 2016

The growth in popularity of the ancient Benedictine practice of lectio divina over the last half-century has been remarkable. Books are written about how to practice it, Bible study groups often employ it, and the Fellowship of Catholic Student gatherings that Abbot Austin and I have been attending the last few years offer how-to-do-it workshops.  With all the attention it has enjoyed of late, one cannot help but think that it would have been considerate of St. Benedict to say more about lectio divina in his Rule!   
    
He doesn’t in truth say much, simply assuming that when he prescribes that the monks spend this or that time in lectio divina, the reader understands what he intends by the statement. No doubt he was correct. A few comments:

First, the very fact that the monks are to give some of the best hours of the day to this “sacred reading” shows not only the importance Benedict places upon it but states in unmistakably clear terms that he expected that every monk would be able to read. One presumes that the rural regions around Monte Cassino and most other monasteries could not boast universal literacy. Yet Benedict expects that each of his monks could read, to the point that in Chapter 49, he will command that every monk receive a book during Lent and read it straight through. 

In the Italy of Benedict’s time, with the Roman educational system succumbing to the pressures (to say no more) of the barbarian invasions (as well as the not much less destructive Byzantine counter-attacks), for a group of men to enjoy universal literacy must have required there to be schooling within the community. And, if not by intent, the sheer inefficiency of beginning the ABCs with men in their twenties meant that the future of Benedict’s sort of monasteries lay not with the “simple Goth” mentioned in the Dialogues, but with the child-oblates discussed in Chapter 59. We can be sure that not every instance of a child being accepted at age seven and brought up in the monastery ended up so happily as was the case with the Venerable Bede (who positively flourished in the system). But there must have been ever fewer “late vocations” in their twenties who would have able to come to the monastery with the bare minimum of education expected of a Benedictine monk.

Finally, not only would the monasteries have been obliged to provide their own readers, they would have more and more found it necessary to produce their own books. The “publishing houses” of the Roman world were diminishing where not disappearing, so if a group of men or women in a monastery wanted a library, there was little alternative but to produce it themselves. The monastic scriptoria did, as often noted, do much to preserve Western civilization. But this was more a happy accident than a deliberate plan. Benedictine copied books first of all in order to read them and thereby, in St. Benedict’s understanding, come closer to God.

NEWSLETTER 115 - FEBRUARY 2, 2016

“Idleness is the soul’s enemy,” sounds like – and is – standard and good monastic fare. But there is much to think about in regard to this “otiositas” with which St. Benedict begins Chapter 48 of his Rule. This is not a standard Latin term, and Benedict might be employing it in a deliberate effort to avoid giving a negative connotation to the term “otium,” leisure, which was highly regarded in the ancient world as a necessary element of a good life. Benedict would have agreed, most likely, as to the value of leisure, that is, leisure understood in a way that excludes any possibility of idleness, sloth, or acedia, that noonday devil so much reprobated in the monastic tradition.

A few passages from Josef Pieper’s classic, Leisure: The Basic of Culture, help, I think, to show what Benedict had in mind in organizing his day of his monks to include a great deal of “prime time” for lectio divina, which he very likely would have thought a splendid sort of leisure:

Leisure is a form of silence, of that silence which is the prerequisite of the apprehension of reality: only the silent hear and those who do not remain silent do not hear. Silence, as it is used in this context, does not mean “dumbness” or “noiselessness”; it means more nearly that the soul’s power to “answer” to the reality of the world is left undisturbed. For leisure is a receptive attitude of mind, a contemplative attitude. . . .

Leisure is not the attitude of mind of those who actively intervene, but of those who are open to everything; not of those who grab and grab hold, but of those who leave the reins loose and who are free and easy themselves – almost like a man falling asleep, for one can only fall asleep by “letting oneself go.” . . . 

[By contrast] Idleness, in the medieval view, means that a man prefers to forgo the rights, or if you prefer the claims, that belong to his nature. In a word, he does not want to be as God wants him to be. . . . Acedia is the “despair from weakness” which Kierkegaard analysed as the “despairing refusal to be oneself”. Metaphysically and theologically, the notion of acedia means that a man does not, in the last resort, give the consent of his will to his own being; that behind or beneath the dynamic activity of his existence, he is still not at one with himself, or, as the medieval writers would have said, face to face with the divine good within him; he is a prey to sadness. 

To offer but one application, if I surf endlessly and restlessly on the internet looking for something that shall somehow entertain me, this is far more likely escape from reality, one that genuine leisure (in lectio divina, for example) would not permit me. And therefore it constitutes Benedict’s “otiositas,” an enemy to my soul. 

NEWSLETTER 114 - JANUARY 26, 2016

About seventy students of our Academy, and a few others from our University, took buses to Washington last week to participate in the annual March For Life, the annual witness that, almost ignored by the “mainstream media,” hundreds of thousands give to the importance of life, of which the most vulnerable in our society are now routinely deprived. Abbot Austin is out there every year as well, though generally he travels by air, arriving out there a couple days early so as to work quietly on his dissertation at the fine library of the Dominican House of Studies.

This year, of course, all bets were off, due to the massive winter storm approaching rapidly the morning of the March. First the Abbot learned his flight home was cancelled. No problem, he could come back by bus with the students. Then the bus company made the decision that the trip home needed to begin immediately. No March. Well, the March did take place, with some very hardy participants who somehow made their way to the Mall (all public transportation was shut down). But none of those from Lisle was able to be present. They did arrive home safely in the wee hours of the next morning.

So, some disappointment, but as the Abbot remarked, neither the witness nor the prayers were in any way invalidated by the refusal of the weather to cooperate!

So central is liturgy in the life of a Benedictine monastery that one can only expect that it is the topic over which the inmates most frequently debate, quarrel, draw lines in the sand, etc. We at St. Procopius have been carrying on this fine old tradition the past few years amidst innumerable meetings over the future design of our Lady Chapel, in which we now pray all of the Divine Office. Our Abbot constructed some temporary choir stalls just over a year ago, and now we are engaged in (sentenced to) debating exactly what should be the permanent design of the choir. We live in pious hope of completing the project during the year to come. Please join St. Jude in praying for the fulfillment of this earnest aspiration!  

NEWSLETTER 113 - JANUARY 19, 2016

SinceancientmanuscriptsnomatterofwhatcomplexitylackedanythinginthewayofwordseparationorpunctuationonlyapersonwhoknewatextverywellorevenbyheartcouldhopetoprovideanintelligentreadingthusStBenendictswarningagainstthepresumptionofjustpickingupatextandwingingitortryingtomorelikelyresultinginamangledperformancethananythingelse 

Okay, let’s try that again: Since ancient manuscripts (no matter of what complexity) lacked anything in the way of word separation or punctuation, only a person who knew a text very well or even by heart could hope to provide an intelligent reading. Thus St. Benedict’s warning against the presumption of just picking up a text and winging it – or trying to, more likely resulting in a mangled performance than anything else. [47:3]

As Fr. Terrence Kardong notes, monks were in Benedict’s thinking most likely assigned to read or sing, so the presumption being warned against here is not that of untalented singers or readers grabbing a place at the podium, but of one who is assigned daring to take up his role without having looked the material over and just expecting that his great talent will carry him through. Even today, the consequences of such presumption are not always pretty. In Benedict’s day and for centuries to come, the risk of verbal or musical disaster would have been high. And for Benedict, the Work of God was not the place for improvisations or dress rehearsals!

Something else that occurs to me in regards to that mess of a paragraph at the top of the page: it would provide an incentive to memorize as much as I could manage of the passages of Scripture or the Church Fathers that might occur in the Divine Office. For, even beyond the inconvenience that a limited number of books might occasion, to have the text secure in my memory could save a great deal of preparation time, not to mention eyestrain!  There is a real logic in Benedict’s command [8:3] that the interval between Vigils and Lauds being used for those who need to learn psalms better – the opportunity would have been appreciated, I suspect, not only by novices!

NEWSLETTER 112 - JANUARY 12, 2016

The responsibility that St. Benedict in Chapter 47 of the Rule assigns to the abbot of seeing to it that the time for the Divine Office is properly announced does not arise from desire to control or micro-manage. It is rather another indication of the extreme seriousness with which Benedict regards the Work of God, an insistence that prayer be done not only well (upon which he has been legislating in Chapters 43-45) but that it be done punctually. God is no slave to time, but He deserves at least the same respect as we would bestow upon some important prelate or official. If the Night Office is scheduled for the “eighth hour,” then that’s when the monks should be present to pray it. Having God wait is the sign of a lax, not a free, spirit.

But to avoid such discourtesy towards the Almighty is a less simple matter than it might appear today. The presence of alarm clocks makes it perfectly feasible for a monastery to dispense with a common signal of any kind, allows each monk to take personality responsibility for arriving at his place in choir on time. Even those houses that continue to uses bells or buzzers have the option of electric timers that assure the signal is heard at the proper moment.  Should there be a power outage, watches would still allow most monks to know when it’s time to head to church or chapel.

Benedict’s era lacked not only electricity, but also watches and alarm clocks. A sun dial would be of limited utility in the middle of the night. To know the time from the position of the moon or stars requires some training (and a clear night!). I’m not enough of an historian of technology to say exactly what means allowed telling time at night, though I suppose hour glasses with sand or water would have been possibilities. But no method then available would work unless someone was awake to take the proper observations and give the signal! Therefore either the abbot himself or a reliable brother he designates must assume the duty of time-keeping and signaling.

At least one novice has expressed to me some regret that the hours of the Office, etc., are no longer announced in some common manner. He would prefer to be liberated from the slavery of wearing a watch and keeping an eye on it enough to know when he needs to break off other activity. Instead, he would like simply to respond to the Lord’s call when it was revealed to him by the bell in the tower. Perhaps romantic, perhaps impractical – but I think St. Benedict would have appreciated his point.
 

NEWSLETTER 111 - JANUARY 6, 2016

Over the past weekend, Abbot Austin and I attended the Leadership Summit of the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) in Dallas. As always, the energy of the thousands of young people desiring to serve God and neighbor was immensely impressive. The “FOCUS model” has in fact been so successful on college and university campuses that it is now being attempted in other contexts.

For example, one of the prominent sights at this weekend’s FOCUS gathering was a scattering of grocery carts, deliberately moved around during the day and then overnight. The carts, accompanied by some young folk, were full of odds and ends, as well as crude cardboard signs inviting inquiries about what was called “Christ in the City.”

So the Abbot and I visited one of these grocery carts to learn about “Christ in the City.” It’s new, at present located only in Denver, and its purpose is to provide outreach to the homeless. Not in the sense of supplying material assistance, and certainly not a matter of telling the homeless what they ought to do. No, the members seek only to be around and talk, to provide companionship to the homeless population, to accompany them on their journey as best as can be done. Thus, “Christ in the City.” 

To a great degree, this effort follows the FOCUS model. That is, the missionaries commit themselves to a given period of service, a summer, a year, whatever, and do preliminary fund-raising to support themselves during that time. They live in a fairly Spartan manner in a common residence and go out a set number of days each week simply to encounter the homeless population. As regulars on the streets, they come to be known and trusted, even by some who would be hesitant to enter a soup kitchen or Catholic Worker house.

There were other groups represented in Dallas that also use this FOCUS model to harness for the Gospel the energy and good will of the young. No doubt growing pains shall be experienced, and not every venture shall succeed. But we saw a lot at this leadership summit for which to be very grateful – and hopeful for the future.