What is the Work of the Monastery?
August 24, 2008 9:10am
Filed under:
silence, humility and obedience
by Sr. Mary Margaret Funk
Presented to the American Benedictine Academy
St. John’s Collegeville, MN August 10, 1992
Sister Mary Margaret Funk, osb
Our Lady of Grace Monastery Beech Grove, Indiana
Used with permission: American Benedictine Academy
Introduction:
This is a defining moment for monasteries in the Unites States. We have a small window of choice before institutional decline snuffs out our future.
Meg's comments 16 years after writing this:
If I would write this today I've make some changes, but the training on the inner life is the work of the monastery. changes I'd make to this text would be:
1. Silence and obedience are a practice that requires training, but humility has indicators and is the fruit of praxis of the mind and practices within observances. This talk on the work of the monastery was before writing Humility Matters.
2. The hermeneutics of my previous Scripture studies have been replaced by using the four voices received by the four senses of lectio divina that comes from the Medieval Exegesis sources.
3. The forms of the monastery needs the forms of the interior practices. It is not either/or, but a both/and. Interior practices are sustained by exterior observances and exterior observances are and expression of one's internal praxis/practice.
New ones will form but my concern is for our existing monasteries like yours and mine. If monasteries did not exist, what work would be left undone? What does a monastery do? What “work” names what it is doing when it is “working”?
(Footnote: In a conversation with Mary Jo Leddy I asked her where she got her description of vocation –“to give all of your life the whole of your life.” She said she thought it originated with her. And, I said, “It’s a marvelous definition of a vocation but it still leaves the question of particularity. Just what is unique about religious life?”
American monasteries are dangerously close to being indiscriminately assimilated into the culture. For the purpose of this paper, i.e., attempting to define what is the work of the monastery, I’ll cite four troubling indicators of cultural assimilation affecting the monastic way of life.
(Footnote: This language is not original. David Nygren, a Vincentian, presented to the Daughters of Charity on their data as gathered by the “Religious Life Futures Project.” They decided to take action to check the indiscriminate assimilation into culture and to take measures to be more faithful to their charism-to mediate Christ to the poor.)
Four troubling indicators:
Then I will attempt to name the work that is worthy of the vocation. Perhaps if we can name our vocation with clarity we can invite new membership with confidence and live our particular expression of monasticism with authority.
(Footnote: From a common sense point of view the use of the word “work” seems fitting in light of Lonergan’s phrase. I realize the classical Greek work of the monk was “contemplation” or theoria.)
In Greek thought there were works that made contemplation possible – these were called praxis-the observance of all commandments, especially those of charity. One arrives at theoria through praxis. Work was often used to refer to sustained effort toward achievement or gaining a product of values beyond the level of sustenance, which was produced, by labor and toil.
In post-modernity, the word praxis is preferred over work to denote conscious, socially-oriented activity of a human being striving to co-create with others, a fully human way of life.
For the purpose of this paper I am using “work” to meditate meaning of the monastic conscious intent upon doing the whole of their life. Work names what you are doing when you are doing it.
And finally, I hope to make a case for silence, humility and obedience as the functioning asceticism that holds the monastic way of life in the world, but not of the world.
Part One: Four Troubling Indicators of Cultural Assimilation
Practices of Poverty: Two Economic Systems
Since the 1983 revision of the Code of Canon Law monastic women could re-do their Vow of Poverty papers to take Total Renunciation. This expression of the vow of poverty assured that things were used and held in common. All money or gifts were possessed by the monastery.
All options in between for personal ownership were cut off or used with permission. In the spirit of Total Renunciation economic practices were updated:
Gift giving/receiving, personal/corporate budgets, health care issues (i.e. Living Will, End of Life Directives, etc.) were rethought and put into Chapter norms.
This achieved good order and legal compliance. The monastic library swelled with books, other community closets became fully stocked, and bedrooms became simplified and took on the appearance of cells rather than apartments. So, what is troublesome?
A change in consciousness is not evident. Some sisters still cultivate family and friends to provide a secondary economic support system –clothes, trips, and cash. Some still support ‘themselves’ with additional ‘works’ to supplement their income.
So, in effect, the sister has two sources of things, a) the monastery and b) another “self-made” arrangement to take care of her. Both systems are used to enhance the self. The emphasis is on taking care of sister and not the sister taking care to renounce the ‘world.’
Practices of Obedience: Casual and Friendly
Discernment is an “in” word today. Before decisions are made the nun or the Council gathers facts and discusses the implications of the decision at length. All is done in a context of prayerfulness. As prioress I’ve just completed one hundred individual conferences on Obedience.
The conversation usually centered on where to work or minister and where and with whom to live. Or, if the sister is retired, we talk about what community services fit her age and stage of health.
What is shared is information and understanding. The appointment is finalized and the mailing list is sent out. Some language is used like “I feel called” or “Would you consider?” And “I need permission to…” or “From my prayer I’ve decided to ask you…” What is adult obedience supposed to look like anyway?
We have even formed small groups to move toward mutual obedience. The conversation seems to be moving in the direction of all other small groups, i.e. support groups.
(Footnote: According to the Lilly Endowment, Inc. Annual Report the Gallup Poll is assessing the impact on spiritual growth in support groups. They estimate one out of every four adult Americans belongs to at least one support group.)
Practice of Silence: Optional and Seldom Chosen
Most monasteries have places and times of silence. With the renewal of the Liturgy of Silence there are long pauses after psalms and readings. Activities of community building have replaced repressive silence. Charity and hospitality eclipse silence, as it should.
Then what is troublesome about the renewed practices of silence? Silence is a discipline and there seems to be confusion as to what to do within silent time and silent spaces. There’s a hunger for it. The younger members seem less dependent on television.
The material silence reduces noise and sisters move within the cloister without superficial chitchat. Again, what is troublesome? This is a hunch and not fact, but I wonder if silence is just another fortress of the “self” so that thinking and personals care can be done in peace.
Weekend Migration
Most monasteries have fewer members present on weekends. Less expensive rates for flying, ministerial duties, in-service training and vacations all add up. In an average sized monastery, about 50% of the members are absent at least 50% of the weekends.
(Footnote: One recent weekend I studied the check out board: of 65 resident members at my monastery 8 were at work, 3 visiting another monastery, 2 were at our country retreat house in Brown County, 6 were at workshops at different locations, 7 were visiting their families, and two ser signed “out”, and two more were gone and had not “signed out”.)
Why is weekend migration troublesome? Isn’t it good to get away? Or is it just “the way it is these years”?
Unchecked, it leads to a monastery where the members “work out of” or even give “their week’s work” but do not give their real affective, relational self. Weekend migration places the center of gravity someplace else. The monastery becomes just an extension of boarding school or a college experience to be outgrown when one grows up.
Worse still, would be the member who is checked in as a resident but mentally and emotionally absent in place through one or another compulsive or addictive behaviors.
Part Two: Work worthy of the vocation to the monastic way of life.
If this is a defining moment for monastics what choices should we make to be a working monastery? Was the genetic moment so unique in history to be out of reach for Post-Modernity? Is there anything worth staying home for?
There is a clear call out of the monastery for the poor, the sick, the unlearned or the marginalized. It’s not checking out of the monastery that is the problem. It is when one checks back into the monastery that there is confusion or ambiguity about what is the work. Is there any clear raison d’être for belonging to and living in a monastery? Or, is it just a convenient place to work out of?
(Footnote: In 1992 from Jan to August I checked my calendar and have been away from the monastery 60 days for meetings, home visit, boards, etc.)
The defining moment for the desert fathers and mothers was to respond to the invitation to leave all things and follow Christ. May factors clustered to prompt this movement, but the result is that the hermit’s life became a treasure in the Christian Tradition. Hermits soon clustered into lauras around Master Teachers.
Eventually communities sprang up around these elders or abbas/ammas and became full-scale monasteries.
(Footnote: Thomas Keating says that what is needed today is a modern form of a monastic mechanism to enable all God-seekers to give all of their life the whole of their life through a valid expression of our Christian tradition of contemplation. He is very convincingly training all who are interested in Centering Prayer through the Contemplative Outreach Movement. I am privileged to be on his National Faculty and have teamed with him on intensive Retreats. It is a bold, vigorous movement. Only time will tell if it can be as sturdy as the monasticism of old. This paper is my version that would doubt that meditation practice can replace monastic forms.)
In John Cassian we find a description of the monastic vocation. He seems to use the word vocation a “calling” and there are three points to the origin of this call:
No matter which point of origin the monk traces the call to, the goal or the end is the same: to seek God, to be one with God. The end is possession of eternal life, but the immediate goal is purity of heart. To this end one sacrifices “whatever then can disturb that purity and peace of mind —even thought it may seem useful and valuable.” (Cassian p. 321 Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. The Ramsey translation was not yet published.)
There are three sorts of renunciations according to Cassian:
The renunciant, then, leaves all possessions, former preoccupations, professions or desires to do one thing, to pray without ceasing —to seek God. Since the monk understood the profound implication that the kingdom of God was within, then, conversely, she/he understood that “nothing else” can be within you. (Footnote ibid. p. 300)
The monk took on these six characteristics when he/she followed the paths of Augustine, Basil, Cassian or Benedict. Is this what they thought they were doing?
Took up a pattern of good, moral life-giving relationships.
Forsake compulsions and known evils.
Checked motivations of greed and selfishness.
Took on the reverse of tendencies toward laziness and reinforcements of original sin.
Explicitly left all things that would detract from the spiritual journey.
And to take up the cross and move toward contemplation and union with God.
How were these aspirations moved from desire to lifestyle? The external renunciations were the easiest part of the ascetic life. Chapters abound in the early rules governing exteriority: clothing, food, times for prayer, rest and work are detailed and explicit in directives.
The Rule of Benedict is a masterpiece of good order with care and attention given to make the way of life possible for even the weakest of monks.
(Footnote about Rule of Benedict being an accurate term rather than St. Benedict’s Rule.)
Does this form create an environment so that the monastery works for the monk? Or, can we say today that if only our practices were in place and practiced by every monk or nun our monasteries would be working?
We have retrieved practices of Total Renunciation of things, of obedience and of silence and still our monasteries lack zeal and depth evidence by physical and emotional absence. Our members seem to be someplace else. Where are they?
It seems to me that we changed external practices, set in motion a series of processes and procedures but there is no change in consciousness. Probably the interior life is still seeking the self instead of renouncing the self and seeking God.
(Footnote: Patricia Wittberg, Creating a Future for Religious Life. We moved through Chapter decision like other institutions following a bureaucratic model.)
In the American culture there is a strong permission for the individual to serve the self rather than transcend the self and express the self in selfless service. The classic definition of original sin leaves the self with a lifetime of work to “put on Christ” and to donate the self as Christ did (Gal. 3:17; Romans 6:5, 11; Col. 3:3, 3:5).
You can choose to follow Christ as an observer rather than a participant. Many religious are just that, “religious”. They are content to join a group or even to it alone with a religious attitude making vague and random intentions to live a sinless life and do good.
This simply is not enough in a Post-Modern culture with religion no longer can carry the believer.
(Footnote: Scott R. Appleby and Martin E. Marty, Fundamentalisms Observed.)
It seems to me that the crisis in religious life is that even religious life institutes, including monasticism, cannot carry the vowed believer any more. Though grace abounds and God’s creatures are good, the self has to be trained into Christianity as Soren Kierkegarrd said 140 years ago.
(footnote: Soren Kiekegaard, Training in Christianity. My first draft of this paper on the work of the monastery was a close parallel study as to doing for monasticism what Kierkegaard did for Christianity within Christendom.)
This training is undergone consciously and actively.
(Footnote: Karl Rahner, The Practice of Faith: A Handbook of Contemporary Spirituality. Pp56-57. “True spirituality does not consist in pious feelings…there can be no vigorous spirituality without discipline, without a certain hardness against oneself, without a plan…theorizing can not replace a life of prayer, faith, self-denial and humility.”)
All major religions have such programs. In Christianity East and West the monastic model is predominantly the tradition of living under an Abbot and a Rule. The structure works, but only if there is the work done within the structure.
It is my thesis that the third renunciation has not been taken seriously by our generation “…that by which we detach our soul from all present and visible things, and contemplate only things to come, and set our heart on what is invisible (John Cassian, Conference 3:6).
This third renunciation is more than a technique to be used at prayer, meditation or contemplation. This training in internal renunciation couples with exterior renunciation to make up the work of the monastery.
American monasteries are dangerously close to being indiscriminately assimilated into the culture.
The exterior renunciations are controls on the environment to renounce things, former professions, marriage, children, and family and to set up an alternate culture. To renounce obstacles to contemplation further purifies traces of culture carried into the monastery by the seeker. We have changed external forms and left “to choice” the internal business of thoughts and intentions.
There seems to be an agreement that the goal was union with God. This union in the Greek mind was the restoration of the original order; perfection was attaining the pure or theoria (contemplation). The monk/nun was one who embraced the ascetical life of removing all obstacles that are in the way of unceasing prayer. Sometimes these pious practices got translated not asketes but athletes (Acts. 24:16).
This process is described in a general way as follows:
(footnote: Cassian Book V. Chapter XLIII p.233 “…Hear then in a few words how you can mount up to the heights of perfection with any effort or difficulty.)
“The beginning” of our salvation and of wisdom is, according to Scripture, “fear of the Lord.” From fear of the Lord arises salutary compunction. From compunction of heart springs renunciation, i.e. nakedness and comtemptment of all possessions. From nakedness is begotten humility. From humility the mortification of desires. Through mortification of desires all faults are extirpated, rooted out and decay. By driving out faults virtues shoot up and increase. By the budding of virtues purity of heart is gained. By purity of heart the perfection of apostolic love is acquired.”
The Christian must repent and remove oneself from sin. The state of sin is prevented by exercising mortifications that purify the soul from guilty deeds, unruly passions or abiding inner dispositions inimical to the goodly life.
After repentance forgiveness is assured so that the monk/nun continues his/her state of grace through perpetual compunction (penthos). After sin is thoroughly rooted out the monk/nun notices the obstacle to union with God, which is too much attachment to the self. The self, or more accurately, the propensity toward self-love instead of loving God through expressions of the self are preoccupied by thoughts, desires and passions that need reconciliation.
Thoughts give rise to desires. Desires, not checked or redirected become passions. Passions lead the God seeker out of control and possibly into sin or even into a sinful state.
So, even if the person enters the monastery this interior work must be added to the external renunciations of being celibate, holding things in common and even wearing a habit. The exterior work takes on two parts:
1. Negative praxis, which is overcoming obstacles (to contemplation or theoria). It is aimed at managing sins, passions, desires and thoughts and,
2. Positive praxis, which is directed at cultivating the virtues.
Logismos:
To go deeper into the tradition of negative praxis the training of logismos is indispensable. Retrieving the Eight Thoughts (sometimes translated Faults) the monk/nun can find a full catechesis in the Philokalia. And in the complete works of John Cassian, especially Books V-X11 of the Institutes.
(Footnote: St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St. Makarios of Corinth. Translated by G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard and Killistos Ware. The Philokalia.)
The seeker soon learns that to work on vices or virtues is pointless since the only control one has is over one’s thoughts. It is in the thoughts that rise up on the screen of consciousness that the monastic can become more and more astute in recognizing the origin and nature of the impulse. She/he can discover the “thoughts” and their importance and either consent or redirect the thought. The intention is to consent to God’s will.
This interior movement is continuous and eventually passionless since it neither suppresses nor represses any thought. If thoughts are watched during consciousness usually a spirit of detachment evolves because the thoughts don’t coalesce into desires and passions.
Logismos is the key to discernment of spirits. Were these thoughts from God, the human self or the Evil one?
The tradition of the logismos provides catechesis on the most common categories of thoughts. The Eight Thoughts (Faults) of Cassian speak of gluttony, fornication, avarice, dejection, anger, acedia, vainglory and pride. These are the generic thoughts that are the most typical obstacles to prayer. The negative praxis is to attend to these thoughts.
These thoughts or faults got translated in the West and came down to us as the Seven Capitol Sins. (Gregory the Great is credited with this catechetical tool. Unfortunately it lost the whole tradition of catching these thoughts early and often and not when it was a full-blown sin. I’ve translated the eight thoughts as food, sex, things, anger, dejection, vainglory and pride to get at the first rising of the impulse that becomes an image of desire.)
Some practices advocated by the Eastern Christian fathers and mothers would be custody of the heart, which is attentiveness and prayer. This led to constant prayer. In his use of prayer ceaseless pray became the dominant asceticism because it purifies the heart filling consciousness with God. Other methods included memorizing Scripture, invoking the name of Jesus and the Jesus Prayer. Benedict advocated 4-6 hours of Lectio Divina which flooded the heart with communion with God.
Logismos is the key to discernment of spirits. Were these thoughts from God, the human self or the Evil one? The first step was to lay one’s thoughts open to the Abbot or an elder. The other was to become detached from the self-willed systems. Instead of talking to one’s self each thought is done with another.
Therefore, this “confession” was a practice of renunciation (the third form which separates the self from selfishness). This kind of confessing has more to do with believing than reporting guilty actions.
This negative praxis (i.e. using the teachings of Eastern Christian traditions) requires careful study of the culture from which it comes –early antiquity, so that it is not misused once again. A fruit of these practices is apatheia –getting beyond emotional pain.
But, the West, as early as St. Jerome discarded the asceticism of logismos and with it a praxis that engaged the heart of monastic work.
(footnote: According to Evagrius (Tomas Spidlik, The Spirituality of the Christian East, P.239), the logismos is not a “thought” in the true sense of the word, it is a mental “image” which arises in a person endowed with sensibility. This image appears not in the nous, the mind, but in the inferior part of the human cognitive faculty, the dianoia where the reasoning for and against something takes place. This image, meanwhile, proves attractive; it stirs the mind, a passionate movement, then arises to incite the person to a secret decision against God’s law, or at least to some sort of dialogue with this image, which presents itself as some sort of idol, and should instead be driven away.)
The asceticism of positive practice got more attention. The dominant path of positive praxis is obedience to God’s will through listening to human mediators and following the prescription of law, to set I place the modern superior and the rule.
Positive praxis was to lead the virtuous life and so there are libraries devoted to virtues and vices. The dominant and sene qua non virtue was charity. Love as Christ loved was the mark of all followers. And so in the Christian West there sprang up hundreds and thousands of religious communities and institutes of exemplary virtue.
(Footnote: The West stressed meditation, not contemplation, image and not imageless prayer, imitation rather than adoration, active rather than contemplative, apostolic rather than monastic, kataphatic over apophatic prayer, charity over mysticism. Both East and West lost ground: the East with negative praxis and the West with positive praxis lost the balance of the two sides of the same coin.)
In the Christian East monasticism remained the dominant form of religious life with a living tradition of logismos the monastic life kept to its vigor and original intelligibility.
The Rule of Benedict presumes the reader is familiar with the Institutes and Conferences. The monastic way of life presumed all three renunciations. There was a living tradition of logismos through which the intentional practice of silence, obedience and humility could find expression. The Rule of Benedict in the light of this third renunciation is no more compelling.
Part Three: Retrieving silence, humility and obedience and reapropriating these virtues for those living in Post-Modernity
To move the monastic structures from idea to action it is not enough for the monk to practice “forms” of external renunciation but must also practice interior renunciation. These grip the believer at the most intimate level of “thought.” The ancient teaching of logismos is an asceticism of relinquishment of self-will and tendencies to sin or indifference to the quest for God and sanctification.
(Footnote: So deVoque is on target when he says the purpose of a monastery is for personal sanctification. Is this not regressive in a modern world wherein a cosmic Christ urges to strive for a global-consciousness and to construct socially responsible structures for universal salvation?
Not if sanctification leads one to this kind of strong faith of word and deed. “Such is indeed the pedagogy of monasticism. It goes from outer to the inner, from practice to reflection, from observances to the spirit.” The Rule of Saint Benedict: A Doctrinal and Spiritual Commentary, P.313.)
All lifestyles are expected to pattern good, moral, life-giving relationships and forsake compulsions, known evils and unconscious motivations of greed and selfishness. The monastic lifestyle is engineered to take on the tendencies toward laziness and reinforcements of original sin, to explicitly leave all things that would detract from this spiritual journey.
The coenobitic (life in common under an Abbot) lifestyle is to do this with other like-minded God seekers.
(Footnote: I prefer to name vocation as the best “lifestyle” for me to “make it through,” there is a debate as to whether the monastic or hermit lifestyle is a higher calling/lower calling for someone needing excessive spiritual nourishment. Some enlightened folks need very little structure to mediate the holy.
(footnote: In 2008 reading this…. I would no longer use the word lifestyle, as that is too casual and self-chosen. Today I’d use the technical language of “style or manner of life” as in converstatio morum. Also, today I’d have a sober preference for more structure, rather than less because of my own experience of the human condition.)
The practice of the virtues, especially silence, humility and obedience replace the previous “worldly ” way of life. The “thoughts” within the inner consciousness are the points of contact for the person who seriously has left a previous way of life and is undergoing a new one. The monk/nun underwent a conscious deprogramming to disidentify with his/her culture insofar as it warred against Gospel values.
Let’s return to our troubling indicators of indiscriminate cultural assimilation –external renunciation and interior renunciation.
Exterior renunciation: Things, professional work, celibacy, the entrance in the monastery entails the letting go of possessions, professions and former relationships with family, friends and lovers. Obviously, the purpose of the calling would be negated if the entrant would renege on each count. It does happen- the monastic can have all the things of the system provided by the monastery and also cultivate a secondary source of money, clothing, travel, equipment and even dwellings.
The person, usually under obedience –with permission, gets assigned to a job, ministry, position or work and becomes intensely involved. The drive for perfection often compels the monastic to be excellent, competent, and highly skilled and quite professional. Sometimes the profession itself requires an alternate set of things such as a car and a credit card (laptop, cell phone). Travel and peer group relationships are not optional.
Family bonds often tighten, as children become adults-especially for nuns, brothers, and priests. There is just such immediacy to each parent and sibling that one experiences but can not explain. It is like the religious never married and hence does to belong to anyone else. The monastic often takes care of the elderly parent and the family things are still available as if one had never left home.
That same kind of blurring of boundaries can exist with religious’ outside friends. Now when peer groups of younger members are few in number there is often a “primary relationship” with persons outside. Some members of religious communities have adopted children or families.
In the 1990’s we have less formal structures as well as fluid communication and multiple relationships both inside and outside the monastery. Should any of the above be changed? It is the thesis of this paper to give a resounding ”no” because we have already tried with a notable lack of success because of a failure to couple external renunciation with internal renunciation.
For the sake of this paper let’s presume that a monastery somewhere in the United States has retrieved logismos ascetics and reappropriated the virtues of silence, humility and obedience. Let us dream together.
(Terrence Kardong “The Abbot as Leader” American Benedictine Review, 42:1 March 1991.)
Silence:
Silence is the language of listening. The monk listens to hear God’s word, God’s will, and God’s pattern of communication. Silence is not easy –especially today. Monks today have extensive training in the practice of silence.
The training is to be both a study into what other monks did with their silence, i.e. St. Gregory and his compunction of heart; but, also training to move from desiring silence as a good attitude and value to aspire to, but to actually translate silence into a behavioral practice.
Of old there were always places and times of formal silence. There was even the modeling and expectation of material silence, which means the practice of movement of the body and things without intrusive noise.
The classics point to multiple benefits of silence (Ambrose Wathen, Silence (Washington DC: Cistercian Publications, 1973). But the sisters in formation would be stressed these three purposes of silence:
1. Self-awareness – the mind is in continuous chatter with itself – the conversation edits the moment by moment commentary on impressions, thoughts, feelings, physical signals from inside and out.
To be aware of what is going on inside is the first movement of the Spirit. The Spirit of God is not the self so to get in touch with the inside stuff of the self is to be the first movement of listening.
The second motion is to consciously lay aside thoughts or at least lift them up to God as they are and place them before God or God’s representative.
The third motion is to still the mind so that it would be ready to rest in God if that is God’s will or to act according to God’s will.
Notice the three motions are very active and require energy and purity of intention: to listen to one’s thoughts, to raise them up, to lay them before God for discerning action. This activity is called prayer.
The point is that without silence prayer is usually an unreflective chatter punctuated by saying prayers.
Self-awareness is exposed for what is in silence. We come to God naked and eventually all deceit is factored out. This painful process is exercised efficiently through the practice of humility and obedience. But, that gets us ahead of ourselves in this essay. It is in silence that the tradition of logismos can be retrieved. The Eight Thoughts afflict everyone and can provide asceticism for the monastic seeking God.
Silence mediates the truth about God and ourselves.
2. The second purpose for silence is adoration. It is in silence that the awareness of the presence of God moves beyond an intermittent ecstatic moment of wonder into the abiding responsiveness that God is God and I am creature.
(Footnote: Without this deep abiding consciousness, creation is in service of the self. Self will and manipulation of religion is inverted –Jesus is another friend along the path to wholeness. The Gospel speaks of paradox not wholeness. Wholistic spirituality is a dangerous corrective in a therapeutic age.)
The silence is to provide space in each person’s consciousness of an Other much beyond the self even though, because of Jesus Christ, our beings are inextricably united and make for a unified creation of the One Christ loving him/herself.
(Footnote: Edward Schillebeeckx, Church: The Human Story of God P. 71. “Mysticism is a dialogue in which both conversation partners are intensively at work, but in which one partner, God seems to be silent, for all his active influence.”)
Mystical experience is a source experience. There are three constants in mysticism as a way of life:
In the first phase, there is a sense among mystics that something fundamental has happened: a sort of sense of “Illumination”. In it, the old familiar picture of the world and self (the “ego”) of the person concerned is radically shattered: his or her old world collapses and he or she has experienced something completely new, overwhelmingly new, which changes the whole of his or her life.
Even the old words are no longer enough; the new experience calls for new words if it is to be described or articulated. To sum up, it is a kind of breakthrough, a collapse of the old world; an experience of something completely new: light or fire, a glow of love, or nada, or a “You.”
We also find paradoxes like “all” and “nothing” among the mystics, side by side; most characteristic is Ruysbroeck’s expression “dark light.” This is something transcendent and at the same time all-embracing: the source both of all objectivity and all subjectivity.
It is an unconditional experience of salvation, an experience also of totality, of reconciliation with all things, despite conditions for suffering and lack of reconciliation.
Then usually follows a second phase: the first great love seems to disappear; there is a gnawing doubt. Was it all authentic?
There comes what many mystics call the phase of purgation(catharsis), through a heightened concentration; also processes of love in what is experienced as human wounding, though this does not hurt those involved but rather raises them up.
This second phase usually ends up in a night and a wilderness; authentic mysticism is often to a good thing, but a torment.
And yet! For ultimately there is a discovery of the features of the divine love, albeit only in the trace that the beloved has left behind in the being of the mystic. There remains a mediated “immediacy”; there is the pure presence of the divine, but also the natural presence of the mystic with God.
“Mystical union”, mutuality. And yet, this is always with a painful feeling of absence; not-seeing.
3. The third purpose of silence is to seek God. The silent movement between God and the monk is the sacred space of dismantling the false self and creating the possibility maybe to hear for the first time the cry of the poor. It’s in silence when stilled from the inside the self can be free from defenses that protect the ego from the need and from the desire to change.
It is in this conversation with God interiorly that the monk finds that the monastic myth –Abbot-community engaged in work and prayer can be demythologized and with a second naiveté that Paul Recour talks about really happens!
The guests, poor, sick, elderly are Christ received. The community is the lived experience like the one envisioned by the early Christian community (Acts 2:42). The work and the prayer in common are fitting responses to the Gospel.
God is not out there someplace nor is God merely a subjective feeling nor is God an optional belief. In a functionally irreligious culture this monastic myth intentionally patterned and mutually shared is a great bond.
When operative in the midst of a functioning community this myth gives silence a renewed purpose and vigor. Without silence there is little recollection. Without silence the chatter fills the space wherein the Gospel message is echoing through various human and mystic channels. Signs and wonders remain unconnected to the word and deed.
That this training in silence is very difficult even for the most reflective people. Most want time for silence but for the purpose of time for their own thoughts and not letting go and getting stilled.
In a psychological age the emotional life dominates. Feelings and emotions are indicators of reality but not reality in and of themselves. It is in silence that we distance ourselves even from our own feelings and act after discerned deliberation. Thomas Keating calls this spiritual poise. Silence is an absolute necessity for persons to live in relationship with others.
Training in silence has to be more extensive than to merely provide a quiet atmosphere through methods of cloister, nightly silence, silent retreats and days of recollection. Like any practice, it cannot be learned quickly or through episodic events.
Training in silence is a practice to be taught. The teaching is in on–going dialogue with the monks as to what they are doing actively and interiorly during the time designated to be silent.
Some critics say silence is a grace or a gift that you either get or don’t receive from God. It seems that is an escapist tactic because whether the monk receives the quiet space inside or not does not absolve the monk from cultivating the virtue of silence through its practice. This kind of activity is the work of the monastery.
Silence has at least three purposes in the monastery:
Part Three continued on Humility: Retrieving silence, humility and obedience and reapropriating these virtues for those living in Post-Modernity
Humility
The second monastic virtue that requires work worthy of lifetime is humility. No other chapter in the Rule is more refracted than is Chapter Seven on Humility. Humility is also the work of the monastery and needs to be taken seriously by the modern monk. Humility, too, is more than an aspiration or an attitude.
Humility is a virtue to be practiced. Like other practices it cannot be learned except through training in repetitious patterns so that humility can be come a lifestyle.
(Footnote: One time about four years ago, as part of a grant from Lilly Endowment, Inc. I invited five Prioresses to an overnight meeting at Beech Grove with the previously agreed upon topic of “Humility.” We asked each other if we would recognize humility if we saw it. We asked what practices could possibly express humility in contemporary monasteries of women. We had no conclusions but the dialogue was significant and without pretense or platitudes of piety.)
Humility has two major parts to its marriage in the soul – asceticism and truthful identity. Chapter Seven is a clear transposition of Desert Spirituality.
(Footnote: Benedict takes the desert spirituality of John Cassian, Rule of the Master and Evagrius/Origen.)
In the midst of a communal setting the desert, whether it is an historically real, or symbolic journey, is the motion of all monks; to go apart from culture and take on the demons that interfere with purity of heart. To put the desert in the middle of the monastery all one needs to do is to practice humility.
Asceticism is the outcome of humility since the monk who has undergone a conversion feels filled with a desire to follow God even to persecution like the early martyrs. This desire seeks to respond to God’s grace by doing actions that express one’s inclination to serve God as God. This ascetical life is the monk’s action in response to God’s invitation. It is the corrective of serving the self.
The desert is a place that isolates motivations, expectations, and cultural conditioning so that the monk can come toward God with utmost purified zeal. Again, humility is the truthful thought between dejection and pride or vainglory as described by Cassian and Evagarius.
Desert spirituality in a modern monastery is the practice of selflessness and willingness to act without reservation and no expectation of return. The ascetic does moral actions to build strength and courage and make “giving” a lifestyle. Asceticism is assertiveness to bear one another’s burdens or to anticipate another’s needs.
Desert spirituality assertively accepts suffering and uses this inevitable event for surrendering one’s will. It is just the opposite of letting oneself be and become a victim. This ascetical lifestyle is to embrace life without denial systems and move through the consequences without guilt or regret. The disposition is hopeful and even joyful.
So what kind of practices can be done today in humility? A few in this list may make you laugh and say that’s just life anywhere. The difference is motivation. The monk is asked to stay in the long rhythm of life and attend to his/her intentions:
The list is endless. The point is that training in asceticism must be ongoing and seen as a practical outcome of humility. There is the twin partner in this marriage to asceticism – truthful identity. Humility is the virtue that places the monk in truthful identity with himself/herself, community and the world.
Rather than an expose on the false self-system and its hold on all of us, I’d like to assume that as a theory base and move into current practices in the monastery that are examples of humility:
Identity is often negotiated through one’s ability to work. Identity continues the process of personhood through one’s professional track. Simply put, we become what we do. The monastic practices of humility are a control that whatever we do is in the service of the truth. We are trained to disidentify from what we do so that God is the content of our work.
The monastic is trained to separate from one’s work in two ways:
1. To see the results as not an extension of one’s identity but as emergent outcomes according to God’s will. The monk waters but God gives the increase and another does the harvest. In sum, the monk works and relinquishes control of profit and/or achievement.
The practice is to work hard out of one’s center of truth but not to identify with the results and become the role. It is in this sense that the religious has only one profession, i.e. to seek God. One may work in a profession but not become the role. All roles are in service of the monastic profession.
2. The second practice in humility is the partner to relinquishing results but it is also to attribute to the self only God’s grace rather than one’s ability, talent, experience or hard work. Any achievement is not in service of the ego.
A test of this is how we respond to failure. So the practice is detachment from results or feedback of how one is doing.
(Footnote: Thomas Keating says any self recrimination is always neurotic because it translates that the person believes she is better than this and that failure is not possible for this exalted person.)
When the monk/nun is separated from the results and the commentary about the results, humility flourishes. The Gospel is sometimes very countercultural. Christ died for us. The monastic just works without personal gain. The truth is known by God and revealed to those without their own agenda. Humility is a lifestyle to practice self-forgetfulness.
Humility is not exalted nor dominating, never boasts and lives every day without denial systems. It is possible to do God’s will with confidence. Humility is the ascetical life of little practices with attention to intention as well as working to seek God with a truthful rigor of disidentification with the self and put on Christ instead of self.
(Footnote: Then how does the monastic have a healthy self-esteem? Notice the practices are not to put down the ego, it is just that ultimate fulfillment is to do God’s will. Stages of growth usually follow the older theories on spiritual paths and yet do not contradict the psychological development theories. They put the judging of growth’s assessment on God and leave only the motivation as the burden of the seeker.)
Part Three continued on Obedience: Retrieving silence, humility and obedience and reapropriating these virtues for those living in Post-Modernity
Humility is not exalted nor dominating, never boasts and lives everyday without denial systems. It is possible to do God’s will with confidence.
Since the monk has restructured his/her consciousness through silence and humility, obedience is obvious and attractive. However, it takes a lifetime to learn obedience. The practices have two forms:
In the Rule of Benedict, Chapter Five on Obedience is his strictest, most uncompromising section. He requests that the monk surrender his self will and donate the self to God through the monastery. The Abbot assumes the role of Christ in the dialogue.
For the purpose of this dream, i.e. to name the work of the monastery, I do not hesitate to say that Obedience is not only possible today but also essential for the monastery to claim any meaning in its structures.
Obedience requires:
Transparent honesty
Purity of intentions
Whole-hearted willingness
Spiritual attentiveness
Sustained compassion
Or Obedience quickly degenerates into:
Manipulation of needs
Escape from responsibility
Competition for power
Domination for control
Indifference instead of risk
Deadly compulsions unchecked
Projection on others
To Follow Christ is more than becoming part of the herd. It is equally dangerous for an individual seeker to go it alone as in the case of a recluse. As Lonergan points out, individual bias and group bias are equally dangerous. The seeker can and does get reinforcement from the false self and from the unreflective group.
(Footnote: Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding p. 237. “…The actors in the drama of living become stagehands, costumes, gorgeous, but there is no play. Clearly, by becoming practical, culture reduces its one essential function and, by the renunciation, condemns practicality to ruin.
The general bias of common sense has to be counterbalanced by a representative of detached intelligence that both appreciates and criticizes, that identifies the good neither with the new nor with the old, that above all else, neither will be forced into any ivory tower of ineffectualness by the social surd nor, on the other hand, will capitulate to its absurdity.”)
The role of Abbot is to lead the group toward the desired goal of preferring nothing to Christ. The Abbot can also enable the individual to discern intention, motivation, authentic service to others and true devotion to God.
(Footnote: History shows that this can and has gone wrong in so many ways.)
That the monks simply do not have the Abbot’s role of authority as part of their spirituality has scarred so many. Or, so few Abbots ever played the role that there is no memory of that wise, discerning activity in their midst. For the most part, monastic women call on the Prioress for information, communication or permission on budget items. Rare is the person asking for a discerned insight.
Rarer still is there openness for the possibility of a no.” Adults “discern” on their own and resist being told. Groups are too large; discussions are too many for meaningful dialogue. Defenses are strong and emotions protect the ego. If individuals do not get their way there is unconscious retaliation. Loving without return breaks this cycle of violence.
Some practices of Obedience with the Abbot
(have a footnote about a publication from Conference of American Prioresses to be approved at Beech Grove, 1993. But the following list is my own)
The Abbot takes time to know each monk. Each monk knows the Abbot. The content of the dialogue is the stuff of ordinary life- what is going on in the practice of silence, the practice of humility? Out of this silence and humility:
The Abbot initiates the conversation with each monastic and the Chapter as a whole as to what is the work of the monastery. Somewhere this dialogue should surface the agreed upon authorizing vision of this monastery. It is this vision that sets the boundaries of most conversations around Obedience.
The practice of appointments is a culminating ritual to effect word and deed. What is written is more like covenant than contract.
These practices can keep on going: The Abbot is accountable in both areas of administration of the goods and order of the monastery as well as the teaching “office” of giving homilies, conferences, reports and teachable moments.
The Abbot must especially teach Obedience by example:
No other claim on affect or time takes priority to the community (not family, friends, former profession, personal outreach ministry).
Time is publicly posted so monastic can have access to time.
Informal time is given (recreation) as is given by any other monk.
The Abbot has resources to do the work but not symbols against community lifestyle. The Abbot guards against practices that demoralize the common life. Benedict points out how useless it is to teach one thing and do another. The test of all “special” needs for the Abbot is to ask “is it for the self or in service of others?”
Community (Mutual Obedience)
In several places in the Rule of Benedict is the exhortation toward mutual obedience – especially Chapter 72 on Good Zeal. To do God’s will in common is the object of mutual obedience.
The monastic myth is not played out “as if” Christ is present but because Christ “is” present in the breaking of the bread, in the breaking of the word. Members believe these religious words are really real, or were not written for some one else for a different time. This translates to layer after layer of belief upon belief.
Again, all decisions are made in the light of the Gospel, the Rule, The Abbot and the lived experience of the community.
Discernment
The link between “thoughts” and obedience to the Abbot or Prioress and mutual obedience is discernment. The monastic myth is to replicate the early Christian community as depicted in Acts. The individual follower fully incorporates putting on the mind of Christ to use Paul’s phrase “I no longer live, Christ lives in me.”
(Bernard McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the 5th Century, P. 131. “The first layer of Christian mysticism…was monastic. Though its fundamental conceptions were rooted in Judaism. Hellenism and early Christianity ideas needed Institutions to have effects. It was through the mystical theories found in Origen, Augustine and other early Latin mystics reached into the centuries to come. These spiritual systems, whether or not they were created specifically for a monastic context soon became monastic.”)
The election of Abbot or Prioress would be done through a prayerful discernment process. The decision is finalized by formal voting according to norms of the Code of Universal Law. All decisions subsequently are made in a mode of discerning –What is God’s will? and seeing with the eyes of the heart more than reasoning. Discernment is part of the wisdom tradition more than theological inquiry or business deals.
The shift from ordinary decision-making would take on characteristics of discernment. The individual or the community would notice the point of origin – is the idea from God, self or the Evil One?
The choice is freely accepted and fully grasped as both a duty and a graced privilege.
The roles of leadership and membership are worm only in service of the Gospel and not self-ordained (I came to do the will of the father).
All dialogue and conversation come from a profound silence wherein the believer speaks thoughts in a detached manner of laying the thoughts out there for “discernment” of the Abbot, elders or community members.
All extremes are avoided as “extremes meet” and usually bear the fruits of self will and pride rather than humility.
The effect of the decisions would create a unity between external renunciation and internal renunciation to work toward structures that remove obstacles to contemplation.
From contemplation emerge clear directives for action. Cultural and personal noise is diminished so that imperatives are revealed with a compelling force.
Whatever the emergent outcomes that lead to action, whether it is for the monk/nun or community, there is a good zeal that filters out any inappropriate motivations such as comfort, fear or competition.
The context of living in the monastery becomes ordinary and of a low profile since it is just a trellis that helps a rose grow over the course of a life–span.
Holiness or sanctification is a universal call to all believers in the Christian path. This spiritual journey of work and prayer is attainable by awareness in any other context such as marriage or single apostolic service. However, it is more explicit and bonded in a religious community in the monastic tradition.
The word vow is a term to lock into obligation the intention to pray always. Vow (to pay to God) lifts aspirations and desires to the level of a lifestyle of decisions moving toward living a mystical union with God.
The shadow side or the “thoughts” of gluttony, fornication, avarice, anger, dejection, acedia vainglory and pride are used as an asceticism to move from a life of indiscriminate living to conscious restructuring of our interior life to live as Jesus did. This moves one beyond thinking to just moving with being in God.
The culture would be discerned as to what should and should not be assimilated as if from God.
(Footnote: “But do not trust any and every spirit, my friends; test the spirits to see where they come from God.” Jn. 4:1.)
The dream could continue indefinitely and is not outside of the Benedictine Tradition. Living a lifestyle of discernment would incorporate the retrieval of the ancient practice of logismos. This might shift both the content of conversations and current changes of what is considered spiritual direction.
The criteria for trusting an elder, to lay one’s thoughts upon, would be if the elder has managed to move beyond being a victim of the eight Thoughts and some one who has espoused the practices of silence, humility and obedience. Spiritual direction would assist each monastic to do the work of the monastery both interiorly and exteriorly.
Part Four: Attention to Method
To retrieve the monastic tradition and to reappropriate it for our times and us, one must learn to read the Rule of Benedict using contemporary methods of hermeneutics. We can use contemporary Scripture studies to teach us how to read the Rule of the light of the Gospel.
To examine themes of asceticism or virtues in the light of four dominant referents yield a rich teaching indeed:
Without such a method there is a danger of linear thinking that could lead to selective retrieval of the past or narrow themes that would be dangerously narrow and could lead to fundamentalism.
Again all decisions are made in the light of the Gospel, the Rule, the Abbot and the lived experience of the community (Learned these reading books by Paul Recour).
From the outside, this community looks ordinary and has the rhythm of work and prayer. Obedience is the work within the work and prayer.
(Footnote: Sandra M. Schneider’s The Revelatory Text: Interpreting the New Testament as Sacred Scripture. Uses hermeneutical dialectic between Scripture and tradition. Her method in this book is similar to how I read the Rule of Benedict and Benedict’s sources.)
Summary:
So, what is the work of the monastery?
The work of the monastery is to provide structures for exterior and interior renunciation so that the individual monastic and the monastery can discern God’s will and lead lives in union with God.
The vowed life can be the fullest expression of intention to consent to God. The work is more about undoing than doing and there’s a need for continual vigilance to be aware of one’s selfish tendencies and cultural biases that can dupe the monastic into an illusory way of life instead of the monastic way of life.
A retrieval of the negative asceticism of logismos and the positive praxis of silence, humility and obedience need to be set in motion in an appropriate manner for each monastic in each monastery. Those of us who live this way of life must do this work so that it is not just another form imposed from the outside.
Conclusion:
We are moving toward this work of the monastery or we would not even be speaking of it here at St. John’s, Collegeville during the 1992 ABA meeting.
My hunch is that the farther we get into this work of renunciation and restructuring of our consciousness we will experience a second naiveté that will reconnect us with all we have left behind. With purified hearts we will revisit our former ways of life, family, friends, prior professions, and even “thoughts” to know, maybe for the first time, that we are in the culture but not of the culture. Maybe we won’t need to stay at the monastery on weekends, or maybe we do not even need the monastic structures at all. Or is our culture so pervasive that only a monastery can do this kind of work?
