The Rule of Benedict

by Joan Chittister

  CHAPTER 49

  THE OBSERVANCE OF LENT

  March 31 – July 31 – Nov. 30

  The life of a monastic ought to be a continuous Lent. Since few, however, have the strength for this, we urge the entire community during these days of Lent to keep its manner of life most pure and to wash away in this holy season the negligences of other times. This we can do in a fitting manner by refusing to indulge evil habits and by devoting ourselves to prayer with tears, to reading, to compunction of heart and self-denial. During these days, therefore, we will add to the usual measure of our service something by way of private prayer and abstinence from food or drink, so that each of us will have something above the assigned measure to offer God of our own will with the joy of the Holy Spirit (1 Thess. 1:6). In other words, let each one deny themselves some food, drink, sleep, needless talking, and idle jesting, and look forward to holy Easter with joy and spiritual longing.

  “Once upon a time,” an ancient story tells, “the master had a visitor who came to inquire about Zen. But instead of listening, the visitor kept talking about his own concerns and giving his own thoughts.

  “After a while, the master served tea. He poured tea into his visitor’s cup until it was full and then he kept on pouring.

  “Finally the visitor could not bear it any longer. ‘Don’t you see that my cup is full?’ he said. ‘It’s not possible to get anymore in.’

  “‘Just so,’ the master said, stopping at last. ‘And like this cup, you are filled with your own ideas. How can you expect me to give you Zen unless you first empty your cup?’”

  A monastic Lent is the process of emptying our cups. Lent is the time for trimming the soul and scraping the sludge off a life turned slipshod. Lent is about taking stock of time, even religious time. Lent is about exercising the control that enables us to say no to ourselves so that when life turns hard of its own accord we have the spiritual stamina to say yes to its twists and turns with faith and with hope. Most interesting of all, perhaps, is the fact that Benedict wants us to do something beyond the normal requirement of our lives “of our own will.” Not forced, not prescribed for us by someone else. Not required by the system, but taken upon ourselves because we want to be open to the God of darkness as well as to the God of light.

  Benedict tells us that Lent is the time to make new efforts to be what we say we want to be. We applaud the concept in most things. We know, for instance, that even people who were married years ago have to keep working at that marriage consciously and intently every year thereafter, or the marriage will fail no matter how established it seems. We know that people who own businesses take inventories and evaluations every year or the business fails. We too often fail to realize, however, that people who say that they want to find God in life have to work every day too to bring that Presence into focus, or the Presence will elude them no matter how present it is in theory.

  All should, however, make known to the prioress or abbot what they intend to do, since it ought to be done with their prayer and approval. Whatever is undertaken without the permission of the prioress or abbot will be reckoned as presumption and vainglory, not deserving a reward. Therefore, everything must be done with their approval.

  An ancient people tells us that when the moment of a great teacher’s death was near, the disciples said, “What is it we will see when you are gone?” And the master said, “All I did was sit on the river bank handing out river water. After I’m gone I trust you will notice the water.” Spiritual mentoring is a staple of the Benedictine tradition. The role of the abbot or prioress is to evaluate the directions the seeker intends to take. Like anything else, the spiritual life can become an elixir of novelties, a series of fads, an excursion into the whimsical. Benedict counsels the zealous to submit themselves to the scrutiny of wisdom so that the spiritual remedies they fancy have the merit of the tried and the true, the sensible and the measured. It is so easy to ply extremes and miss the river of tradition. This chapter reminds us that the purpose of personal restraint is to develop us, not to ravage our energies or confuse our perspective on life.

  CHAPTER 50

  MEMBERS WORKING AT A DISTANCE OR TRAVELING

  April 1 – Aug. 1 – Dec. 1

  Members who work so far away that they cannot return to the oratory at the proper time—and the prioress or abbot determines that is the case—are to perform the Opus Dei where they are, and kneel out of reverence for God.

  So too, those who have been sent on a journey are not to omit the prescribed hours but to observe them as best they can, not neglecting their measure of service.

  In Sanskrit it is written: necessity changes a course but never a goal. Benedictine spirituality—flexible, sensible, realistic at all times—sets loud, clear goals but models a number of ways to achieve them. Perhaps there is no surer proof of Benedict’s awareness that spirituality is neither a formula nor a straightjacket than this chapter. Benedict values nothing more than community prayer, the Opus Dei. In other chapters he organizes it minutely and schedules it for seven times a day. “Nothing,” he writes “is to be preferred to the Work of God.” And yet, when the ideal is confronted by the real, Benedict opts for the sanctification of the real rather than the idealization of the holy. If there is work to be done at a great distance from the chapel, the monastic is to see that it’s done. Holiness is not an excuse to avoid responsibility. Spirituality is not an escape from life. Spirituality leavens life. Spirituality is what stabilizes us in the middle of confusion and gives us energy to go on doing what must be done even when the rest of life taxes and fatigues and separates us from our own resources.

  CHAPTER 51

  MEMBERS ON A SHORT JOURNEY

  April 2 – Aug. 2 – Dec. 2

  If members are sent on some errand and expect to return to the monastery that same day, they must not presume to eat outside, even if they receive a pressing invitation, unless perhaps the prioress or abbot has ordered it. Should they act otherwise, they will be excommunicated.

  Benedictine spirituality, this chapter implies, is not a set of rules; it is a way of life. Being out of the monastery does not relieve the monastic of the obligation to be what we say we are—simple, centered in God, in search of higher things. What life demands from us is the single-minded search for God, not a series of vacations from our best selves. The point is a clear one: being a religious is full-time identity; being business people does not give us the right to do during the week what we tell ourselves on Sunday that we shun; being American does not give us the right to be less Christian in order to be more patriotic; being rich does not give us the right to forget the poor. No Christian ever has the right to be less than the Gospels demand of them wherever they are.

  CHAPTER 52

  THE ORATORY OF THE MONASTERY

  April 3 – Aug. 3 – Dec. 3

  The oratory ought to be what it is called, and nothing else is to be done or stored there. After the Opus Dei, all should leave in complete silence and with reverence for God, so that anyone who may wish to pray alone will not be disturbed by the insensitivity of another. Moreover, if at other times some choose to pray privately, they may simply go in and pray, not in a loud voice, but with tears and heartfelt devotion. Accordingly, those who do not pray in this manner are not to remain in the oratory after the Opus Dei, as we have said; then they will not interfere with anyone else.

  Richard Sullivan, a professor of creative writing at the University of Notre Dame in the 1960s and a writer himself, taught his classes that the two most important physical dimensions of the writing profession were time and space. “Write every single day at the same time and in the very same place,” he said. “Whether you have anything to say or not, go there and sit and do nothing, if necessary, until the very act of sitting there at your writer’s time in your writer’s place releases the writing energy in you and begins to affect you automatically.” Teachers of yoga, too, prescribe a set of basic postures and places to dispose the soul to the transcendent. Teache
rs of meditation prescribe times and places and mantras, a type of personal chant, to center the soul. In every tradition we are taught that it is not a matter of separating the sacred and the secular. It is a matter of staying conscious of the fact that the sacred is in the secular. There is, in other words, such a thing as a spiritual well where simply being in that place can tap open that special part of our souls and enable us to touch the sacred in the secular.

  “Let the oratory be what it is called,” Benedict said. Have a place where you can go in order to be about nothing but the business of being in the presence of God so that every other space in your life can become more conscious of that Presence as well. More than that, Benedict asks us to be there in a special way—with quiet and with awareness, not laughing or talking or lounging or distracting but alert and immersed and enshrouded in the arms of God. Americans, of course, have made of God a casual circumstance. We have prayer meetings with coffee cups in our hands and listen to psalmody with our legs crossed and our arms spread-eagled on the backs of our pews. We avoid churches and say that since God is everywhere, any place is good enough. All of which is true, at one level. But Benedictine spirituality says also that to know God in time and space we must regularly seek to find God in one time and space that enables us to recognize God more easily in every other one.

  CHAPTER 53

  THE RECEPTION OF GUESTS

  April 4 – Aug. 4 – Dec. 4

  All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, who said: “I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (Matt. 25:35). Proper honor must be shown “to all, especially to those who share our faith” (Gal. 6:10) and to pilgrims.

  Once guests have been announced, the prioress or abbot and the community are to meet them with all the courtesy of love. First of all, they are to pray together and thus be united in peace, but prayer must always precede the kiss of peace because of the delusions of the devil.

  Stereotypes come hard in the Benedictine tradition. Is this a spirituality that centers on prayer or work? Does it recommend fleeing the world or embracing it? Does it set out to create a world unto itself or to leaven the wider one? The difficulty with understanding Benedictine spirituality comes in reading some sections of the Rule without reading the entire document. The fact is that Benedictine spirituality is not based in dualism, in the notion that things of the world are bad for us and things of the spirit are good. We are not to pray too long but we are to pray always. Self-discipline is a given, but wine and food and the creature comforts of a bed with bedding are also considered necessary. The Rule is for everyone, including the abbot or prioress, and yet everyone is a potential exception to it.

  In this chapter on guests and hospitality, the wholism out of which it emerges is startlingly plain: this is a monastery and guests are to be received. As Christ. “Hospitality is one form of worship,” the rabbis wrote. Benedictine spirituality takes this tendency seriously. The welcome at the door is not only loving—a telephone operator at a jail can do that. It is total, as well. Both the community and the abbot receive the guest. The message to the stranger is clear: come right in and disturb our perfect lives. You are the Christ for us today.

  And to assure us all, guest and monastic alike, that this hospitality is an act of God that we are undertaking, the community and the guest pray together first and then extend the kiss of welcome so that it is understood that our welcome is not based on human measurements alone: we like you, we’re impressed with you, you look like our kind, you’re clean and scrubbed and minty-breathed and worthy of our attention.

  Hospitality in a culture of violence and strangers and anonymity has become the art of making good connections at good cocktail parties. We don’t talk in elevators, we don’t know the security guard’s name, we don’t invite even the neighbors in to the sanctuary of our selves. Their children get sick and their parents die and all we do is watch the comings and goings from behind heavy blinds. Benedict wants us to let down the barriers of our hearts so that this generation does not miss accompanying the innocent to Calvary as the last one did. Benedict wants us to let down the barriers of our souls so that the God of the unexpected can come in.

  All humility should be shown in addressing a guest on arrival or departure. By a bow of the head or by a complete prostration of the body, Christ is to be adored and welcomed in them. After the guests have been received, they should be invited to pray; then the abbot or prioress or an appointed member will sit with them. The divine law is read to all guests for their instruction, and after that every kindness is shown to them. The prioress or abbot may break their fast for the sake of a guest, unless it is a day of special fast which cannot be broken. The members, however, observe the usual fast. The abbot or prioress shall pour water on the hands of the guest, and the abbot or prioress with the entire community shall wash their feet. After washing they will recite this verse: “God, we have received your mercy in the midst of your temple” (Ps. 48:10).

  “In India,” Ram Dass writes, “when people meet and part they often say, ‘Namaste,’ which means: I honor the place in you where the entire universe resides; I honor the place in you of love, of light, of truth, of peace. I honor the place within you where if you are in that place in you and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us.…‘Namaste.’” In Benedictine spirituality, too, hospitality is clearly meant to be more than an open door. It is an acknowledgment of the gifts the stranger brings. “By a bow of the head or by a complete prostration…Christ is to be adored and welcomed in them.”

  But Benedictine hospitality is also a return of gifts. The stranger is shown both presence and service. After a trip through hard terrain and hot sun, the guest is given physical comfort and a good meal, spiritual instruction, and human support. Not even a fast day is counted as important as eating with a guest. Not even asceticism is counted as holy as care for the other. Obviously, from the point of view of the Rule of Benedict, it isn’t so much what we do for those curious others in our lives, the strange, the needy, the unscrubbed, as it is the way we do it. We can give people charity or we can give them attention. We can give them the necessities of life or we can give them its joys. Benedictine hospitality is the gift of one human being to another. Benedictine hospitality is not simply bed and bath; it is home and family.

  Great care and concern are to be shown in receiving poor people and pilgrims, because in them more particularly Christ is received; our very awe of the rich guarantees them special respect.

  “It’s a barren prayer,” St. Cyprian wrote, “that does not go hand in hand with alms.” For the Benedictine heart the reception of the poor is an essential part of going to God. We cannot be too busy, too professional, too removed from the world of the poor to receive the poor and sustain the poor. Anything else, Benedict warns in a society that is by nature class structured, is not hospitality. It is at best more protocol than piety. Those who can buy their comforts or demand their rights are simply receiving what they can get, with us or without us. Those who have been thrown upon the mercy of the world are the gauge of our open hearts.

  It is an important distinction in a culture in which strangers are ignored and self-sufficiency is considered a sign of virtue and poverty is a synonym for failure. Hospitality for us may as much involve a change of attitudes and perspectives as it does a handout. To practice hospitality in our world, it may be necessary to evaluate all the laws and all the promotions and all the invitation lists of corporate and political society from the point of view of the people who never make the lists. Then hospitality may demand that we work to change things.

  April 5 – Aug. 5 – Dec. 5

  The kitchen for the abbot and prioress and guests ought to be separate, so that guests—and monasteries are never without them—need not disturb the community when they present themselves at unpredictable hours. Each year, two monastics who can do the work competently are to be assigned to this kitchen. Additional help should be available when needed, so that they can perform this serv
ice without grumbling. On the other hand, when the work slackens, they are to go wherever other duties are assigned them. This consideration is not for them alone, but applies to all duties in the monastery; members are to be given help when it is needed, and whenever they are free, they work wherever they are assigned.

  The guest quarters are to be entrusted to a God-fearing member. Adequate bedding should be available there. The house of God should be in the care of members who will manage it wisely.