The Rule of Benedict

by Joan Chittister

  Feb. 23 – June 24 – Oct. 24

  Four psalms are sung each day at Vespers, starting with Psalm 110 and ending with Psalm 147, omitting the psalms in this series already assigned to other hours, namely, Psalms 118 through 128, Psalm 134 and Psalm 143. All the remaining psalms are said at Vespers. Since this leaves three psalms too few, the longer ones in the series should be divided: that is, Psalms 139, 144, and 145. And because Psalm 117 is short, it can be joined to Psalm 116. This is the order of psalms for Vespers; the rest is as arranged above: the reading, responsory, hymn, versicle, and canticle.

  In determining the order of the psalms for the prayer life of his community, Benedict grounds Prime, Terce, Sext, and None, the Little Hours of the Divine Office, in the wisdom psalm, 119. Wisdom psalms were not liturgical hymns of lament or praise. They were meant to instruct the assembly in divine truths and were often built on the alphabet in order to make memorization easier. Modern educators write children’s books or songs in the same way and for the same reason. Psalm 119, therefore, has twenty-two sections, with each of the eight verses of each section beginning with one of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

  It is this longest of all psalms, with its theme of the trustworthiness of God’s law, the richness of God’s will for us, the excellence of God’s loving design for us, that Benedict wants us to learn and say daily and never forget.

  Feb. 24 (in leap year, otherwise add to preceding) – June 25 Oct. 25

  The same psalms—4, 91, and 134—are said each day at Compline.

  The remaining psalms not accounted for in this arrangement for the day hours are distributed evenly at Vigils over the seven nights of the week. Longer psalms are to be divided so that twelve psalms are said each night.

  Compline, the night prayer of the community, was built around three psalms designed to do what we all need to do at night: recognize that what we did that day was not perfect, hope that the next day will be better, praise the God whose love and grace brought us through another day, and go to bed trusting that the God who sees our every action is more concerned with our motives than with our failures.

  Above all else we urge that if people find this distribution of the psalms unsatisfactory, they should arrange whatever they judge better, provided that the full complement of one hundred and fifty psalms is by all means carefully maintained every week, and that the series begins anew each Sunday at Vigils. For members who in a week’s time say less than the full psalter with the customary canticles betray extreme indolence and lack of devotion in their service. We read, after all, that our holy ancestors, energetic as they were, did all this in a single day. Let us hope that we, lukewarm as we are, can achieve it in a whole week.

  Finally, Benedict implies very clearly in this chapter on the order of the psalms that a full prayer life must be based on a total immersion in all the life experiences to which the psalms are a response. The order of the psalms is not nearly so important to Benedict as the fact that the entire 150 psalms are to be said each and every week. The Benedictine is not to pick and choose at random the psalms that will be said. The Benedictine is not to pick some psalms but not others. The Benedictine is to pray the entire psalter in an orderly way, regardless of mood, irrespective of impulses, despite personal preferences. Anything other than regular recitation and total immersion in the psalms is, to Benedict’s way of thinking, spiritual sloth. Ours is to be a full spiritual palate. Readings may be shortened if situations warrant but the psalms, never. We are to tap into every human situation that the psalms describe and learn to respond to them with an open soul, an unfettered heart, and out of the mind of God.

  CHAPTER 19

  THE DISCIPLINE OF PSALMODY

  Feb. 24 (25) – June 26 – Oct. 26

  We believe that the divine presence is everywhere and “that in every place the eyes of God are watching the good and the wicked” (Prov. 15:3). But beyond the least doubt we should believe this to be especially true when we celebrate the Divine Office.

  We must always remember, therefore, what the prophet says: “Serve the Holy One with reverence” (Ps. 2:11), and again, “Sing praise wisely” (Ps. 47:8); and, “in the presence of the angels I will sing to you” (Ps. 138:1). Let us consider, then, how we ought to sing the psalms in such a way that our minds are in harmony with our voices.

  “The unexamined life is not worth living,” the philosopher Socrates said. Benedict implies the same. If indeed we walk in the womb of God, then reflection on the meaning of every action and the end of every road is the constant to which we are called. There must be no such thing as the idle decision, the thoughtless act. Every part of our lives must be taken to prayer and the scrutiny of Scripture must be brought to every part of our lives because we believe “beyond the least doubt” that the God we seek is there seeking us.

  Prayer in the Benedictine tradition, then, is not an exercise done for the sake of quantity or penance or the garnering of spiritual merit. Benedictine prayer is not an excursion into a prayer-wheel spirituality where more is better and recitation is more important than meaning. Prayer, in the spirit of these chapters, if we “sing praise wisely,” or well, or truly, becomes a furnace in which every act of our lives is submitted to the heat and purifying process of the smelter’s fire so that our minds and our hearts, our ideas and our lives, come to be in sync, so that we are what we say we are, so that the prayers that pass our lips change our lives, so that God’s presence becomes palpable to us. Prayer brings us to burn off the dross of what clings to our souls like mildew and sets us free for deeper, richer, truer lives in which we become what we seek.

  CHAPTER 20

  REVERENCE IN PRAYER

  Feb. 25 (26) – June 27 – Oct. 27

  Whenever we want to ask a favor of someone powerful, we do it humbly and respectfully, for fear of presumption. How much more important, then, to lay our petitions before the God of all with the utmost humility and sincere devotion. We must know that God regards our purity of heart and tears of compunction, not our many words. Prayer should therefore be short and pure, unless perhaps it is prolonged under the inspiration of divine grace. In community, however, prayer should always be brief; and when the prioress or abbot gives the signal, all should rise together.

  The rabbis taught that “the first time a thing occurs in nature, it is called a miracle; later it becomes natural, and no attention is paid to it. Let your worship and your prayer be a fresh miracle every day to you. Only such worship, performed from the heart, with enthusiasm, is acceptable.” The function of prayer is not to establish a routine; it is to establish a relationship with the God who is in relationship with us always. The function of times of prayer, then, is not to have us say prayers; it is to enable our lives to become a prayer outside of prayer, to become “pure of heart,” one with God, centered in the truth that is Truth and the power that is Power and the love that is Love.

  The function of prayer is to bring us into touch with ourselves, as well. To the ancients, “tears of compunction” were the sign of a soul that knew its limits, faced its sins, accepted its needs, and lived in hope. That’s what Benedict wants for those who live the prayer life he describes: not long hours spent in chapel but a lifetime lived in the Spirit of God because the chapel time was swift and strong, quick and deep, brief but soul shaking. Prayer is “to be short and pure,” he says, not long and tedious, not long and majestic, not long and grand. No, Benedictine prayer is to be short and substantial and real. The rest of life is to be impelled by it. To live in church, as far as Benedict is concerned, is not necessarily a sign of holiness. To live always under the influence of the Scriptures and to live in the breath of the Spirit is.

  There are some who would look at the Rule of Benedict and be surprised that it does not contain a discourse on prayer instead of simply the description of a form of prayer. The fact is, of course, that Benedict does not theorize about the nature and purpose of prayer. All he does, with every choice he makes of the versicles and Alleluias and
Jesus Prayers and psalms and length of it, is to demonstrate it and steep us in it until the theory becomes the thing.

  CHAPTER 21

  THE DEANS OF THE MONASTERY

  Feb. 26 (27) – June 28 – Oct. 28

  If the community is rather large, some chosen for their good repute and holy life should be made deans. They will take care of their groups of ten, managing all affairs according to the commandments of God and the orders of their prioress or abbot. Anyone selected as a dean should be the kind of person with whom the prioress or abbot can confidently share the burdens of office. They are to be chosen for virtuous living and wise teaching, not for their rank.

  In one simple paragraph Benedict does away with the notion of absolute hierarchy and the divine right to anything. The abbot and prioress are to be the last word in a Benedictine community, but they are not to be its only word. They are to “share the burdens of their office,” not simply delegate them, with those members of the community who themselves are models of the monastic life. The age of a person or the number of years a person has been in the monastery has nothing to do with the decision to give one person rather than another a position of responsibility or authority in the group. What counts is the quality of their community life, the prayerfulness of their lives, their commitment to Benedictine values.

  Whoever the leaders, the central thesis of the chapter remains: the community belongs to the community. Its sanctity and success do not rise and fall on the shoulders of one leader alone. They rise and fall on the shoulders of its members. What they are the community shall be.

  It is an important concept in a culture that calls itself classless but that relies heavily on connections and prestige and money to define its centers of power and so overlooks the values and voices of many.

  If perhaps one of these deans is found to be puffed up with any pride, and so deserving of censure, they are to be reproved once, twice, and even a third time. Should they refuse to amend, they must be removed from office and replaced by another who is worthy. We prescribe the same course of action in regard to the subprioress or prior.

  To share authority is not the same as to give it away. To share authority means that those who are responsible for the group must arrive at common decisions, share a common wisdom, come to a common commitment, and then teach it together in such a way that the community is united, not divided, by the people chosen to lead it. To give authority away is to abdicate it, to leave the group open to division, disunity, and destruction.

  The government of a Benedictine community is to come out of a common vision, a common heart. There is one interpreter of the Rule in every Benedictine monastery, the abbot or prioress, who themselves are immersed in Scripture and who have listened to the experience of the community and bring those elements to bear on every present situation. The unity of the community depends on the centrality of that teaching. To divide a group into factions until the unity of the teaching pales, to tear at its center until its fabric frays and rends, to refuse to give focus to its focus, is to strike at the very heart of Benedictine spirituality. It is not possible to form a group when the group is being divided over the very items on which it should be being developed.

  What Benedict is inveighing against, then, is the spirit of the coup d’état, that war that is waged against authority by the very people named by the authority to uphold it. The person with a Benedictine mind-set goes into the parish council or the union office or the hospital board to cooperate with the leadership, to carry the group, not to tug it to pieces over inconsequential matters for some gain of personal aggrandizement and ego satisfaction. A Benedictine family does not draw and quarter the children with two different sets of expectations. Benedictine spirituality uses authority to weld a group, not to fracture it.

  CHAPTER 22

  THE SLEEPING ARRANGEMENTS OF MONASTICS

  Feb. 27 (28) – June 29 – Oct. 29

  Members are to sleep in separate beds. They receive bedding as provided by the prioress or abbot, suitable to monastic life.

  At first glance, the paragraph seems pathetically mundane for anything so exalted as “the most influential monastic rule of all time.” It is, on the contrary, exactly paragraphs like this that make the Rule so influential.

  In a culture of peasants who came out of clans where whole families slept in one room—and still do in many poorer areas of the world—Benedict proclaims a policy of at least limited privacy and simplicity and adaptation. Benedict wants an atmosphere of self-sacrifice, true, but he also wants people to have opportunity for reflection. He wants no living situation to be so austere that both sleep and thinking become impossible in the cold of winter. In Benedictine spirituality people get what they need, both beds and bedding, both privacy and personal care.

  The lesson is a good one when we are tempted to think that extremism is a virtue. As far as Benedictine spirituality is concerned, there is a very limited spiritual value in denying the body to the point where the soul is too agitated to concentrate on the things of the spirit.

  If possible, all are to sleep in one place, but should the size of the community preclude this, they will sleep in groups of ten or twenty under the watchful care of elders. A lamp must be kept burning in the room until morning.

  The dormitory is of ancient origin in the monastic tradition. It carried the concept of community living from the chapel to the dining room to bedtime itself. The common life was indeed a common life for twenty-four hours of every day, with all the difficulty and all the virtue that implied. Nevertheless, the sleeping arrangements present in monastic communities of the sixth century were not very different from family circumstances of the same period. Nor were bedrooms in communities of manual laborers the study centers they were to become as monastics of later centuries became more engaged in intellectual labors.

  What is important in the paragraph is not so much the sleeping arrangement itself as the underlying caution it presents to an era in which independence, individualism, and personal space have become values of such magnitude that they threaten the communal quality of the globe itself. The question becomes, what part of our lives do we really practice with others? Has our claim to the private and the personal evicted the world from our space, from our hearts?

  They sleep clothed, and girded with belts or cords; but they should remove their knives, lest they accidentally cut themselves in their sleep. Thus the members will always be ready to arise without delay when the signal is given; each will hasten to arrive at the Opus Dei before the others, yet with all dignity and decorum. The younger members should not have their beds next to each other, but interspersed among those of the elders. On arising for the Opus Dei, they will quietly encourage each other, for the sleepy like to make excuses.

  In this instruction, monastics are formed to be modest—dressed even in bed, unlike a good proportion of the population of the time; and simple—willing to wear the same thing at night that they did during the day; and ready—quick to respond to the will of God at the first sound of the call. They are trained, too, to “quietly encourage each other” in the daily effort of rousing the soul when the body is in revolt.

  Personal modesty, simplicity, readiness, and encouragement in life may well be the staples of community living, of family life, or decent society even today. What, after all, can shatter any group faster than the one person who is dedicated to being conspicuous, overdone, resistant, or self-centered?

  CHAPTER 23

  EXCOMMUNICATION FOR FAULTS

  Feb. 28 (29) – June 30 – Oct. 30

  If monastics are found to be stubborn or disobedient or proud, if they grumble or in any way despise the holy rule and defy the orders of the elders, they should be warned twice privately by them in accord with Christ’s injunction (Matt. 18:15, 16). If they do not amend, they must be rebuked publicly in the presence of everyone. But if even then they do not reform, let them be excommunicated, provided that they understand the nature of this punishment. If however they lack und
erstanding, let them undergo corporal punishment.

  One of the sages said, “I never met anyone in whom I failed to recognize something superior to myself: if the person was older, I said this one has done more good than I; if younger, I said this person has sinned less; if richer, I said this one has been more charitable; if poorer, I said this one has suffered more; if wiser, I honored their wisdom; and if not wiser, I judged their faults more lightly.” Community is the place where we come to honor the world.

  In one of the gentlest monastic rules ever written, Benedict devotes eight straight chapters to punishment and its techniques, none of them either very acceptable or very applicable today. His concept of punishment, if not his form of punishment, however, may well bear considerable reflection in our own time.

  In the first place, Benedict does not punish severely for everything. He does not punish for incompetence or lack of spiritual intensity or ignorance or weaknesses of the flesh. No, Benedict punishes harshly only for the grumbling that undermines authority in a community and the rebellion that paralyzes it. Benedict punishes severely only for the destruction of the sense of community itself.

  It is community that enables us both to live the Christian life and to learn from it. Human growth is gradual, Benedict knows—the grumblers and defiant are to be warned about their behavior twice privately—but grow we must. Otherwise those who do not honor the community, those who in fact sin against the development of community in the worst possible way, by consistent complaining, constant resistance, or outright rebellion, must be corrected for it.