The Rule of Benedict

by Joan Chittister

  The workshop where we are to toil faithfully at all these tasks is the enclosure of the monastery and stability in the community.

  The spiritual life for Benedict of Nursia is not an errant idea. It is not something we do without thought, without concentration, without direction, without help. Monastic spirituality is a spirituality of love. It is a way of life, not a series of ascetical exercises. It takes persistence. It takes dedication. It takes a listening commitment to the human community. It asks a great deal more of us than a series of pious formulas. It asks for an attitude of mind and a style of life and way of relating that takes me out of myself into the mind of God for humanity.

  CHAPTER 5

  OBEDIENCE

  Jan. 22 – May 23 – Sept. 22

  The first step of humility is unhesitating obedience, which comes naturally to those who cherish Christ above all. Because of the holy service they have professed, or because of dread of hell and for the glory of everlasting life, they carry out the orders of the prioress or abbot as promptly as if the command came directly from God. The Holy One says of people like this: “No sooner did they hear than they obeyed me” (Ps. 18:45); again, God tells teachers: “Whoever listens to you, listens to me” (Luke 10:16). Such people as these immediately put aside their own concerns, abandon their own will, and lay down whatever they have in hand, leaving it unfinished. With the ready step of obedience, they follow the voice of authority in their actions. Almost at the same moment, then, as the teacher gives the instruction the disciple quickly puts it into practice out of reverence for God; and both actions together are swiftly completed as one.

  There is an urgency in the Rule of Benedict. The hallmark of obedience for Benedict, in fact, is immediacy. Monasticism is a process, true, but it is lived out in a million little ways day after day. Most of all, perhaps, it is lived out in obedience, the ability to hear the voice of God in one another—in the members of the community, both old and young; in the person we married and all of whose aphorisms we know by now; in underlings and children; in old parents and boring in-laws. This voice of God in the demands of community life is not something to be dallied with or contended with or speculated about or debated.

  The necessary question, of course, is how is it that a rule that purports to deal with the spiritual life can possibly put so much stock in the human dimensions of community. Obedience to God is imperative, yes, but so much emphasis on obedience to a prioress or abbot, to leaders whose mundane lives are as limited as our own, almost seems to make a mockery of the very concept. If this is a life centered in the call of God, then why so much attention to the human?

  The answer, of course, is that the human is the only place we can really be sure that God is. It is so easy to love the God we do not see but it is so much more sanctifying to serve the God we learn to see in others.

  The self-giving of real obedience is very clear to Benedict. When we follow the voice of the ones who call us to higher service, we put down our own concerns, allow ourselves to be led by the sights of another, treat our own best interests with a relaxed grasp. We empty ourselves out so that the presence of God can come in, tangible and present and divinely human.

  It is love that impels them to pursue everlasting life; therefore, they are eager to take the narrow road of which God says: “Narrow is the road that leads to life” (Matt. 7:14). They no longer live by their own judgment, giving in to their whims and appetites; rather they walk according to another’s decisions and directions, choosing to live in monasteries and to have a prioress or abbot over them. Monastics of this resolve unquestionably conform to the saying of Christ: “I have come not to do my own will, but the will of the One who sent me” (John 6:38).

  Two ideas permeate the Rule of Benedict: love and wisdom. Love is the motive; wisdom is the goal and the Way. Two great loves, love of God and love of the other, impel us to look outside ourselves and learn from those outside of ourselves where we really are in life. When we love something besides ourselves and when we listen to someone besides ourselves we have glimmers of growth to guide us.

  That’s why the Rule alone is not enough. The Rule is a luminaria, a lighted path, a clear direction. The presence of a prioress and abbot, of spiritual guides and spiritual giants in our lives, the living interpreters of a living spirituality and Way of Life, holds us up during the hard times in life. These living, breathing, loving vessels of the best in the spiritual life act as antidotes to our confusions and selfishness and pain when we are least able to make clear decisions. They act as corrections when we of all people would be least satisfied with ourselves. They become the compasses when we are veering off course, not because we do not want to see but because our sight is blinded now by age or stress or fatigue. They become the track when our hearts stray or our lives hurt.

  What Benedict is saying, obviously, is that there is no going through life alone. Each of us needs a wisdom figure to walk the Way with us as well as a rule to route us. The Rule is clearly not enough.

  “Why do you need teachers?” the visitor asked a disciple.

  “Because,” the disciple answered, “if water must be heated it needs a vessel between the fire and itself.”

  Abbots and prioresses, good leaders and teachers, fine parents and mentors, tender husbands and gentle wives, good friends and quality administrators, who listen to us as much as we listen to them, are there to help us bear the heat of life that shapes us, not to escape it.

  Jan. 23 – May 24 – Sept. 23

  This very obedience, however, will be acceptable to God and agreeable to people only if compliance with what is commanded is not cringing or sluggish or halfhearted, but free from any grumbling or any reaction of unwillingness. For the obedience shown to an abbot or prioress is given to God, who has said: “Whoever listens to you, listens to me” (Luke 10:16). Furthermore, the disciples’ obedience must be given gladly, for “God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Cor. 9:7). If disciples obey grudgingly and grumble, not only aloud but also in their hearts, then, even though the order is carried out, their actions will not be accepted with favor by God, who sees that they are grumbling in their hearts. These disciples will have no reward for service of this kind; on the contrary, they will incur punishment for grumbling, unless they change for the better and make amends.

  If there is one determinant of monastic spirituality, this is surely it: you must want it. You must give yourself to it wholeheartedly. You must enter into it with hope and surety. You must not kick and kick and kick against the goad.

  It is so easy to begin the spiritual life with a light heart and then, one day, drowning in the sea that is ourselves, refuse to go another step without having to be dragged. We ignore the teachings or demean the teachings. We ignore the prioress or criticize the abbot. We defy the teachers to teach.

  We do what we are told, of course. We come to the meetings or keep the schedule or go through the motions of being part of the community or part of the family or part of the staff, but there is no truth in us and we weigh the group down with our complainings. We become a living lamentation. We become a lump of spiritual cement around the neck of the group.

  This, Benedict says, is not obedience. This is only compliance, and compliance kills, both us and the community whose one heart is fractured by those who hold theirs back. Real obedience depends on wanting to listen to the voice of God in the human community, not wanting to be forced to do what we refuse to grow from.

  CHAPTER 6

  RESTRAINT OF SPEECH

  Jan. 24 – May 25 – Sept. 24

  Let us follow the prophet’s counsel: “I said, I have resolved to keep watch over my ways that I may never sin with my tongue. I was silent and was humbled, and I refrained even from good words” (Ps. 39:2–3). Here the prophet indicates that there are times when good words are to be left unsaid out of esteem for silence. For all the more reason, then, should evil speech be curbed so that punishment for sin may be avoided. Indeed, so important is silence that permission to speak
should seldom be granted even to mature disciples, no matter how good or holy or constructive their talk, because it is written: “In a flood of words you will not avoid sin” (Prov. 10:19); and elsewhere, “The tongue holds the key to life and death” (Prov. 18:21). Speaking and teaching are the teacher’s task; the disciple is to be silent and listen.

  Therefore, any requests to an abbot or prioress should be made with all humility and respectful submission. We absolutely condemn in all places any vulgarity and gossip and talk leading to laughter, and we do not permit a disciple to engage in words of that kind.

  Silence is a cornerstone of Benedictine life and spiritual development, but the goal of monastic silence is not nontalking. The goal of monastic silence, and monastic speech, is respect for others, a sense of place, a spirit of peace. The Rule does not call for absolute silence; it calls for thoughtful talk. This chapter provides the principles upon which this “guard upon the tongue” is based. Silence for its own selfish, insulating sake, silence that is passiveaggressive, silence that is insensitive to the present needs of the other is not Benedictine silence.

  Benedictine spirituality forms us to listen always for the voice of God. When my own noise is what drowns that word out, the spiritual life becomes a sham. Benedictine spirituality forms us to know our place in the world. When we refuse to give place to others, when we consume all the space of our worlds with our own sounds and our own truths and our own wisdom and our own ideas, there is no room for anyone else’s ideas. When a person debates contentiously with anyone, let alone with the teachers and the guides of their life, the ego becomes a majority of one and there is no one left from whom to learn. But Benedictine spirituality is a builder of human community. When talk is unrestrained, when gossip becomes the food of the soul, then the destruction of others can’t be far behind. When talk is loud and boisterous, when we make light of everything, when nothing is spared the raillery of a joke, the seriousness of all of life is at stake and our spirits wither from a lack of beauty and substance.

  Make no doubt about it, the ability to listen to another, to sit silently in the presence of God, to give sober heed, and to ponder is the nucleus of Benedictine spirituality. It may, in fact, be what is most missing in a new century saturated with information but short on gospel reflection. The Word we seek is speaking in the silence within us. Blocking it out with the static of nonsense day in and day out, relinquishing the spirit of silence, numbs the Benedictine heart in a noise-polluted world.

  The ancients wrote,

  Once upon a time a disciple asked the elder, “How shall I experience my oneness with creation?”

  And the elder answered, “By listening.”

  The disciple pressed the point: “But how am I to listen?”

  And the elder taught, “Become an ear that pays attention to every single thing the universe is saying. The moment you hear something you yourself are saying, stop.”

  CHAPTER 7

  HUMILITY

  Jan. 25 – May 26 – Sept. 25

  Sisters and Brothers, divine Scripture calls to us saying: “Whoever exalt themselves shall be humbled, and whoever humble themselves shall be exalted” (Luke 14:11, 18:14). In saying this, therefore, it shows us that every exaltation is a kind of pride, which the prophet indicates has been shunned, saying: “O God, my heart is not exalted; my eyes are not lifted up and I have not walked in the ways of the great nor gone after marvels beyond me” (Ps. 131:1). And why? “If I had not a humble spirit, but were exalted instead, then you would treat me like a weaned child on its mother’s lap” (Ps. 131:2).

  If the modern age has lost anything that needs to be rediscovered, if the Western world has denied anything that needs to be owned, if individuals have rejected anything that needs to be professed again, if the preservation of the globe in the twenty-first century requires anything of the past at all, it may well be the commitment of the Rule of Benedict to humility.

  The Roman Empire in which Benedict of Nursia wrote his alternative rule of life was a civilization in a decline not unlike our own. The economy was deteriorating; the helpless were being destroyed by the warlike; the rich lived on the backs of the poor; the powerful few made decisions that profited them but plunged the powerless many into continual chaos; the empire expended more and more of its resources on militarism designed to maintain a system that, strained from within and threatened from without, was already long dead.

  It is an environment like that into which Benedict of Nursia flung a rule for privileged Roman citizens calling for humility, a proper sense of self in a universe of wonders. When we make ourselves God, no one in the world is safe in our presence. Humility, in other words, is the basis for right relationships in life.

  Later centuries distorted the notion and confused the concept of humility with lack of self-esteem and substituted the warped and useless practice of humiliations for the idea of humility. Eventually the thought of humility was rejected out of hand, and we have been left as a civilization to stew in the consequences of our arrogance.

  Benedict’s Magna Carta of humility directs us to begin the spiritual life by knowing our place in the universe, our connectedness, our dependence on God for the little greatness we have. Anything else, he says, is to find ourselves in the position of “a weaned child on its mother’s lap,” cut off from nourishment, puny, helpless—however grandiose our images of ourselves—and left without the resources necessary to grow in the Spirit of God. No infant child is independent of its mother, weaned or not. No spiritual maturity can be achieved independent of a sense of God’s role in our development.

  Accordingly, if we want to reach the highest summit of humility, if we desire to attain speedily that exaltation in heaven to which we climb by the humility of this present life, then by our ascending actions we must set up that ladder on which Jacob in a dream saw “angels descending and ascending” (Gen. 28:12). Without doubt, this descent and ascent can signify only that we descend by exaltation and ascend by humility. Now the ladder erected is our life on earth, and if we humble our hearts God will raise it to heaven. We may call our body and soul the sides of this ladder, into which our divine vocation has fitted the various steps of humility and discipline as we ascend.

  Jacob’s ladder is a recurring image of spiritual progress in classic spiritual literature, as clear in meaning to its time as the concept of the spiritual journey, for instance, would be to a later age. It connected heaven and earth. It was the process by which the soul saw and touched and climbed and clung to the presence of God in life, whose angels “descended and ascended” in an attempt to bring God down and raise us up. That ladder, that precariously balanced pathway to the invisible God, Benedict says, is the integration of body and soul. One without the other, it seems, will not do. Dualism is a hoax.

  Just as false, though, is the idea that “getting ahead” and “being on top” are marks of real human achievement. Benedict says that in the spiritual life up is down and down is up: “We descend by exaltation and we ascend by humility.” The goals and values of the spiritual life, in other words, are just plain different from the goals and values we’ve been taught by the world around us. Winning, owning, having, consuming, and controlling are not the high posts of the spiritual life. And this is the basis for social revolution in the modern world.

  Jan. 26 – May 27 – Sept. 26

  The first step of humility, then, is that we keep “the reverence of God always before our eyes” (Ps. 36:2) and never forget it. We must constantly remember everything God has commanded, keeping in mind that all who despise God will burn in hell for their sins, and all who reverence God have everlasting life awaiting them. While we guard ourselves at every moment from sins and vices of thought or tongue, of hand or foot, of self-will or bodily desire, let us recall that we are always seen by God in the heavens, that our actions everywhere are in God’s sight and are reported by angels at every hour.

  The very consciousness of God in time is central to Benedict’s perception o
f the spiritual life. Benedict’s position is both shocking and simple: being sinless is not enough. Being steeped in the mind of God is most important. While we restrain ourselves from harsh speech and bad actions and demands of the flesh and pride of soul, what is most vital to the fanning of the spiritual fire is to become aware that the God we seek is aware of us. Sanctity, in other words, is not a matter of moral athletics. Sanctity is a conscious relationship with the conscious but invisible God. The theology is an enlivening and liberating one: it is not a matter, the posture implies, of our becoming good enough to gain the God who is somewhere outside of us. It is a matter of gaining the God within, the love of Whom impels us to good.

  Jan. 27 – May 28 – Sept. 27

  The prophet indicates this to us, showing that our thoughts are always present to God, saying: “God searches hearts and minds” (Ps. 7:10); and again: “The Holy One knows our thoughts” (Ps. 94:11); likewise, “From afar you know my thoughts” (Ps. 139:3); and, “My thoughts shall give you praise” (Ps. 76:11). That we may take care to avoid sinful thoughts, we must always say to ourselves: “I shall be blameless in God’s sight if I guard myself from my own wickedness” (Ps. 18:24).

  Benedict, whose whole way of life is steeped in the psalms, relies heavily on the psalms here to prove God’s probing presence to the individual soul. God, Benedict says quite clearly, is within us to be realized, not outside of us to be stumbled upon. It is not a game of hide-and-seek we play in the spiritual life. It is simply a matter of opening our eyes to the light that drives out the darkness within us.