The Rule of Benedict

by Joan Chittister

  But Benedict is saying even more than this. Benedict is saying that the function of spiritual leadership is not to intimidate people into submission by fear or guilt. The function of spiritual leadership is to show in our own lives the beauty that oozes out of those who live the spiritual life to its fullness. The function of spiritual leadership is to enshrine what a good life can be.

  The abbot and prioress are to make of themselves the light that guides and the crystal that rings true. Otherwise, why should anyone else attempt the Way at all? “Love work and hate lordship,” the Hasidim teach their rabbis. It is Benedict’s teaching, too.

  Jan. 12 – May 13 – Sept. 12

  The prioress or abbot should avoid all favoritism in the monastery. They are not to love one more than another unless they find someone better in good works and obedience. One born free is not to be given higher rank than one born a slave who becomes a monastic, except for some other good reason. But the prioress and abbot are free, if they see fit, to change anyone’s rank as justice demands. Ordinarily, all are to keep to their regular places, because “whether slave or free, we are all one in Christ” (Gal. 3:28; Eph. 6:8) and share equally in the service of the one God, for “God shows no partiality among persons” (Rom. 2:11). Only in this are we distinguished in God’s sight: if we are found better than others in good works and in humility. Therefore, the prioress and abbot are to show equal love to everyone and apply the same discipline to all according to their merits.

  If Benedict of Nursia was anything, he was not a pious romantic. He knew the gospel and he knew life and he set out to bring the two together.

  In one paragraph of this chapter, he shapes a completely new philosophy of authority, in another paragraph he hints at a different philosophy of religious life, and in this one he rejects, out of hand, the common social structures of the period. In his communities, slave and free are equal, as the Gospels demand.

  This is the Jesus life. What is insane in the streets is common coin here. What is madness to politicians is life breath here. What is unheard of in nice company is taken for granted here. Here people are ranked in the order in which they came to the group—not by education, not by money, not by social status, but simply according to the moment they came to Christ. There is, as a result, no rank at all and this is very disconcerting to a world that loves uniforms and titles and knowing people who are in Who’s Who.

  But do not be misled. Benedict is a realist, not a feckless libertarian. There are differences among us and he recognizes those. There is a kind of natural hierarchy of gifts. Some of us are business people and some of us are not. Some of us are musicians and some are not. Some of us are leaders and some are not. The question is not whether or not some of us should be put over others of us. The question is how we get there and why we’re put there.

  Here Benedict draws another sharp contrast with life as we know it. The monastic life, the spiritual life, is not a life dedicated to climbing and clawing to the top. The monastic mind is not set on politicking or groveling. Abbots and prioresses, good leaders anywhere, are not in the business of forming kitchen cabinets or caucuses.

  No, favoritism and intrigue are not the mint of the monastic mind-set; commitment is.

  Benedict doesn’t just want a business manager who can make money for the monastery. He doesn’t want workers for their productivity only. He doesn’t take for leaders simply those who know how to control a group or build a business. Whom Benedict wants appointed to positions of responsibility are people who are distinguished “in good works and obedience,” in “good works and humility.” It is a model for leadership in those places where profit and power and the party line take precedence over what the business or the diocese or the social service agency proclaims it is about.

  He does not want people in positions simply to get a job done. He wants people in positions who embody why we bother to do the job at all. He wants holy listeners who care about the effect of what they do on everybody else.

  Imagine a world that was run by holy listeners.

  Jan. 13 – May 14 – Sept. 13

  In their teachings, the prioress or abbot should always observe the apostle’s recommendation in which it is said: “Use argument, appeal, reproof” (2 Tim. 4:2). This means that they must vary with circumstances, threatening and coaxing by turns, at times stern, at times devoted and tender. With the undisciplined and restless, they will use firm argument; with the obedient and docile and patient, they will appeal for greater virtue; but as for the negligent and disdainful, we charge the abbot or prioress to use reproof and rebuke. They should not gloss over the sins of those who err, but cut them out while they can, as soon as they begin to sprout, remembering the fate of Eli, priest of Shiloh (1 Sam. 2:11–4:18). For the upright and perceptive, the first and second warnings should be verbal; but those who are evil or stubborn, arrogant or disobedient, can be curbed only by blows or some other physical punishment at the first offense. It is written, “The fool cannot be corrected with words” (Prov. 29:19), and again, “Strike your children with a rod and you will free their souls from death” (Prov. 23:14).

  To “vary with the circumstances” may be the genius of the entire Rule of Benedict. It is undoubtedly clear here.

  The Rule of Benedict does not turn people into interchangeable parts. Benedict makes it quite plain: people don’t all learn the same way; they don’t all grow the same way; they can’t all be dealt with the same way. Those concepts, of course, have become commonplace in a culture that is based on individualism. But they were not commonplace as recently as the 1950s. Historically, there has been a more acceptable way for just about everything: a more acceptable way to pray; a more acceptable way to celebrate the Mass; a more acceptable way to think; a more acceptable way to live. Not everyone did it, of course, but everyone had very clear criteria by which to judge the social fit of everyone else.

  Personalism is a constant throughout the Rule of Benedict. Here, in a chapter on the abbot or prioress, you would certainly expect at least to find a clear call for order, if not for perfection and discipline and conformity. There is no room in Benedictine spirituality, though, for bloodless relationships between people in authority and the people for whom they have responsibility. Benedictine authority is expected to have meaning. It is to be anchored in the needs and personality of the other person. For the prioress or abbot or parent or supervisor, it is an exhausting task to treat every individual in their care as an individual but nothing else is worth their time. It is easy to intimidate the stubborn with power. It is simple to ignore the mediocre. It is possible to leave the docile on their own and hope for the best.

  In the Rule, though, the function of the leader is to call each individual to become more tomorrow than they were today. The point of the paragraph is not how the calling is to be done, with firmness or tenderness or persuasion or discipline. The theories on that subject change from period to period. Some types respond to one approach, some respond better to another. The point here is simply that the calling is to be done. The person who accepts a position of responsibility and milks it of its comforts but leaves the persons in a group no more spiritually stirred than when they began, no more alive in Christ than when they started, no more aflame with the gospel than when they first held it in their hands, is more to be criticized than the fruitless group itself. It was Eli, Benedict points out, the father who did not correct his sinful sons, whom God indicted, not the sons alone.

  Jan. 14 – May 15 – Sept. 14

  The prioress and abbot must always remember what they are and remember what they are called, aware that more will be expected of one to whom more has been entrusted. They must know what a difficult and demanding burden they have undertaken: directing souls and serving a variety of temperaments, coaxing, reproving, and encouraging them as appropriate. They must so accommodate and adapt themselves to each one’s character and intelligence that they will not only keep the flock entrusted to their care from dwindling, but will rejoice in t
he increase of a good flock.

  There are some interesting distinctions made in this paragraph. The abbot and prioress are to remember what they are and what they are called. What they and every other leader are is painfully clear: they are people just like everybody else in the monastery. They are not royalty. They are not potentates. They are only people who also struggle and fail just like the people they lead.

  But what they are and what they are called—abbot, abbess, spiritual father, spiritual mother—are not unrelated. They are not called to be either lawgivers or camp counselors. They are not expected to be either rigid moralists or group activity directors. They are to be directors of souls who serve the group by “coaxing, reproving, and encouraging” it—by prodding and pressing and persuading it—to struggle as they have struggled to grow in depth, in sincerity, and in holiness, to grow despite weaknesses, to grow beyond weaknesses.

  Abbots or prioresses of Benedictine monasteries, then, parents and supervisors and officials and bishops everywhere who set out to live a Benedictine spirituality, are to keep clearly in mind their own weak souls and dark minds and fragile hearts when they touch the souls and minds and hearts of others.

  But there is another side to the question as well. It is not easy for honest people who hold their own failures in their praying hands to question behavior in anyone else. “There but for the grace of God go I,” John Bradford said at the sight of the condemned on their way to execution. Aware of what I myself am capable of doing, on the one hand, how can I possibly censure or disparage or reprimand or reproach anyone else? On the other hand, Benedict reminds us, how can those who know that conversion is possible, who have been called to midwife the spiritual life, for this generation and the next, do less?

  The Hasidim tell a story that abbots and prioresses, mothers and fathers, teachers and directors may understand best. Certainly Benedict did.

  When in his sixtieth year after the death of the Kotzker, the Gerer accepted election as leader of the Kotzker Hasidim, the rabbi said, “I should ask myself: ‘Why have I deserved to become the leader of thousands of good people?’ I know that I am not more learned or more pious than others. The only reason why I accept the appointment is because so many good and true people have proclaimed me to be their leader. We find that a cattlebreeder in Palestine during the days when the Temple stood was enjoined by our Torah (Lev. 27:32) to drive newborn cattle or sheep into an enclosure in single file. When they went to the enclosure, they were all of the same station, but when over the tenth one the owner pronounced the words: ‘consecrated unto the Lord,’ it was set aside for holier purposes. In the same fashion when the Jews pronounce some to be holier than their fellows, they become in truth consecrated persons.”

  Once chosen, it is their weakness itself that becomes the anchor, the insight, the humility, and the gift of an abbot or prioress, a pope or a priest, a parent or a director. But only if they themselves embrace it. It is a lesson for leaders everywhere who either fear to lead because they know their own weaknesses or who lead defensively because they fear that others know their weaknesses. It is a lesson for parents who remember their own troubles as children. It is a lesson for husbands and wives who cannot own the weaknesses that plague their marriage. We must each strive for the ideal and we must encourage others to strive with us, not because we ourselves are not weak but because knowing our own weaknesses and admitting them we can with great confidence teach trust in the God who watches with patience our puny efforts and our foolish failures.

  Jan. 15 – May 16 – Sept. 15

  Above all, they must not show too great a concern for the fleeting and temporal things of this world, neglecting or treating lightly the welfare of those entrusted to them. Rather, they should keep in mind that they have undertaken the care of souls for whom they must give an account. That they may not plead lack of resources as an excuse, they are to remember what is written: “Seek first the reign and justice of God, and all these things will be given you as well” (Matt. 6:33), and again, “Those who reverence the Holy One lack nothing” (Ps. 34:10).

  In an age of great institutions and unending development campaigns, Benedict makes a statement in this paragraph that stretches the modern mind to the extremity of disbelief. Benedict instructs the abbot and prioress to be more concerned about the spiritual needs of the monastery than its physical ones. You have to wonder how long a group like that will last. You also have to wonder whether a monastery that is not like that should last at all. The implications are profound.

  A monastery does not have to be wealthy, Benedict implies, a monastery does not have to be large, a monastery does not have to be popular. What a monastery must be, without doubt and without fail, is holy. The role of the abbot or prioress, therefore, is not to concentrate on the physical development of the community, on the “fleeting and temporal things of this world.” The role of the abbot or prioress is to direct their energies to bringing the community to the white heat of the spiritual life, after which no challenge is too great and no effort is too much because we know for certain that “those who reverence the Holy One lack nothing.”

  In monastic spirituality, then, leadership is not intent on making things right; leadership is intent on making life right. The number of families who have succumbed to the notion that giving their children everything that money can buy assures their happiness need this insight from monastic spirituality. The number of business people who have put their entire lives into developing their businesses instead of their quality of life need this insight from monastic spirituality. The number of young people who have learned to believe that success depends on having it all may need this monastic lesson in life. The Rule of Benedict teaches us that nothing, not even a monastery, is worth the loss of the development of the important things in life, the spiritual things in life.

  The prioress and abbot must know that anyone undertaking the charge of souls must be ready to account for them. Whatever the number of members they have in their care, let them realize that on judgment day they will surely have to submit a reckoning to God for all their souls—and indeed for their own as well. In this way, while always fearful of the future examination of the shepherd about the sheep entrusted to them and careful about the state of others’ accounts, they become concerned also about their own, and while helping others to amend by their warnings, they achieve the amendment of their own faults.

  The word here is clear: abbots and prioresses are responsible for the community, yes, but they are responsible for the quality and integrity of their own lives as well. Being an abbot or prioress, a president or corporate tycoon does not put people above the law or outside the law. On the contrary, it may instead create a double burden. In being concerned for the spiritual well-being of others, the caretaker will have to be alert to the demands it makes on her own life. Any leader knows the litany of emotional responses: anger with those who resist, frustration with things that can’t be changed, disappointment with things that showed promise but never came to fruit, hurt because of rejection by the people you tried to love, grief over the failure of projects that you counted on to succeed—all tax the soul of a leader. “Thought breaks the heart,” the Africans say. Thought also robs the leader of confidence and energy and trust. Despite it all, though, Benedict counsels leaders against the sin of resignation, despair, depression, and false hope. Monastic spirituality teaches us that everything we want to do will not succeed, but monastic spirituality also teaches us that we are never to stop trying. We are never to give in to the lesser in life. We are never to lose hope in God’s mercy.

  People looking for a spirituality of leadership have substance in this chapter for years of thought. Benedict’s leaders are to birth souls of steel and light; they are to lead the group but not drive it; they are to live the life they lead; they are to love indiscriminately; they are to favor the good, not to favor the favorites; they are to call the community to the height and depth and breadth of the spiritual life; they are to remember and
rejoice in their own weaknesses in order to deal tenderly with the weaknesses of others; they are to attend more to the spiritual than to the physical aspects of community life; and, finally, they are to save their own souls in the process, to be human beings themselves, to grow in life themselves.

  In this chapter, monasteries become the image of a world where leadership exists for the people it leads and not for itself. It is a model for businesses and families and institutions that would change the world. It is also a model for leaders who become so consumed in leadership that they themselves forget what it means to live a rich and holy life.

  CHAPTER 3

  SUMMONING THE COMMUNITY FOR COUNSEL

  Jan. 16 – May 17 – Sept. 16

  As often as anything important is to be done in the monastery, the prioress or abbot shall call the whole community together and explain what the business is; and after hearing the advice of the members, let them ponder it and follow what they judge the wiser course. The reason why we have said all should be called for counsel is that the Spirit often reveals what is better to the younger. The community members, for their part, are to express their opinions with all humility, and not presume to defend their own views obstinately. The decision is rather the prioress’s or the abbot’s to make, so that when the abbot or prioress of the community has determined what is more prudent, all must obey. Nevertheless, just as it is proper for disciples to obey their teacher, so it is becoming for the teacher to settle everything with foresight and fairness.