Seeking God. Esther de Waal
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the Middle Ages would be not only to write a history of the church, it would be to write a history of medieval society as well. In every country of Europe the black monks, as they became known, established themselves as landowners, administrators, bishops, writers. New foundations were appearing all the time, not least those which sprang up under the stimulus of the monastic renewals which from the tenth century brought a re-ordering, a re-emphasis of the original Rule. First Cluny and then Citeaux appear as offshoots of the main trunk, each responding to the new demands of an increasingly complex society, yet without losing touch with the heart of the Rule. First the Cluniacs emphasized the good order and administration, and put magnificent worship to the fore; then the Cistercians recovered the role of austerity and of hard manual work which they felt had become neglected. By the beginning of the thirteenth century in England and Wales alone the number of houses of black monks had grown from fifty in 1066 to three hundred in 1200, and the white monks (the Cistercians were distinguished by their habits of undyed wool) by 1200 had some seventy houses. Few people in England today live far from the ruins of some great Benedictine or Cistercian foundation, or do not know cathedrals which were in the Middle Ages the churches of some Benedictine community.
But while we pay homage to the power and presence of the past we might all too easily forget the continuing link of the Church of England with the Benedictine life. For the Benedictine presence, so strong in England in the Middle Ages, left its mark on the church at the time of the Reformation. It was Cranmer’s genius to condense the traditional monastic offices into the two Prayer Book offices of Matins and Evensong, and their continued usage through the following centuries has shown how highly appropriate for parish church and cathedral worship those adapted offices can be. It is hardly too much to claim that the Benedictine spirit is at the root of the Anglican way of prayer, as both clergy and laity have been nourished by the daily recitation of the psalms and the regular reading of the Scriptures. And, if the Benedictine way stands above all else for balance and moderation, so also does the Anglican via media.
Today many thousands of men and women, some Anglican and many more Roman Catholic, are following the monastic life according to the Rule of St Benedict. How is it possible that one common bond can link together, over a space of fifteen hundred years, those first small communities of a dozen, those great powerful medieval establishments, and the amazing variety of contemporary expressions of the same life? How is it possible that this same Rule can also speak to men and women who are trying to follow Christ without undertaking the commitment to community? Perhaps one of the stories which St Gregory tells about St Benedict may hint at the answer. It comes not from the Life but from the third book of the Dialogues. A certain hermit named Martin had chained himself to the side of his solitary cave near Monte Cassino. When he heard of it St Benedict sent him this message: ‘If you are indeed a servant of God, do not chain yourself with chains of iron. But rather, let Christ be the chain that binds you.’ St Benedict points to Christ. It is as simple as that. Christ is the beginning, the way and the end. The Rule continually points beyond itself to Christ himself, and in this it has allowed, and will continue to allow, men and women in every age to find in what it says depths and levels relevant to their needs and their understanding at any stage on their journey, provided that they are truly seeking God.
THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS
Come my children, listen to me:
and I will teach you the fear of the Lord.
(Psalm 34:11)
There was a man of holy life, Benedict by name, and the benediction of God was upon him.
(St Gregory, Dialogues, II, I)
Love takes to itself the life of the loved one.
The greater the love, the greater the suffering of the soul.
The fuller the love, the fuller the knowledge of God.
The more ardent the love, the more fervent the prayer.
The more perfect the love, the holier the life.
(Staretz Silouan)
Holy and blessed Benedict,
the grace of heaven has made you rich
with such full blessing of goodness
not only in order to raise you to the glory you desire
to the rest of the blessed, to a seat in heaven,
but that many others be drawn to that same blessedness,
wondering at your life,
stirred by your kind admonitions,
instructed by your gentle doctrine,
called on by your miracles.
Benedict, blessed of God,
whom God has blessed with such wide benediction,
I pour forth my prayer to you
with all the fervour possible;
and implore your help with all the desire possible;
for my need is too great; I cannot bear it.
(St Anselm)
A swimmer plunges into the water stripped of his garments to find a pearl; a monk stripped of everything goes through his life to discover in himself the pearl – Jesus Christ; and when he finds him, he seeks no longer for aught existing beside him.
(Isaac of Turin)
Miracles may show me the saint, they do not show me how he became a saint: and that is what I want to see. It is not the completed process that intrigues me: it is the process itself: for you see, my work is not to be a saint. Tell me what was churning in his soul as he battled his way up from selfishness and the allurements of sin to the great heart of God.
(M. Raymond, O.C.S.O.)
If anyone would like to get the true picture of this man of God let him go to the Rule he has written, for the holy man could not have taught anything but what he had first lived.
(St Gregory, Dialogues, II, 26)
Almighty God,
by whose grace St Benedict,
kindled with the fire of your love,
became a burning and a shining light in the church:
inflame us with the same spirit
of discipline and love,
that we may walk before you
as children of light;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Notes
The idea of describing the Rule as an ark comes from an article by the Rev. Prof. Gordon Rupp, ‘St Benedict, Patron of Europe’, Church Quarterly Review, July 1968, Vol. 1, No 1, pp. 13 – 21, to which I am indebted for this and for other comments in the opening sections of this chapter.
There are a number of editions of the Second Book of the Dialogues. I used a translation by Myra L. Uhlfelder, published by the Boob-Merrill Company Inc., New York, 1967. This interpretation of St Gregory’s Life owes much to the introduction to the Collegeville text of the Rule, ‘St Benedict of Nursia’ pp. 73 – 9, and to Ambrose Wathen ‘Benedict of Nursia: Patron of Europe, 480 – 1980’, Part II, ‘The Vir Dei Depicted by Gregory the Great’, Cistercian Studies, 1980, XV, pp. 229 – 38.
The point on page 4 about the consummate wisdom which the Rule reflects is further discussed in a chapter by Claude J. Peifer O.S.B. ‘The Rule of St Benedict – Present State of the Question’, The Continuing Quest for God, ed. William Skudlarek, O.S.B., Liturgical Press, Collegeville, 1980.
A useful article on the present state of scholarship on the Rule is Sir Richard Southern, ‘St Benedict and his Rule’, Ampleforth Journal, Summer 1982, LXXXVII. l, pp. 16 – 28.
In The Making