Strangers to the City

by Michael Casey

  12 Holiness

  Do not wish to be called holy before

  you are; first be holy that you may

  more truly be said to be so.

  RB 4:62

  In the Middle Ages, a monastery was often described simply as an ecclesia, a church. The use of such a term underlined the fact that what was in question was a holy community—that those who lived there were, in the usage of the New Testament, “saints”—men and women dedicated to living holy lives. Listen to Bernard reminding his monks of this.

  This community is made up not of the wicked but of saints, religious men, those who are full of grace and worthy of blessing. You come together to hear the word of God, you gather to sing praise, to pray, to offer adoration. This is a consecrated assembly, pleasing to God and familiar with the angels. Therefore, brothers, stand fast in reverence, stand with care and devotion of mind, especially in the place of prayer and in this school of Christ where the Spirit is heard.110

  When prayer ceased to be a priority, when monastic observance became slack, and monasteries grew rich and powerful, holiness ceased to be a visible attribute of such communities. They degenerated and became corporations or institutions of one sort of another. As a result their role and function in the Church and in society became less obvious, and monks and nuns themselves became vague about the ultimate finality of their vocation.

  1. Communio and Communitas

  One of the great temptations for any community that is relatively clear about its ideals is that its cardinal values may be systematized in a way that pays scant regard to persons. The values are fine, and the structures designed to express and communicate the values are objectively good. The problem is that they may not necessarily be serving their purpose within this particular group of people. Sometimes a charismatic figure or founder can hold the group together by force of character, but, often enough, when the leadership passes to a successor, rumblings begin to be heard. It may be only one or two people who marginalize themselves, but they are expressing a wider and deeper dissatisfaction.

  Comparing the Rule of Augustine to that of Benedict we notice in the former a much stronger emphasis on the theme of “one heart and one mind.” It is true that in the finale to Benedict’s Rule we find something of a re-reading of the earlier chapters in more personal terms, but there is plenty in the Rule that, for the literal-minded, could provide a justification for setting up a “total institution.” Indeed some of the autocratic religious superiors of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw no harm in taking that particular route, somewhat unaware of the harm they were doing and the pain they were inflicting. The chaos that followed the termination of their authoritarian regimes is sufficient proof that the values so long trumpeted had scarcely taken root.

  By the twelfth century there was a greater appreciation of the role of subjective experience in monasteries. The early Cistercians, in particular, tried to make of their communities schools of love, where it was recognized that full human and spiritual development was coterminous with the practical will to love and be loved. Such fraternal affection was not mere sentiment. It was contextualized by a common purpose and the acceptance of common means to attain the monastic goal of union with God. It was the sort of love that develops among like-minded travelers on the same journey.

  [Christ] does not like corners; private places do not please him. He stands in the midst: discipline, the common life and common pursuits: these are the things that bring him pleasure.111

  Aelred’s teaching on spiritual and monastic friendship is based on similar presuppositions. The discovery of a compatible person serious about the same priorities can be the foundation of a close relationship that owes more to the spirit than to the flesh. This is a love that comes from the will; it is powered on our side by an active faith and on God’s by the inpouring of the Holy Spirit.

  For the most part we do not choose those among whom we live. We belong to a community of faith that draws together persons of different personalities and dispositions. We are of different generations and levels of culture. Ordinary affinity is not enough to sustain us in mutual fidelity for a lifetime, and close living is a sure guarantee that even the slightest foible or failing will not go unnoticed or unremarked. The love that covers such a multitude of imperfections needs to borrow heavily from God’s unconditional love for us; it is only thus that it can be simultaneously sincere, heartfelt, and all-forgiving.

  This commingling of characters is not typical only of pluralist modernity. St. Aelred speaks humorously of the different characters that formed the community at Rievaulx, taking as his starting point the text of Isa. 11:6, about the wolf lying down with the lamb:

  Consider how God has gathered you together in this place, from vastly different regions and from different lifestyles. One of you, when he was in the world, was like a lion, who despised others and thought himself better than them because of his pride and riches. Another was like a wolf, who lived from robbery, whose only interest was how to steal the property of others. A leopard is an animal marked by variety: such were some of you [who lived] by your wits, through deception and fraud. Furthermore there were many in this community who were foul because of their sexual sins. Such as these were like goats—because goats are foul animals. There were some of you who lived innocent lives when you were in the world; they may well be compared to lambs. There were others who were like sheep because you lived a simple life. Look now, brothers, and see with how much concord and peace God has gathered all these into one common life. Here the wolf lives with the lamb; he eats and drinks with the lamb and does him no harm, but loves him greatly.112

  Unity does not derive from a common background; it comes from an act of will by which each renounces individualism and strives to live in concord. Community of will has a double function: It serves as a check to self-will and it creates a climate of harmony that makes the cohabitation of brothers a good and pleasant thing. It creates an affective community where differences are neither denied nor suppressed. Any tendency to fragmentation is subverted by the “glue of love.”

  Meanwhile the Spirit of wisdom is not only single but also manifold, compacting interior realities into unity, but in judgment making distinction among exterior things. Both are recommended to you in the primitive Church where “the multitude of believers had one heart and one soul” and “distribution was made to everyone according as each had need.” So there should be a unity of souls among us, my friends. Hearts should be united by loving the one thing, seeking the one thing, adhering to the one thing and, among ourselves, being of the same mind. Thus external division will involve no danger and produce no scandal. Each will have his own field of tolerance and sometimes his own opinion about what is to be done in earthly matters. Furthermore, there will even be different gifts of grace and not all members will appear to follow the same course of action. Nevertheless interior unity and unanimity will gather and bind together this multiplicity with the glue of love and the bond of peace.113

  As Baldwin of Forde implied in the treatise already quoted, communio is the heart of the Church and of every monastic community. This being so, relationships are an important part of the cenobitic dynamic. Sometimes you hear opinions implying that the only way to preserve unity is to avoid relationship: Members of the community are encouraged to build their personal space and to go their own way; serious conversation and community dialogues are avoided since they are regarded as a potential threat to peace and harmony, although it is unclear what sort of unity is thus threatened. Unity cannot be built by avoidance. Differences need to be positively reconciled. For this to happen there must exist relationships of sufficient depth to mine the deep zones where unity already exists. This is not achieved easily, but there is no other way. We are a community because we have made an act of the will to become a community, with God’s grace. Such an outcome is more than mere serendipity. It comes about by faith. The community it creates is essentially a holy community.

  If it is
true that a community is bound together by a spider’s web of interlocking relationships among its members, then it must be obvious that any defect or disruption in these linkages will endanger the community’s well-being. This, no doubt, is why many of our most persistent temptations occur in the area of community relationships. And the area where dissension is most keenly felt in many communities is, undoubtedly, the liturgy.

  2. The Primacy of Liturgy

  It happened that the global trend towards secularization, expressed most dramatically in the “Death of God” movement, coincided with the period of post-Conciliar renewal of religious life.114 It is, perhaps, to be regretted that elements of what was termed “secularization theology” unthinkingly came to be incorporated in the process of reformation and renewal. The total effect of this was the loss from religious life of many purely “sacred” observances, on the grounds that they lacked relevance to the contemporary world. Forty years later, we may need to embark on a process to recover a sense of the sacred—in effect, to desecularize or resacralize monastic life. It may be that in this realm also “God often reveals what is best to the young” (3:3).115

  Monastic communities generally resisted secularizing trends better than most, partly due to the central position occupied by the Work of God and the relatively important place assigned to minor community rituals. Resisting a trend, especially when it means retaining elements with a whiff of the archaic about them, is hard work, and we may perhaps have experienced wave after wave of the same complaints that we are not more “normal.” Inevitably some erosion occurs. Even the liturgy can be contaminated by foreign intrusions representing beliefs and values that are discordant with its true nature and with the character of a Benedictine community, and not consonant with our long tradition of communal worship.116

  The celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours with the customary degree of solemnity demands nowadays a fair amount of energy, especially since the structure and texts of the liturgy are no longer a universal given and not every culture evinces the same facility for ritual. Although circumstances vary, there is a certain expectation that monasteries following the Benedictine Rule will have a liturgy in which maximum participation is combined with some degree of professionalism. For such a celebration to go beyond mere performance so that it also belongs to the local community and expresses its inner character, the community needs to have attained a “critical mass” that entails the following:

  a) a certain size of community,

  b) the necessary range of liturgical skills,

  c) a generous portion of time available both for preparation and for celebration,

  d) a good capacity for dialogue and consensus that leads to a liturgy acceptable to all and facilitates a certain unity of heart, and

  e) the fundamental beliefs and values to sustain a corporate commitment to the communal celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours.

  Such resources were once nearly universal. Now monastic demographics have changed and communities operate on a more human scale, sometimes because of choice and sometimes simply because of reduced recruitment. This means that grand liturgy is simply not always possible or desirable. A different style of liturgical celebration will necessarily be envisaged. It seems likely that changes in the liturgy will either reflect or foreshadow changes in the nature and dynamics of community life. The important thing is that whatever its shape, the community liturgy continues to play an important role, even at the cost of some sacrifice. In extreme situations there may be the risk that in the process of adaptation, the Work of God loses its effective priority. Liturgy could become a side show that absorbs little of the community’s time or resources and may eventually be regarded as more or less optional.

  Benedict’s insistence on the priority of the Work of God (43:3) is not negotiable. The Liturgy of the Hours serves as an important structural element in the monastic day, no matter what size the community is or what its situation. It is a concrete means of re-injecting prayer into the daily round, calling the monk or nun to be mindful of the ultimate meaning of and direction of their life and providing a pause that refreshes. Precious time and energy given to the Divine Office is a clear signal about the finality of Benedictine life, and this massive dedication of time to prayer is one of the most obvious elements that distinguish monasticism from the life of the city.

  There is perhaps scope for concern regarding the status of Eucharistic celebration. Here we have to note that there has been a development in doctrine and devotion since the time of Benedict, whose Eucharistic practice was considerably less than what is now commonly expected. Today we seem to be moving away from the excesses of the recent past, but it may be queried whether we are not in danger of marginalizing sacramental practice. In many male communities there has been a healthy reaction against clericalism that has led to significant changes in the style of celebration and also to a lower proportion of monks being presented for priestly ordination. In female communities it is becoming increasingly difficult to find suitable chaplains. Given that priestly ordination is excluded, the desire among women for greater leadership of their own worship understandably leads to an increasing reliance on non-sacramental liturgies.

  As if nothing had changed, most official documents continue to emphasize the centrality of the Eucharist.

  No community can be built if it does not have its roots and core in the celebration of the most holy Eucharist, from which should spring as a consequence, all formation in community spirit.117

  How this works out in practice is another question. It seems to me that there is a declining confidence in the whole sacramental reality—whether it be Eucharist, reconciliation, or anointing of the sick. It is not always a matter of explicit doctrine, simply a question of reduced interest. In part this may be due to a greater appreciation of the apophatic aspects of spirituality, and the fact that moving towards a Zen-like neutralism removes us from the spheres of theological controversy and community politics. On the other hand Neo-Pelagianism, which reduces everything to will-power and effort, may have a role to play. Once grace is taken out of the equation, the rituals that are seen to impart grace become irrelevant.

  Another example of the impoverishment resulting from such reductionist tendencies can be seen in the rituals of monastic profession and consecration. It is a shame to reduce solemn profession to a ceremony that accompanies the making of vows. Active consecration and passive consecration are inseparable. The blessing of a monk or nun is an act of the Church that, according to long-standing monastic tradition, has baptismal-like effects in the life of the newly professed.118

  3. A Lifestyle Worthy of the Gospel

  Throughout this book we have been returning to the notion that the specificity of the Benedictine vocation needs to be expressed by a distinctive philosophy and lifestyle, each supporting the other. Beliefs and values are not much use unless and until they are embodied in practice. Practice, be it ever so holy, can become self-defeating unless the values it represents are internalized and appropriated.

  We have seen that fidelity to many Benedictine values is at odds with many of the priorities we have acquired in the course of growing up. Typical among the substitutions that we are expected to weather in the process of growing into monastic life are the following:

  • stability instead of mobility;

  • humility instead of ambition, status-seeking, and pride;

  • patience instead of anger, recrimination, and revenge;

  • obedience instead of autonomy;

  • common order instead of spontaneity;

  • working without remuneration instead of being paid;

  • discipline instead of relaxation;

  • poverty instead of affluence;

  • chastity instead of sexual liberation;

  • celibacy instead of family life;

  • silence instead of communication;

  • abstemiousness in food and drink instead of satisfaction;

  • early rising instead
of sleeping late;

  • early to bed instead of partying.

  Show that list to any of our contemporaries and they will conclude that you lead a miserable life. And so you will—unless there is something else. It is this “something else” that makes monastic life tolerable, worthwhile, and sometimes delightful. Among the benefits we receive from belonging to a monastic community are the following:

  • our relationship with God in prayer;

  • our discipleship of Christ;

  • the gift of daylong liturgy;

  • our belonging to a sound spiritual tradition;

  • our clarity about goals and means;

  • the support and affection of like-minded brothers or sisters;

  • our contemplative ambiance;

  • our hours of holy leisure;

  • our opportunities for spiritual, intellectual, and personal formation and growth;

  • our relative freedom from financial and other worries.

  Yet all these blessings lose their savor if they are not integrated within the search for God and the commitment to gospel values, as embodied in our particular way of life. Monasticism is a package: Some of its features are desirable, but they are inseparable from necessary renunciations. These are not impositions that we rightfully resent, but part of what we have freely chosen. Jesus prefaced his demand for absolute poverty with the conditional phrase, “If you wish to be perfect” (Mt. 19:21). The choice is ours: After fully manifesting the hard and difficult passages to be encountered on the journey towards God, Benedict solemnly reminds the aspirant: “This is the rule under which you wish to serve; if you can observe it, enter; but if not, freely leave” (58:10). Selective observance is unacceptable. We are expected to commit ourselves to the whole.