How do the benedictine oblates enable the witness of Monastic Spirituality to be expressed in secular society - Essay Example

How do the Benedictine oblates enable the witness of monastic spirituality to be expressed in secular society The Benedictine vocation is not carried out primarily by cloistered, celibate monastics. The vast majority of Benedictines in our age are oblates, married men and women from many different Catholic Churches. The spiritual values embodied by the age-old Benedictine monastic tradition is today dispersed among people of the modern society by those chosen few - whose numbers nonetheless are on sharp rise - who have found their calling in the way shown by St. Benedict barely a few centuries after Jesus Christ. Benedictine oblates today represent a promising movement of bringing forth lofty spiritual principles out into the open and amalgamating them into our everyday humdrum existence. This they do by virtue of their thought, word and deed being permeated by the spirit of Christ. Methodology: Faith is like love, a very personal and intimate matter. It has a profound beauty and sublimity that cannot be so easily understood by cool rationality. The values and principles that Benedictine monks and oblates cherish and uphold can be best understood from the point of view of deep empathy. This point can be illustrated by a simple example. Some anthropologists study primitive tribes as if they were strange creatures steeped in a culture of ignorance. More mature anthropologists, on the other hand, often try to identify with the subjects of their study, by mingling and living with them, by becoming almost like one of them, by trying to look at the world from their eyes. Benedictine culture and tradition too ought to be ideally studied in the latter manner. 1. Oblates in the Context of Modern Society The Benedictine vocation is not carried out primarily by cloistered, celibate monastics. The vast majority of Benedictines in our age are oblates, married men and women from many different Catholic Churches. Benedictine oblates are lay persons affiliated with a Benedictine abbey or monastery who strive to direct their lives, as circumstances permit, according to the spirit and Rule of St. Benedict. (Our Sunday Visitor's Catholic Almanac 2005, p.490). While yet living "in the world," as ordinary members of society, they join themselves spiritually to a particular Benedictine community and seek to observe in the particular circumstances of their lives the important aspects of the Rule of St. Benedict. In the recent years, there has been a renewed interest among laymen and laywomen in associating themselves with religious communities as oblates or members of secular 'third orders'. Oblates do not take monastic vows but choose to live in close connection to a monastery, while integrating the spirit of the monastic rule into their daily lives. Groups of such "secular oblates" have in fact multiplied today in various forms. The term 'third order' generally has been a category for laity who seek to follow a way of life in the world but under the inspiration and spiritual guidance of a canonically approved religious institute.(Seasoltz, 2003, p.248). These groups often are the lay counterpart of particular religious orders. The First Order of the community was its professed male members, the Second Order, the professed female members, and the Third Order, the nonprofessed male and female affiliates (Wynne, 1988, p.164). People of these third orders seek to deepen their Christian life and apostolic commitment in association with and according to the spirit of various religious institutes. Considerable numbers of people, most of them lay people with family and work commitments and with many involvements which keep them busy, are today turning to the monastic tradition. The main reason for this is perhaps that in monastic approach to life, in its essence though not in the outer form, they are finding practical help in making the ordinary and the everyday life a way to a higher reality. Monastic tradition began as a lay movement, and remained so until its intertwining with priesthood much later on in the Medieval history. St. Benedict himself was a layman writing a guide for his household, his extended family of brothers in their busy shared life. His concern was to impose on this busy life such a structure and order (both external and interior) that they could make prayer the one essential priority, the central focus of everything else. In the original Benedictine view of life, there was here no separation of prayer and life (De Waal, 1999, p. x). Everything flowed from one center, that contemplative center which so many people today recognize is what they themselves are also looking for. It is the same Benedictine tradition that continues to this day. Raimundo Panikkar in his book Blessed Simplicity has coined the term "new monk" to refer to the lay person longing to live the monastic dimension of life (Kulzer, 2002, p.6.). A new monk is someone who responds to an inner call and reinterprets his or her way of being in the world. Oblates sometimes refer to themselves as "lay monastics" and their form of life as "monasticism beyond the walls." Oblates are coming to the Benedictine fold with the realization that they have a calling, a monastic vocation - not , however, one that will be lived out in the monastery, but one to be lived outside the walls of monastery. Oblates share with monastics a life based on the Rule of St. Benedict. Oblates are not second-class monastics, but are part of the same community - only living a different life-style. Benedictine oblates have the sacred duty of transmitting the monastic spiritual values to the turbulent dizzy-paced society our present-day. The new monasticism of the oblates of St. Benedict is a prayerful response to a world crying out for peace and salvation. 2. The Rule of St. Benedict The Rule of St. Benedict was written by St.Benedict, who is often credited as being the father of Western monasticism. He wasn't the first to start a monastery, but for a long time Western monasteries predominantly followed the Rule that he wrote in the sixth century AD. For over fifteen hundred years the Rule has been a source and spring to which men and women went for guidance, support, inspiration, challenge, comfort and solace, as well as for a provocation towards a higher life. It has helped both those living under monastic vows and those living outside the cloister in all the trouble and turmoil, the mess and muddle, of ordinary, busy lives in the world. (De Waal, 1999, p. xii) St. Benedict's world too was an uncertain, chaotic one, hit by wave upon wave of turbulence. Life was a battle to make sense of all that was happening, a war for personal meaning and significant values. Against such a chaotic backdrop appeared Benedict, a man with a profound affinity for order, meaning, and peace. The Rule of St. Benedict took monastic traditions passed down the centuries and synthesized them into a single tradition. The aim of The Rule is to establish a life that can be lived after the Gospel, and that for St Benedict meant, above everything else, a life that is grounded in Christ. Christ is the beginning and the end of the Rule, as he is the beginning and the end of any true Christian life. 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" (Benedict, 1985, p.45) The Rule contains a treasure of spiritual wisdom concerning the monastic movement in the Church. Its prologue and seventy-three chapters provide teaching about the basic monastic virtues of humility, silence, and obedience as well as directives for daily living. The Rule prescribes times for common prayer, meditative reading, and manual work (Modern Catholic Encyclopedia, 2004, p.75). According to the Catholic Dictionary (2002, p.127), The Rule is marked by common sense, balance, an emphasis on the following of Christ, the chanting of the Divine Office, stability, work, and the leadership of an elected abbot. The Rule is intended not only for men and women living in Benedictine communities and for the lay oblates associated with them, but for many ordinary lay people who have found spiritual inspiration in The Rule, which helps them to be deeply faithful in the personal vocations as Christians. 3. The Benedictine Movement in a Historical Context Origins of the Western monastic tradition, based on connections with the Greek East and the homeland of Christianity in the Near East, includes many figures such as St. Martin of Tours, St. Ambrose of Milan, and so on, but the key founder was St. Benedict of Nursia. His rule assimilated and overtook all others that existed at his time, most importantly the famous Regula Magistri or Rule of the Master. In no time, Benedict's Rule flourished throughout Europe. The Rule initially spread due to Pope Gregory the Great, a former Benedictine monk in the sixth century. Gregory sent his first mission to England to spread the faith, and ultimately, the Rule. The Rule's later proliferation was a direct result of Charlemagne's support and his application of it. Charlemagne envisioned it as a strategy to combine spirituality, work, community, and government into God's earthly organization. Many viewed it as part of Augustine's vision of a godly human city for all. ((Skrabec, 2003, p.6) Thus, by the time of Charlemagne at the beginning of the 9th century, the Benedictine Rule had supplanted most other observances in northern and western Europe. During the five centuries following the death of Benedict, the monasteries multiplied both in size and in wealth. They were the chief repositories of learning and literature in western Europe and were also the principal educators. (Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of World Religions, 1999, p.122) The community in the early Anglo-Saxon monastery, after the Benedictine reforms but before the Norman conquest, consisted of oblates (children who had been offered to the monastery at the age of seven), novices (young men who were under probation for approximately a year before becoming monks), and professed monks (that is, those who had made the vows). (Blackwell Encyclopedia, 1999, p.322). At that time, the term "oblates" (from the pluperfect of 'offerre' in the sense of sacrificial offering) referred to very young children who were "offered" to the monastery to let them imbibe the spiritual culture of the monastery from an early age on. Later on, Benedictine oblates were people who lived around and cultivated the lands owned by monasteries. They participated in Mass and Liturgy of the Hours and wore a simplified form of the order's habit (Mannion, 2002, p.229). These people, although living outside the cloister walls were close to what we today call "regular" oblates, i.e., those oblates who live inside the monastery, as opposed to "secular" oblates, i.e., those who live as ordinary members of the society. Further down in the history, oblates were secular men and women who ally with a monastery to look after its material interests. From the thirteenth century onward secular oblates were organized as support groups for bishops, abbots, and abbesses. During the Middle Ages, Benedictine movement went on growing and changing. Benedictine monasticism underwent two major reforms, in its spread to Germany by the missions of St. Boniface (672-754), and from the center of Cluny after 909-11. It was largely in reaction to Cluniac Benedictinism that Cistercian version emerged in the twelfth century. The two versions were often contrasted by their habits representing different approaches to monastic living. It was among the Cistercians that oblate lay brotherhood was massively developed and integrated into monastic organization and spirituality (Lekai, 1977, p.334). Child oblation had fallen into disuse at Cluny, but it was the Cistercians who firmly decided to put an end to it. Other regional reform movements led to the Camaldolese, the Valambrosans, and the Carthusains who formed villages of hermitages. Friars contrasted themselves to monks by moving into cities; both Fransicans and Dominicans were early thirteen-century reform movements consciously differentiating themselves from older monastic orders by their social activism. This trend toward leaving the communal refuge to labor in the secular world was epitomized by Iganatius of Loyola's Jesuits who conditioned themselves through Spiritual Exercises and served as the vanguard of social reforms. (McCrank, 1999, p.212) Here, a few interesting observations can be made comparing the Franciscan and Benedictine lay orders. First is that St. Francis' Third Order has a Rule of its own, while St. Benedict clearly intended his oblates to live by his Rule for Monks (or at least by its principles, its "spirit"); and secondly, St. Francis' Third Order had no necessary connection with the Franciscan monastic community as such - in contrast, oblates of St. Benedict are clearly conceived to be an organic part of the Benedictine family. These two conditions imply a very different kind of relationship between the Teachers or Masters of prayer, or Spiritual Directors, and those who seek spiritual teaching (Smith, 1982). Many Benedictine monasteries were formed during the Middle Ages, but they began to wane at the end of the twelfth century when newer orders, mainly the Franciscans and Dominicans, developed. By the close of the eighteenth century, Benedictine numbers were very small. Over the next century, however, Benedictines experienced revival. (O'Gorman and Faulkner, 2003, p.284). With the revival of monasticism in the 19th century the institution of oblature was reinstated. Increasing numbers were attracted to it in Europe, England, and North America. The Oblates of Mary Immaculate have been especially influential in the mission fields of the American and Canadian West. They formed communities resembling religious orders, including imitation of monastic life. Their statutes incorporate many ideas from the Rule of St. Benedict (McCrank, 1999, p.244). However the oblate movement was yet to truly pick up pace, especially in America. American Catholics in the first half of the twentieth century concerned themselves with following the rules. They attended Mass on Sundays, fasted on Fridays, said the rosary occasionally, and did their best to avoid sin as it was defined by the Church. The role of lay Church members, as they had been taught to understand it, did not include reflection, analysis, or activism where their faith was concerned. Accordingly, they worked at their jobs and raised their families. However, they were beginning to be troubled by a lack of meaning in their lives (Colleton, 2002, p.36). The hunger to do something positive and permanent agitated their inner being, somewhere deep down. It is this urge that Benedictine oblature addressed to. Sharing in the prayer life and liturgies of the monastic community, finding theological and spiritual renewal bring oblates to a deeper awareness of the meaning of their lives (Campbell, 2001, p.219). Consequently, the character of the American Catholic laity changed radically during the second half of the twentieth century. Beginning in the late 1940s, laypersons became more involved in the life of the Church (Colleton, 2002, p.36). As individuals and as groups, they improved their own lives and reformed their communities by participating more actively in the liturgy, taking on important social issues, and integrating their faith more fully into their daily lives. Pope Pius XII said in 1957 (Kotre, 1979, p.3): The relations between the Church and the world demand the presence of lay apostles. The consecratio mundi [consecration of the world] is in its essence the task of laymen, of men who intimately involved in economic and social life, who take part in government and in legislative assemblies. In the Benedictine promotion of the oblate way life, the family represented the domestic Church in which "the father is Christ and is to be love d and obeyed as Christ Himself. The wife is like the bride of Christ, the Church, whose glory it is to be subject to the father of the family. The children are exhorted obey their parents as though God were commanding." the family in this way became a "school of the Lord's service" and a tool of social reconstruction (Chinnici, 2004. p.66). With families, children and all such normal concerns, today's oblates are regular members of the society, leading normal lives, whether being married or single. Oblates go on with their ordinary lives, but accompanied by an extraordinary sensibility. What does it mean to be an oblate in our modern world Even with all their love for order, stability, discipline, and spiritual values, Benedictine oblates by and large continue to face the usual frustrations and challenges that are the lot of the human condition. However, in all their struggles, trials and tribulations, they have a unique sense of direction which would take them toward a higher ideal of life. Beyond a sense of direction, there is a sense of mission. Many an oblate can have this sense of mission for the Gospel and for the Benedictine spirituality lived in the midst of contemporary culture.American culture desperately needs to see lay men and women who are committed to developing a rich interior life; who have a finely tuned sense of justice; who know how to balance simplicity with a rich sense of hospitality; who want to grow into the truth of their own humanity. By changing themselves, oblates change the society. The elements of a Benedictine spirituality manifested in personal living examples can be a profound witness in a culture that is hungry for a spiritual direction. Jesuits are known as reformers and political protagonists; Dominicans are known for their education and preaching; Franciscans are revered for spiritual counseling and service to the poor. As for Benedictines, over the centuries, Benedictine oblature has been remarkably responsive to the spiritual needs of the times and continues in our own time to cherish the precious legacy of monastic prayer. 4. The Benedictine Witness A Benedictine monk takes vows of obedience, stability, and conversatio morum, or ongoing transformation of life according to the monastic way. The oblate too promises to live by these three primary values. By obedience, oblates learn to listen to God's call always and everywhere, with the help of meditative reading of Scripture, especially the Gospels. Oblates also listen to God's voice by frequent meditation on passages of the Rule and by efforts to apply the fruits of their meditation to everyday life. By stability, oblates learn to practice perseverance in carrying out the obligations of their daily lives, especially amidst trials. By conversatio morum, oblates make use of all means at their disposal to welcome God's grace to purify and transform them (St. Vincent Archabbey, 1996). For an oblate, every moment becomes an opportunity for firmer rejection of self-will and deeper abiding in the love of Christ. For St. Benedict life in Christ meant going through a succession of opening doors, not a life that is ever static or safe. The vow of conversatio morum is translated as the challenge to continual, ongoing conversion, being open to the new, saying "yes" to following Christ's call, to discipleship wherever that may lead. This will sometimes be arduous, and St Benedict's exhorted a commitment to holding on against the odds, through perseverance, steadfastness and patience. St Benedict tells his people to move on all the time, he also urges them us to stand still. Stability means staying still, standing firm, in the sense of refusing to run away, recognizing that we are in a long struggle and that we will stick it out to the end. The continual reference to tradition in an oblate's life does not intend a facile return to the past, but it acts as a source of stability and an invitation to rediscover the original grace that manifested through St. Benedict. On the other hand, openness to new proposals entails the honest and creative response of those oblates who today feel themselves called by God and by the Church to collaborate in the salvation of the world. (Field, 2000, p.13) Stasis, the Benedictine practice of stopping for a few minutes while shifting between activities is another factor that brings stability. For it helps the mind to slow down, to get off the treadmill for a bit, to clear itself in order to be ready for what comes next. It is the practice of mindfulness, the call to being and conscious doing. What is it that makes Benedictine spirituality so appealing to those who encounter it Perhaps it is the invitation to a mysticism of everyday life, to tread a path by which an oblate's spiritual yearnings are wedded to the secular necessities of our everyday lives. This spirituality of the ordinary has been an effective catalytic agent in creating a milieu in which attitudes of prayer, peace, justice, and love have not only permeated communities of monastics but the whole societies over the past several centuries. Medieval culture recognized that society was divided into three orders (ordines): those who fought (bellatores), those who worked (laboratores) and those who prayed (oratores); and by many a writer of that age, the oratores were placed at the top of the hierarchy. This classification reminds us that prayer was not seen as a private activity, but had a social purpose as well. Monks and nuns were as essential for the functioning of society as those who worked and those who fought; they were spiritual equivalents of earthly soldiers, who fought against the unseen enemies and the powers of evil. The practice of spirituality was a constant battle between the higher tendencies of man and the lower tendencies that pulled him down. St. Benedict spoke of monastic discipline as soldiering. This was carried further in Ignatian spirituality of Jesuit authors who coupled vocation with combat - as between good and evil. These old themes are receiving new twists in our day, with oblates in the place of monks and American unbridled materialism identified as the enemy. Benedictine spirituality sees work as more than just a means for achieving material ends. From the ancient times, the Benedictine monastic tradition viewed work and spirituality as a two-way relationship. Work augmented spirituality and vice versa. Benedict actually put work on an equal plane with the prayer requirements. Benedict proposed a symbiotic relationship between the two. Benedict saw prayer and work as needing each other in the monastery. Thus, his motto - Ora et Labora (prayer and work) - became a standard of The Rule. It is in Benedict's view of this work/prayer relationship that we can see an amalgamatic approach, primarily through the practice of which Benedictine oblates carry the monastic spiritual values into the secular society. Corporate prayer was the backbone of the monastic timetable, and although manual work was a part of the daily routine prescribed by St. Benedict as an activity to be undertaken between public and private devotions, its function was spiritual, to induce humility; it was not intended to make a religious house economically self-supporting (Burton, 1994, p.8). Today, however, work undertaken by oblates for a living and self-sustenance too carries that same spiritual flavor. In Chapter 1 of the Rule, Benedict compared hermits and communities, the two major branches of monastic traditions. To Benedict, the superior approach was found in that of the monastic communities, which included a work/prayer combination. His belief was closely aligned with St. James - "Work without faith is dead." Later in the Medieval Ages, St. Thomas Aquinas saw work as necessary evil. Though Thomas' attitude was directed at manual labor only, his view dominated western civilization until the time of Martin Luther who defined work as "God's calling." This became the concept of the Protestant work ethic in America. Today, however, the Benedictine concept of work which adds an additional sacred dimension to it seems to be slowly getting back in vogue. (Skrabec, 2003, p.31) Work is carefully balanced with prayer and study throughout the monastic day and so is it with today's oblates. The sacred work of the monastic community, was considered the work of God, the "Opus Dei." Bringing this aspect of sanctity into a seeker's everyday life in whatever way is reasonable and possible will help one attain the harmonious life toward which one strives. The Benedictines applied the term "Opus Dei," Latin for "work of God," to the Liturgy of the Hours - as an affirmation that prayer was a special duty and privilege of monks, a most special kind of work (Ball, p.408). Looking at it from another way, work, in all its forms, constitutes a general kind of prayer. The witness of the oblates who share the Benedictine values with monastic men and women gives a human face to the Benedictine motto: "Prayer and Work." (Ritger, Kwatera, 2004, p.vi). It is through a balanced life of prayer, study and work that oblates carry Benedictine witness into the secular world in general and into their own social setting in particular. But something else besides work is at work too in helping oblates bear witness to deep spiritual values as prescribed by St Benedict in our modern society: an attitude, an awareness, an aura. Most aware and responsible individuals of today keep looking for ways to mitigate the moral ills that afflict our society; Benedictine oblates are ordinary people in our midst who are endowed with a profound awareness that is able to carry into our culture the insights of monastic spirituality - insights that can take our society in more positive directions. The mere presence, the awareness and attitude of the oblates as well as all other persons of high spiritual values can be at work in bringing about a positive change in our society at some deeper level, unawares. Thus, the essence of the life prescribed by St. Benedict remains strong medicine for a society still very much in need of healing. Apparently, Benedict's message was one of obedience, humility and stability. But looked at in other way, this message transforms into one of rebellion, reform and moral assertiveness: In the life they chose - in the radical approach to prayer, celibacy, work, possessions, justice, and much more - Benedict told his monks to intentionally go against the cultural norm. For most of us, that can be translated into challenging the American Dream and all the trappings of our culture. The spirit of the monk is the spirit of Christ. That monastic spirit is not the exclusive possibility of those who live in monasteries. We can all be revolutionaries. We can all resist the clanking of the cultural bell and heed instead the resounding sound of the monastic one that calls us to prayer and service. (Pratt, Homan, 2000. p.6). The Christian faith is not subject to rational analysis. The Benedictine values too cannot be objectively and critically analyzed. But for people with seeking in their hearts and understanding in their minds, the Benedictine approach to life offers a unique synthesis of the spiritual and secular aspects of life, a synthesis of obedience and rebellion, of stability and change, of rational thought and unshakeable faith. And thus The Rule of St. Benedict, the cornerstone of a Benedictine outlook on life, continues to be so immensely relevant to our own times. As Logan notes (2002, p.20), "The Rule with its lofty idealism and pragmatic flexibility recommended itself to the ages." References: Ball, Ann. 2003. Encyclopedia of Catholic Devotions and Practices. Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division. Huntington, Indiana. Benedict, Saint. 2004. Saint Benedict's Rule. Trans. and intro by Patrick Barry. HiddenSpring Mahwah, New Jersey Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England. ed. Michael Lapidge et al. 1999. Blackwell Publishing Limited. Oxford, UK Burton, Janet. 1994. 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