Seeking God. Esther de Waal
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at Christian perfection can go to the Rule for help and come away feeling that he read advice suitable only for a particular call or a particular stage of the religious life. Each finds there what he seeks. The Rule has something of the divine impersonality, without limitations and yet intensely individual, of the Gospel teaching; nor should this surprise us, for the Rule is the Gospel teaching.
‘Let us set out on this way, with the Gospel for our guide’ (Prol. 21). Right from the start, when the Prologue declares, ‘the Scriptures rouse us when they say, “It is high time for us to arise from sleep” ’, we find that the primary concern of the Rule is to confront us as forcefully as possible with the Gospel and all its demands. The Word of God is directly addressing the reader or the listener. For St Benedict is himself a man grasped by the Word of the Lord, a man who listens himself and so calls for listening in others. If we listen we have the chance of the gift of relationship in Christ; if we fail to listen we throw away that chance. Two vivid images are used in the Prologue to describe the Word and to show the role it is to play in our lives. It is ‘the light that comes from God’ (9) and then ‘the voice from heaven’ that calls out its challenge. That challenge is a phrase from the invitatory psalm 95 (94) used each day at the office: ‘If you hear his voice today do not harden your hearts’ (8). It would be difficult to think of anything more urgent, more immediately rooted in the here and now of this moment in time, in today and not in tomorrow or yesterday. Here is an analogy between the daily rising from sleep to hear the words of Scripture and the taking up of the religious life in general as a rising from sleep. A light to waken and a voice to rouse: the Word must be heard, it demands response! At the very end of the Rule, in chapter 73, St Benedict picks up this point again equally firmly, in a tone of voice that brooks no excuses. It is Scripture itself which has the divine authority, which is ‘the truest of guides for human life’. So in some ways the whole of the Rule might be thought of as an inclusion, a commentary, a practical working out of this central theme of the primacy of the Word. The Rule is simply an aid for us to live by the Scriptures. Almost every page of the Rule carries either a direct quotation from the Bible or reflects some biblical allusion. The New Testament is used slightly more often than the Old, and altogether there are probably well over three hundred references. It remains almost impossible to come to a certain estimate for the simple reason that even if the Rule is not using a direct quotation it is so thoroughly soaked in the language and the imagery of the Bible that much of the writing has a biblical flavour, and carries a biblical resonance.
What the members of a Benedictine community sought from the Word was not knowledge but strength, whereas we in the twentieth century have reversed those priorities. This makes it easy to question whether St Benedict is not rather naïve in his use of Scripture, whether what he does with the Old Testament is justified or not. To read the Rule in such an academic way is to prevent ourselves from experiencing its full power. St Benedict’s essential aim was to make Scripture a living experience for his community with all the means at his disposal. ‘Holy Scripture cries aloud!’ is how he opens chapter 7. We are continually confronted with God speaking. There is no escape.
When he wrote the Rule the Bible was essentially a book that was heard rather than read. Since most monasteries and convents had only a limited number of books, and since in any case most reading would take place during the saying of the offices, and even private reading would involve reading to oneself in a muted voice, comparable to reading a poem aloud quietly for full effect, Scripture became a message spoken this day to this disciple. But it was not simply the reading technique that was responsible. The ‘cry’ of Scripture is perceived as the voice, the call of God. When the call is heard it must be embraced as a personal message with its living demands addressed to each individual. God’s Word is not something static, past and dead; something lying inert between the covers of a book. It is what it is called: the manifestation of a living person whom one recognizes by the tone of voice. The call is not simply something out of a distant past; it comes today and it comes to elicit a response from us and to engage us in dialogue. In an age of beguiling paperbacks offering attractive ways to God through every conceivable means, the Rule stands firm in its relentless demand that we listen to the Word, that we never fail to remember that the Word remains our point of reference. Its aim, which the Prologue shows so clearly, is to establish a life that can be lived after the Gospel, and that for St Benedict means, above anything else, a life that is earthed in Christ. Christ is the beginning and the end of the Rule, as he is the beginning and end of our lives. In the Prologue St Benedict says, ‘This message of mine is for you, then, if you are ready to give up your own will, once and for all, and armed with the strong and noble weapons of obedience to do battle for the true King, Christ the Lord’ (3). And at the very end he asks, ‘Are you hastening toward your heavenly home? Then with Christ’s help, keep this little rule that we have written for beginners’ (73, 8–9).
Yet in calling them beginners he does not insult his readers by treating them as children, by patronizing them, by protecting them from those demands which will draw out of themselves depths and strengths of which perhaps they were unaware. It will not be impossibly tough but it will without doubt be tough. His Rule certainly looks on his disciples as ‘sons’ but they are also ‘workmen’ and ‘soldiers’. He shows compassion for the weak but he challenges the strong. He is gentle with weakness but he sees straight through subtle self-deceit and evasion. The demands will not be too great and they will be tempered to each, though for some that is going to mean a ladder which leads to the ultimate in self-dispossession. There is humanity here but there is nothing tepid.
The Rule must become the environment in which the disciple has to live, to struggle, to suffer. This is not therefore a legal code set out by a lawgiver. It is the fruit of practical experience, and although it contains certain theological principles it is derived essentially from life itself and sets out to be a guide to Christian living in the practical situations of daily life. What follows from this, as the most recent edition of the text points out, is that the wisdom of many of its provisions cannot be appreciated until they have been lived. Those today who follow it in a monastic community are doing that week by week and year by year. For those of us outside the enclosure the experience, and therefore the depth of understanding and appreciation, can only be very much less. It would be presumptuous on our part to find facile parallels, and to think that living without the vows can be in any way comparable to living the life of total commitment. Yet if our starting-point is the same, if we can say with the novice that we are truly seeking God, then we may turn to St Benedict as our guide on the way, not so much to pick and to choose whatever might seem relevant or attractive to us in our particular situation, but rather to draw inspiration from a great saint and one of the great creative writers of all time. Because his Rule was a means and never an end, because it is always pointing beyond itself, St Benedict would doubtless have rejoiced to find readers who are ready to learn from him, to go back to the Scriptures and to put nothing before the service of Christ.
THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS
Today if only you will hear his voice
do not harden your hearts
(Psalm 95:8)
With a listening heart that is both supple and receptive
be open son to the words of an experienced father
who lovingly offers you the wisdom gained throughout many years.
This Lord has Himself given us the time and space necessary to learn
and put into practice the service of love that He continues to teach us.
In this school of His let us hope that following faithfully His instructions
nothing distasteful nor burdensome will be demanded of us,
but if it has to be so in order to overcome our egoism
and lead us into the depths of true love,
let us not become disheartened, nor frightened
and so ignore the narrow path in spite of its tight entrance –
that path which leads directly to the fullness of life.
(The Prologue, Rule of St Benedict)
Abbot