Preferring Nothing to Christ

SEEK

Seeking his workman in a multitude of people, the Lord calls out to him and lifts his voice again: Is there anyone here who yearns for life and desires to see good days? What, dear brothers, is more delightful than the voice of the Lord calling to us?

Rule of St Benedict, Prologue

For many people their first contact with Benedictine Spirituality is through Esther De Waal’s book, Seeking God. Her title highlights one of the defining characteristics of St Benedict’s Rule. The monastic embarks upon a journey where every action, great or small, is a search for the God who called them into being.

This deep desire to search for God is something which God has planted within each one of us. For St Benedict this search and longing is a response to God who has sought us first. In the Prologue to his Rule, St Benedict uses the imagery of the Lord searching for his workers in the marketplace. I love this imagery.

Sr Aquinata osb comments that the Lord attracts his workers with a question:

I might suppose he asks if someone has good capacities and wants to work hard in his vineyard. So I am surprised at Christ’s question: Who is there who longs for life and desires to see good days? This is very enlightening. God seeks not my achievement, not even my service. No, what God seeks is my person, desiring that I have life, which corresponds to my heart’s desire.

From the outset the Rule of St Benedict is relational. God seeks us out, desiring that we have life. Part of the monastic’s journey is learning to hear that voice and then to take the next step in search of God.

What sense do you have of God having searched for you and called out to you in the market place of your life?

How have you responded?

LISTEN

‘Listen carefully, my son, to the master’s instructions,
and attend to them with the ear of your heart.‘

St Benedict’s words are an invitation to intentional discipleship, an invitation to follow on a path that has been trodden for centuries. Listening with the ear of the heart is no small matter. It can challenge you at your very core. Sr Clare Condon, an Australian Good Samaritan Sister, comments:

To listen with the heart doesn’t come easily. It is a difficult and challenging journey. I need to empty my heart of my own agenda, of all that clutters my life and my survival: to empty my heart of my own assumptions and prejudices; to empty my mind of all the preconceived answers and solutions I might conjure up. This is a place of inner openness to receive the other, the word, whether that be the Word of Scripture, the word of a confrere, the cry of despair, or the hope of forgiveness and reconciliation. That inner openness is what the desert fathers and mothers called “purity of heart”.

Being open to what God has to say doesn’t happen overnight for the monastic. Those first years of formation are an intense time of adapting and sifting of all the things you are hearing. You learn, perhaps for the first time, the particular cadence of your own inner dialogue. You learn to listen for God’s voice in your sisters and your superior. Your day is shaped by the times of communal prayer and there you listen to the voice of the Church at prayer. In the psalmody and the Scriptures you listen to the story of our salvation being told over and over again. Few things are familiar. You become acutely aware of what you hear and how it is said.

St Benedict’s invitation to listen with the ear of the heart is every bit as relevant for you as it is for the monastic.

Look back over your week.
When are you aware of having listened intently?
How did God speak to you?

Will you do anything differently next week?

LISTEN

Listen carefully, my son, to the master’s instructions, and attend to them with the ear of your heart. This is advice from a father who loves you; welcome it and faithfully put it into practice.

The opening sentences of the Rule of St Benedict invite us to begin a journey that has been made by thousands of men and women over the centuries. Like an overture giving the listener a taste of the main musical motifs of a work, St Benedict lays out the key themes in his vision of monastic life.

We begin the Rule with an invitation to be open in every sense of the word. We are invited to open the ear of our hearts and to listen at the very core of our being to St Benedict’s teaching. Every sentence is crafted in love.

St Benedict hopes that his words will find a home in us. He hopes that his vision will so inspire us that we are prompted to action. A stirring in the heart and an action always go together for St Benedict.

At the outset of the monastic journey the most important disposition we can have is one of listening like a disciple.

Use this text for reflection during the next few days:

The Lord has given me a disciple’s tongue. So that I may know how to reply to the wearied he provides me with speech. Each morning he wakes me to hear, to listen like a disciple. (Isaiah 50.4)

How does God speak to you?
What do you hear?

In the final chapter of his Rule, St Benedict invites his monks to ‘keep this little rule that we have written for beginners.’ There’s something gently reassuring about St Benedict’s vision of his Rule being for beginners, a first step on the journey. And yet, as any monastic will tell you, the seventy-three chapters of the Rule, though simple in form, hold a wisdom that you will never fully fathom.

As a newcomer to the monastery you might see the Rule of St Benedict as a list of regulations and focus on all the things that you can and can’t do. There is much more to it than this. The Latin word for Rule, regula, has a range of meanings. It can be used in the sense of a basic principle or guide, it can also mean rod, bar or rail. I’d like to think that St Benedict had all of these in mind when he wrote his ‘Little Rule of Beginners.’ I find it helpful to think of Rule as a trellis, a support to help us grow and flower.

Are there people, books or places that have guided your own life?
What have they taught you?

You can find an online version of the Rule here:

Study the Holy Rule of St. Benedict

This is a very helpful summary of Benedictine Life:

https://countrymonks.org/holy-rule-of-st-benedict

HEARTS

When Jesus speaks to the disciples and tells them that their ‘ hearts will be full of joy’, I wonder how they understood it. John sets this lengthy discourse around the table of their last meal together. They have already shared together the ‘bread of affliction’ and Jesus now asks them to imagine a time when their hearts will be full of joy. I imagine the disciples in a haze that night.

Often when people warn us that something it going to be really hard it can be difficult for us hear them. I have certainly imagined certain situations to be much worse than they actually were. It’s a lot more subtle when people talk to us about our hearts being filled with joy. Real joy is something very personal. Though I have chosen a picture today of a girl jumping, my own experience of joy is much quieter. It has something to do with integration, with all the parts of my life fitting together. It’s not the absence of suffering. It’s more a feeling that joy and suffering can stand side by side.

If Christ is our pattern for life, love and glory, then joy and sorrow will always be woven through this.

How do you hear Christ’s promise?

( John 16:2-23, Friday, Sixth Week of Eastertide)

GLORY

The opening of John’s Gospel weaves together in poetic prose the major theological themes that we will encounter in its pages: life, light, love and glory. It’s hard to explore one without exploring all three. Glory is perhaps the most difficult to quantify and understand.

For the Hebrew mind the word glory (kavod) has a range of meanings which include ‘importance’, ‘honour’ and ‘weight’. Related to kavod is another Hebrew word ‘shekinah’ which is a way of talking about the divine presence. Kavod and shekinah then are both ways of talking about the felt presence of a loving, saving and guiding God.

For the writer of John’s Gospel, God’s glory is seen very specifically when the Word becomes flesh. Every thought, word and action of Christ is a manifestation of God’s glory. This is why in John’s Gospel the moment of crucifixion is seen as a moment of triumph and glory.

In baptism we are sealed with Chrism and caught up in God’s glory too. What Christ prays to the Father in these words ‘so that they may always see the glory you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. ‘ can be our prayer too. Eastertide gives us the opportunity to stay with these words.

How is God calling you to manifest his glory?

(John 17:20-26, Thursday, Eastertide, Week 7)

FILLED

When our parents and godparents presented us for Baptism they did so in the name of the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit. As the water was poured over of heads and the chrism anointed our foreheads the Holy Spirit made a home in us. Nothing than change that.

In Ch 4 of Acts we are told that Peter and John are ‘filled with the Holy Spirit’. This filling was not merely an emotional experience, it empowered them to proclaim the word of God boldly. Peter and John allowed the Spirit to guide them completely. When they spoke, it was in the Spirit that they spoke. When they healed it was in the Spirit that they healed.

In our own lives, this verse challenges us to ask if we are open to being filled and used by the Spirit. As a child I remember singing:

Spirit of the Living God,
Fall afresh on me,
Spirit of the Living God,
Fall afresh on me.
Break me, melt me, mold me, fill me.
Spirit of the Living God,
Fall afresh on me.

I had very little idea of what this would mean in my life. Now, more than forty five years later, I hope I remain as open and trusting as my young self.

Where in your life do you most need the power of the Holy Spirit?

(Acts 7:51-8:1, Sunday, Eastertide, Week 3)

EMMAUS

I don’t think I’ll ever tire of hearing the Emmaus story. I almost know the text by heart. I’m struck today as I sit to write this reflection just how healing a long walk with a friend can be. There is something about the rhythm of walking and being alongside another person that helps knots to unravel and allows a new perspective to open up.

As the disciples walk towards Emmaus, I imagine that they are experiencing a knot of grief and confusion as they try to hold together the events of the Upper Room, Gethsemane and Calvary. Scholars have speculated as to where Emmaus might be. In a sense it doesn’t really matter. The disciples set out on a physical journey and find through an encounter with a stranger that they have made a life-changing inner journey.

As the weeks of Eastertide unfold, we too are invited to be open to those moments when someone comes and walks alongside us. We are invited to be attentive to the times when by chance we are invited to share a meal with others. There will be times when our hearts too will burn.

How can you be open to encountering Christ this Eastertide?

(Luke 24:13-35, Easter Wednesday)

DORCAS

Peter went back with them immediately, and on his arrival they took him to the upper room, where all the widows stood round him in tears, showing him tunics and other clothes DORCAS had made when she was with them.

Acts records just a handful of details about Dorcas. We have become accustomed to listening to the silences in our biblical texts. That she is named already marks her out as someone significant. To be remembered as one who ‘never tired of doing good or giving in charity’ is a significant accolade in the language of the Early Church. She has spent her life embodying Christ’s self-less service.

The detail of the widows showing Peter the clothes she had made always strikes me. We live in an age where handmade clothes are a rarity. As a monastic I have the privilege of every part of my habit being handmade, including my leather belt. It’s not just handmade, it’s made to measure. It’s likely that my tunic and scapular would only fit me. When I hear this story I am reminded of the care and attention that is needed when you make a garment for someone else.

Where is Christ calling you to show care and attention this Eastertide?

(Acts 9: 31-42, Saturday, Third Week of Eastertide)

COMMON

‘The whole group of believers was united, heart and soul; no one claimed for his own use anything that he had, as everything they owned was held in COMMON.‘

This is a touchstone text for anyone who wants to explore living in community. Living in a way which expresses unity is something to which we can all aspire. There are of course many ways to do this. No one way perfectly embodies this text.

This vision of the early church is something which inspired St Benedict in the Sixth Century. Chapter 34 of his Rule is entitled ‘Distribution of Goods According to Need’. He quotes Acts 4 and makes the very important qualifier:

‘Whoever needs less should thank God and not be distressed, whoever needs more should feel humble because of his weakness, not self important because of the kindness shown him.’

Benedict understands human weakness and knows that ‘one size fits all’ will not work in monastic living. I take heart from this. Accepting where you fall on this spectrum is an important part of the inner journey in monastic life.

How does Luke’s vision inspire you today?

( Acts 4:32-37, Tuesday, Second Week of Eastertide)