St Bruno embraced love

What is the vocation of the Carthusian monk/nun founded by St. Bruno of Cologne?

“The mystery of vocation, by which God calls certain people to a purely contemplative life and all-embracing love; the mystery of hidden lives of self-effacement with Christ who effaced himself; the mystery of the prayer of Christ in the wilderness during the nights of his public life and at Gethsamene; that prayer of Christ that continues in certain privileged souls at every period in the history of the Church; the mystery of being solitary while remaining present to the world, of silence and the light of the Gospel, simplicity, and the glory of God.” (Andre Ravier, Saint Bruno the Carthusian, 14)

Benedictine Spirituality I: Listen

Father Boniface Hicks, OSB, a Benedictine monk of Saint Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. He is trained in computer science and in spirituality. Currently, Father Boniface is part of the formation team training men for the Catholic priesthood at his abbey’s seminary and the work of spiritual direction. Since I am interested in Benedictine Spirituality periodically you will see essays on this subject here on Communio. As a side note, those of us who follow Communion and Liberation ought to recognize a connection with what is said here and with what Father Julián Carrón has been teaching in months. That is, the importance of listening, centering on Jesus Christ as a Lord and Savior, and that silence is crucial method. How we respond to the Lord’s invitation to be in friendship with him requires us to be in relation to Him and listen to His promptings through prayer, fasting, alms-giving, sacred scripture, the worthy reception of the sacraments and knowing the faith.

What is said of monks is also true for the Oblates. Attend!

by Photos8.com

Introduction

“Listen my son to the Master’s instructions and attend to them with the ear of your heart” (Prologue 1). These are the first words Saint Benedict speaks to his monks through his Rule of life. The Rule of Benedict (RB) establishes three important spiritual attitudes already in the first verse. The first instruction is that Saint Benedict requires the monk to listen, which requires the monk to cultivate silence, humility and obedience. The second is that God, the Master, speaks to us—both directly and through those in whom He has invested authority, and even more broadly through the circumstances of reality itself. The third is that there is a kind of listening that one can only do and must do with the ears of the heart.  In this post, we will reflect on the first part and take up the next two parts in the following posts.

Listening – “Listen, my son”

Listening is the foundational attitude of the monk and to do it well it requires silence, obedience, and humility. This explains the three chapters of the Rule on these principal monastic attributes—chapter 5 on obedience, chapter 6 on silence and chapter 7 on humility. All are necessary for listening: only the humble man listens, while the proud man believes he already knows everything; listening requires exterior silence to hear with the ears in one’s head and interior silence to hear with the ears of the heart, and obedience treats listening as a path of potential action, not merely a matter of taking in idle words.

Humility is a key theme throughout the Rule of Saint Benedict. The longest chapter in the rule (chapter 7) is devoted to the virtue of humility. Humility is expressed in the beginning of the rule as the call to listen. A person only listens when he believes he has something to learn. Otherwise, he will talk excessively, thinking everyone else has something to learn from him. That is why Saint Benedict warns the talkative man: “in a flood of words, you will not avoid sinning” (RB 7:57 quoting Proverbs 10:19). He also notes that when we think we know everything and never cease talking, we end up going in circles, never making progress: “A talkative man goes about aimlessly on the earth” (RB 7:58 quoting psalm 140:12). Those scriptures are quoted in the ninth step of humility which requires “that a monk controls his tongue and remains silent” (RB 7:56).

The silence of Christian monasticism is not merely an asceticism of self-control or emptying our desires, but rather a posture of listening to a God who speaks. We do not silence ourselves for the sake of being silent, but rather for the sake of hearing more clearly. Our silence is not a matter of isolating ourselves, but rather of opening ourselves. It is relational. Silence is the necessary pre-condition for hearing God and encountering Him in prayer and in life. Too often we make the mistake of getting lost in the world and never slowing down enough or silencing ourselves enough to meet God, to hear Him, and simply to be with Him. God has revealed Himself as the divine Word who has spoken from all eternity and continues to speak to us in a personal relationship. When we slow down, humble ourselves in prayer and open our hearts, we can hear His voice. That has a way of humbling us even more, reducing our inflated egos to nothing. We find ourselves saying like Saint Paul, “Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Phil 3:8).

Furthermore, Saint Benedict understands listening as leading to action. He is not content with ideas that never turn into action nor with knowledge that never becomes love. “’Knowledge’ puffs up, but love builds up” (1Cor 8:1). “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” (Jn 1:14). It is through obedience that knowledge becomes love and that the Word becomes flesh. That is why Jesus is the ultimate example of obedience. In Him, the Father’s will was made tangible and visible at every moment of His life (cf. 1 Jn 1:1-4). “Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, ’Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me’” (Heb 10:5). The Word was made flesh so that the Father’s will could be visible in a human body. Furthermore, the ultimate sacrifice is made through that same human body. There is no love without sacrifice and Christ revealed the ultimate love by offering the ultimate sacrifice. He laid down His life for us, allowing His crucified Body to proclaim, through suffering, all of the Father’s love for us. When Jesus listened to the Father, He opened His life to the greatest potential. This potential became a reality as His Body participated in and revealed the fullness of divine love. This is true obedience and Saint Paul glorifies it by singing: “Christ…became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:8).

We can now apply to ourselves Saint Benedict’s teaching on listening through silence, obedience, and humility. We must create places of silence and we must intentionally include in our lives extended periods of silence for prayer. In the rule, Saint Benedict prescribes 4-6 hours of silence for monks to spend each day in personal prayer. This sets a high standard that few can follow given the demands of daily life, but at least an hour of daily silent prayer is necessary for real spiritual growth.

Beyond our dedicated times of silent prayer, it also helps to create spaces of communal silence. Benedictine monasteries have done this since the 6th century, making a place not only for the personal sanctification of the monks but also for other members of the faithful to enter into. Saint Benedict had extensive regulations in the Rule to provide for guests, noting that “monasteries are never without them” (RB 53:16). The service of hospitality is a key feature of Benedictine spirituality. When Benedictine monasteries consist of monks that are prayerful and cultivate silence, these monasteries can become a spiritual oasis for the faithful. That depends on the personal decision of the monks, however. We must all choose how we will respond to the call of the Christian faith. When we respond with humble silence and holy love, our hearts are set aflame and we can warm the hearts of others. When we allow the noise of the world to come in and to corrupt our souls and make us busybodies, our hearts grow cold and so do those who would seek the warmth of Christ in us.

This post originally appeared on fatherboniface.org

Art restoration as an act of hope at Portsmouth Abbey

There is a beautiful though modern art piece which hangs over the central altar at the Benedictine Abbey of St Gregory the Great, Portsmouth, Rhode Island. As with all art in order to be formed by it, to be educated by it, you have to listen in silence. Now some art is vacuous. This piece at the Abbey is anything but empty of meaning. When I sit in prayer before this piece of art I am filled with amazement of the beauty of the Most Holy Trinity, the Crucifixion of the Lord, and the wide horizons of the theological virtues come which come alive in a myriad of ways.

I offer this piece for your consideration.

Our hope is Christ

At the annual Rimini Meeting in Italy there were 4 witnesses to hope in impossible situations. One of the persons interviewed was the Trappistine superior, Mother Marta Luisa Fagnani. Mother is the superior of a small Trappistine monastery in Azer, Syria.

The video of Mother Marta Luisa, OCSO begins at 33:40.

The witness of Mother Marta Luisa is critical for us Oblates to attend to at this time. Our hope is Christ.

KEEPING HOPE ALIVE WHEN EVERYTHING SEEMS IMPOSSIBLE. TESTIMONIES FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD

 

Blessed Columba Marmion

Today is the liturgical memorial of Blessed Columba Marmion (1858-1923), priest, monk and abbot. Born in Dublin, served as curate in Dundrum, Ireland. Entered the Abbey of Maredsous, Belgium, 1886. Elected as abbot, he received his abbatial blessing in 1909.

Marmion’s spiritual writings were among the most influential of the 20th Century. His writings are considered to be spiritual classics. It is reported that St John Paul had Marmion’s writings in his private library.

In the USA, there is an abbey under the patronage of Blessed Columba, Marmion Abbey (www.marmion.org). Let’s pray for the monks, oblates and students there.

St Augustine and the Order of Preachers

Today, we are liturgically recalling the feast of St Augustine of Hippo. The Byzantine Church also honors Augustine today along with St Moses the Black. Augustine is a masterful theologian, preacher and pastor that no series Christian can dismiss or avoid. He is the Preacher of Truth.

St Augustine’s Rule is the source for various religious orders such as those who carry his own name, the Sisters of Christian Charity, the Trinitarians, the Pauline Hermits, the Order of Mercy and the Norbertines and not least the Order of Preachers who regard him as their father (alongside St Dominic and St Francis!). It is speculated that about 150 religious congregations follow Augustine’s Rule.

Pope Benedict XVI is a great loved of Augustine and said the following:

“In this regard, through the two rightly famous Augustinian formulas (cf. Sermones, 43, 9) that express this coherent synthesis of faith and reason: crede ut intelligas (“I believe in order to understand”) believing paves the way to crossing the threshold of the truth but also, and inseparably, intellige ut credas (“I understand, the better to believe”), the believer scrutinizes the truth to be able to find God and to believe.

“The harmony between faith and reason means above all that God is not remote: he is not far from our reason and our life; he is close to every human being, close to our hearts and to our reason, if we truly set out on the journey.

“Precisely because Augustine lived this intellectual and spiritual journey in the first person, he could portray it in his works with such immediacy, depth and wisdom, recognizing in two other famous passages from the Confessions (IV, 4, 9 and 14, 22), that man is “a great enigma” (magna quaestio) and “a great abyss” (grande profundum), an enigma and an abyss that only Christ can illuminate and save us from. This is important: a man who is distant from God is also distant from himself, alienated from himself, and can only find himself by encountering God. In this way he will come back to himself, to his true self, to his true identity.”

Concerning the Augustinian Rule, Blessed Humbert of Romans, 5th Master of the Order of Preachers said: “There are many rules which impose a multitude of physical observance; but the Rule of Saint Augustine is built more on spiritual deeds, such as the love of God and neighbour, the unity of hearts, the harmony of customs, and other such things. Who does not know that spiritual deeds are of more importance than physical exercises? The more a rule deals with spiritual matters rather than physical ones, the more worthy it is of greater praise. Likewise the Rule of Saint Augustine observes such moderation that it avoids the dangerous extremes of too many or too few regulations. It takes the middle way where all virtue lies…

Since under this Rule Saint Dominic, father of the Friars Preachers, acquired perfection in every good and bore fruit as far as the salvation of souls is concerned, how fitting it is that his sons imitate him in this and so come to a similar perfection.”

3 conversions of St Augustine

Today’s Doctor and Father of the Church St Augustine has been an object of study of the emeritus Pope, Benedict XVI. In a teaching on the saint, Benedict notes 3 conversions in Augustine’s life that are relevant to us today, especially on his feast day. In fact, I would say that what the Pope says is rather critical for Christians to consider with a certain degree of seriousness. Early in his papacy Benedict made a pilgrimage to Pavia, Italy to honor the relics of Augustine.

St Augustine was a passionate seeker of truth: he was from the beginning and then throughout his life. The first step of his conversion journey was accomplished exactly in his progressive nearing to Christianity. Actually, he had received from his mother Monica, to whom he would always remain very closely bound, a Christian education, and even though he lived an errant life during the years of his youth, he always felt a deep attraction to Christ, having drunk in with his mother’s milk the love for the Lord’s Name, as he himself emphasizes (cf. Confessions, III, 4, 8). But also philosophy, especially that of a Platonic stamp, led him even closer to Christ, revealing to him the existence of the Logos or creative reason. Philosophy books showed him the existence of reason, from which the whole world came, but they could not tell him how to reach this Logos, which seemed so distant. Only by reading St Paul’s Epistles within the faith of the Catholic Church was the truth fully revealed to him. This experience was summarized by Augustine in one of the most famous passages of the Confessions: he recounts that, in the torment of his reflections, withdrawing to a garden, he suddenly heard a child’s voice chanting a rhyme never heard before: tolle, lege, tolle, lege, “pick up and read, pick up and read” (VIII, 12, 29). He then remembered the conversion of Anthony, the Father of Monasticism, and carefully returned to the Pauline codex that he had recently read, opened it, and his glance fell on the passage of the Epistle to the Romans where the Apostle exhorts to abandon the works of the flesh and to be clothed with Christ (cf. 13: 13-14). He understood that those words in that moment were addressed personally to him; they came from God through the Apostle and indicated to him what he had to do at that time. Thus, he felt the darkness of doubt clearing and he finally found himself free to give himself entirely to Christ: he described it as “your converting me to yourself” (Confessions, VIII, 12, 30). This was the first and decisive conversion.

The African rhetorician reached this fundamental step in his long journey thanks to his passion for man and for the truth, a passion that led him to seek God, the great and inaccessible One. Faith in Christ made him understand that God, apparently so distant, in reality was not that at all. He in fact made himself near to us, becoming one of us. In this sense, faith in Christ brought Augustine’s long search on the journey to truth to completion. Only a God who made himself “tangible”, one of us, was finally a God to whom he could pray, for whom and with whom he could live. This is the way to take with courage and at the same time with humility, open to a permanent purification which each of us always needs. But with the Easter Vigil of 387, as we have said, Augustine’s journey was not finished.

He returned to Africa and founded a small monastery where he retreated with a few friends to dedicate himself to the contemplative life and study. This was his life’s dream. Now he was called to live totally for the truth, with the truth, in friendship with Christ who is truth: a beautiful dream that lasted three years, until he was, against his will, ordained a priest at Hippo and destined to serve the faithful, continuing, yes, to live with Christ and for Christ, but at the service of all. This was very difficult for him, but he understood from the beginning that only by living for others, and not simply for his private contemplation, could he really live with Christ and for Christ.

Thus, renouncing a life solely of meditation, Augustine learned, often with difficulty, to make the fruit of his intelligence available to others. He learned to communicate his faith to simple people and thus learned to live for them in what became his hometown, tirelessly carrying out a generous and onerous activity which he describes in one of his most beautiful sermons: “To preach continuously, discuss, reiterate, edify, be at the disposal of everyone – it is an enormous responsibility, a great weight, an immense effort” (Sermon, 339, 4). But he took this weight upon himself, understanding that it was exactly in this way that he could be closer to Christ. To understand that one reaches others with simplicity and humility was his true second conversion.

But there is a last step to Augustine’s journey, a third conversion, that brought him every day of his life to ask God for pardon. Initially, he thought that once he was baptized, in the life of communion with Christ, in the sacraments, in the Eucharistic celebration, he would attain the life proposed in the Sermon on the Mount: the perfection bestowed by Baptism and reconfirmed in the Eucharist. During the last part of his life he understood that what he had concluded at the beginning about the Sermon on the Mount – that is, now that we are Christians, we live this ideal permanently – was mistaken. Only Christ himself truly and completely accomplishes the Sermon on the Mount. We always need to be washed by Christ, who washes our feet, and be renewed by him. We need permanent conversion. Until the end we need this humility that recognizes that we are sinners journeying along, until the Lord gives us his hand definitively and introduces us into eternal life. It was in this final attitude of humility, lived day after day, that Augustine died.

Pope Benedict XVI
General Audience
27 February 2008