A Life-Giving Way

By Esther De Waal

This reflective commentary explores the Rule of St Benedict from the perspective of someone whose life and faith has been shaped by its gentle wisdom and realism. Its approach is personal and contemplative; it is written for all who seek to deepen their Christian understanding and discipleship.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Canterbury Press
• Release date: Apr 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781848255647

Esther De Waal

Esther de Waal is a noted scholar and spiritual writer. She was propelled to fame by her book Seeking God, which was published in numerous languages. She now lives in Oxford.

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Also by Esther de Waal and available from Canterbury Press

Celtic Way of Prayer: Recovering the Religious Imagination

Living with Contradiction: Benedictine Wisdom for Everyday Living

Living on the Border

Lost in Wonder: Rediscovering the Spiritual Art of Attentiveness

On Retreat with Thomas Merton: A Seven Day Programme

Seeking God: The Way of St Benedict

Seeking Life: The Baptismal Invitation of the Rule of St Benedict

A Life-Giving Way

A Commentary on the Rule of St Benedict

Esther de Waal

Canterbury Press

© Esther de Waal 1995, 2000, 2013

First published in 1995 by Mowbray, a Cassell imprint

Translation of the Rule of St Benedict © 1981 by The Order of St Benedict, Inc, Collegeville Minnesota.

Extracts from the psalms are taken from The Psalms: A New Translation (London: Fontana Books, 1963),

Translated from the Hebrew by The Grail © 1963 The Grail (England), and published by HarperCollins.

This edition published by Canterbury Press Norwich

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication data

A catalogue record for this book is available

from the British Library

978 1 84825-562-3

Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon

CONTENTS

Preface to the Second Edition

Acknowledgments

Preface to the First Edition

A Note on the Text

The Prologue

The invitation and the promise. The question is whether I want to be fully alive. Divine energy and exuberance.

Chapter 1: What sort of person should I be?

Chapter 2: Looking outside of myself and recognising the need for guidance

Chapter 3: Balancing the different elements in authority

Chapter 4: Shaping the interior attitude and approach

Chapter 5: Listening gladly to the voice of God

Chapter 6: Going deeper; being still and silent. The guarding of the heart

Chapter 7: Earthed in myself and earthed in God

By the end of Chapter 7, Benedict has shown me that I am the publican and not the Pharisee. Having shaped the inner disposition of my heart, I am now ready to learn how to pray.

Chapter 8: Praying is part of the natural flow of life

Chapter 9: Vigils: praying before dawn

Chapter 10: Respecting the seasons

Chapter 11: Respecting Sundays

Chapter 12: Praying at day-break

Chapter 13: Praying on week days

Chapter 14: Praying on festivals

Chapter 15: Joy and rejoicing at Easter: a reminder that I never forget the Paschal Mystery

Chapter 16: The day punctuated by constant prayer

Chapter 17: The role of the Psalms

Chapter 18: The totality of the Psalms

Chapter 19: Being present to God as God is always present to me

Chapter 20: Purity of heart

I have been told about gratitude and praise in prayer; about repentance and reverence; the harmony of the inner and the outer; structure, framework and boundaries. What is essential for the Opus Dei also applies in my relationships to those around me, whether preventing things going wrong between people (Chapters 22 and 23), or in the correction needed for those who break the common bond (Chapters 24–30).

Chapter 21: Organisation is essential if good order is to prevail

Chapter 22: The shared life is connected to the sharing of prayer

Chapter 23: Facing questions about sin and failure

Chapter 24: Recognising the sliding scale of faults

Chapter 25: Serious faults make me an outsider

Chapter 26: The loneliness that comes from wrongdoing

Chapter 27: Compassion: the heart of it all

Chapter 28: Tough love

Chapter 29: Returning

Chapter 30: What is appropriate to each one for the growth into healing and freedom

The right handling of people leads on naturally to the right handling of material possessions, the tools of daily life and of time itself. It is only now that I can fully address how I approach manual work (Chapters 31–48).

Chapter 31: What should be my attitude towards things?

Chapter 32: Everything is on loan and entrusted to my care

Chapter 33: Ownership is dangerous

Chapter 34: Enough is enough

i. Four role models of loving service

Chapter 35: Loving service in the kitchen

Chapter 36: Loving service to the sick

Chapter 37: Loving service to the old and the young

Chapter 38: Loving service in the proclaiming of the Word

ii. Five ways of honouring

Chapter 39: Honouring food

Chapter 40: Honouring drink

Chapter 41: Honouring time with reference to meals

Chapter 42: Honouring time at the end of the day

Chapter 43: Honouring times for prayer and for eating

iii. Dealing with failure

Chapter 44: The serious nature of these faults

Chapter 45: Negligence, not paying attention

Chapter 46: Not disowning responsibility

Chapter 47: Nothing casual

Chapter 48: The work of the hands is as vital as the work of God

The still centre

Chapter 49: Joy and the Paschal Mystery

Chapter 50: Carrying a heart of prayer wherever I go

Chapter 51: Carrying a heart of prayer despite short interruptions

Chapter 52: The interior oratory

It is from this still centre that I address some vital aspects of my life.

Chapter 53: Openness towards others

Chapter 54: Awareness of the dangers of preferential treatment

Chapter 55: Clothes are the outward mark of the person

Chapter 56: Sharing what is good

Chapter 57: Respecting my God-given gifts, skills and talents

Chapter 57 tells me that in all things, God must be glorified. My response is the offering of myself back to God as I say ‘Suscipe me’ (‘accept me’). Accepting myself encourages me to accept others without distinction.

Chapter 58: Accept me, O Lord, as You have promised and I shall live!

Chapter 59: No distinction because of poverty or wealth

Chapter 60: No distinction because of priesthood

Chapter 61: No distinction because of similar profession

Chapter 62: Keeping one’s place

Chapter 63: Everyone is unique and holds their proper place

Putting this into practice through the example of three portraits

Chapter 64: A portrait of how to behave when in charge of others

Chapter 65: A portrait of how to behave when I am second in command

Chapter 66: A portrait of how to behave in the exercise of hospitality

Facing difficulties

Chapter 67: Carrying a praying heart when away from the daily and ordinary

Chapter 68: Carrying a praying heart when coping with challenging tasks

Chapter 69: Discouraging dependency

Chapter 70: When it is tempting to become judgemental

Arriving at the goal of it all

Chapter 71: Openness and sensitivity to others

Chapter 72: Love

Epilogue

Chapter 73: Continuing to learn as the journey continues

Select Bibliography

Notes and References

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

START

‘St Benedict never quite forgets the individual standing before him, into whose eyes he is looking . . . He writes as though he is speaking in a personal way to a fellow Christian seeking God in the context of monasticism. His manner is direct and often intimate . . .’ Dom Patrick Barry OSB in introducing his translation of the Rule gives me the perfect opening to the new edition of this book.

The Rule of Benedict is a short text, written originally as a practical working document for a small household of men in order that they might live, work and pray together. Its purpose therefore was essentially a corporate one, meant for community use. Yet, as Patrick Barry observes, it carries this personal note so that individuals feel that it speaks to them and they find themselves at home with this monastic voice even though many today are lay people like myself, perhaps knowing little about the traditional monastic life.

This extraordinary flexibility has meant that although it is so short, no more than 9,000 words, written around the year 500, many of us today read it and re-read it, always finding that it can deepen our Christian faith and strengthen our discipleship. It brings new insights, which not only offer support through the demands of changing circumstances and difficult situations, but even more importantly will feed the interior hungers. I have read and re-read it and I continue to think of it as a source and spring to which I return time and again; as a point of reference which has helped me to focus on God in the midst of all the unexpected ups and downs that life presents. I am grateful that the re-issue of this commentary has allowed me to look back to the publication of Seeking God, my first short book on the Rule of Benedict, 30 years ago.

My first encounter had come about through the good fortune of living in Canterbury where, when my husband became the dean of its cathedral, I found myself living in a house that in the middle ages had been that of the Prior of what had been then one of the greatest of Europe’s Benedictine communities. In those deanery days, my own life was not unlike that of those early monastic communities: a family which was also a household carrying a responsibility towards a wider world. In contrast, I am now living alone in a small rural cottage, in a beautiful, secluded valley on the Welsh Borders, the countryside in which I grew up. It is quite remote, and there is a danger that solitude might slip into loneliness, and descend into depression. I have had to let go of people, of expectations, of many of the things that hitherto have filled my life. In other words there are fewer demands from outside, infinitely more on the interior life. I need the help of Benedict more than ever.

The circumstances of the writing of the two books are also very different. Seeking God had been commissioned by a friend in a publishing crisis and I rose to the challenge of producing something in eight months to meet an urgent deadline. It was also written with a particular readership in mind, Anglican lay people like myself who were to take it as their Lent book for the coming year. I was already living under pressure at many different levels and the writing had to be fitted in to an already busy life. But that brought immediacy to my thinking. I needed to listen carefully, with attention to what Benedict was telling me about imposing rhythm and structure on the pattern of the day; about the place of boundaries and the exercise of hospitality; about handling material things with reverence and respect. Above and through all, the call to growth into love, trying to make prayer the focal point of my life.

In contrast the present book was in the first instance written for my own self, at my own pace, with no deadline and with no special wish to seeing it published. I conceived it as a conversation with myself, quietly reflecting on the text, reading and writing slowly; the writing itself interspersed with time in the garden, or beside the stream with its waterfall which flows below the orchard and the copse. This makes me aware of the seasons, of the ebb and flow of time, of the changing sound of the water, the coming and goings of the birds. The writing itself was spread over a number of years, since as I have tried to show, it was as though this was a dialogue, carried out in a very personal way with someone, with whom over time, many like myself feel that they have entered into a unique relationship.

How varied such a relationship can be was brought home to me vividly when I once suggested to a young man who was thinking of entering a Benedictine Community in South Africa that he ask each of the brothers to show him their favourite ikon or picture of Benedict and give him their favourite verse of the Rule. He returned with as many representations and quotations as there were members of that particular community. This was of course the purpose of my exercise, for throughout history there has been a vast range of statues and portraits, attempting to portray the saint as they imagine him. Sometimes he is a Magister/Master, or Abba/Father figure. There are many charming examples of him in medieval illuminated manuscripts, especially those that show him with his sister St Scholastica, or in the cave at Subiaco. There are also marble statues of a later period which seem to my eyes as unsympathetic, although I value one small statuette made of volcanic ash that I was given by Benedictine Sisters in the Philippines, who work amongst the poorest of the poor in Manila, which for me symbolises the new life rising from dust and ashes.

Today as increasing numbers search for a strong foundation for belief and practice in a world and even a church that seem to have lost their way, there is a growing interest in the monastic tradition. I once heard it said that the Religious Life has always guarded the life of the church. While the institutional church almost inevitably must deal in maintenance and finance, jurisdiction and constitutional debate, the monastic life has one primary purpose which it holds on to against all the odds, and that is the priority of prayer. In the past the presence of abbeys and cathedrals, buildings dedicated to the Opus Dei, the work of God, would have dominated the landscape without competition. Now, whether literally or metaphorically, they are likely to be dwarfed, diminished by vast overwhelming structures which speak of financial power, commercial success and political pretension.

The famous Cistercian monk of Gethsemani Abbey, Kentucky, the artist, poet and voluminous writer Thomas Merton, as a young boy had the good fortune to grow up in a small French town virtually unchanged since medieval times and he tells of how much that experience was to shape his later life. In his autobiographical The Seven Storey Mountain he writes that ‘the very pattern of that place, of the houses and streets and of nature itself, . . . all focussed my attention upon the one, important central fact of the church . . . that long, grey building, with its high spire, on which all the narrow streets converged, unifying everything.’ To him it seemed to say that ‘this is the meaning of all created things: we have been made for no other purpose than that we may proclaim the glory of God . . . Oh, what a thing it is to live in a place that is so constructed that you are forced, in spite of yourself, to be at least a virtual contemplative.’

Today, even when the tower or spire is challenged by skyscrapers and tower blocks, it is noteworthy that cathedrals are drawing more visitors than ever before. ‘Millions flock to cathedrals that offer Benedictine spirituality.’ This was the arresting headline in the weekly catholic journal The Tablet. The figures were fascinating: an estimated 11.3 million people, both religious and secular visited a cathedral during the previous year so that ‘these buildings were becoming a forum in which non-religious people experience the sacred’… and even ‘meet with God’. For those whose visit coincided with an act of worship, there would be the experience of a liturgy heavily influenced by the Benedictine tradition. Many of the greatest of English cathedrals, such as Durham, Gloucester, Winchester, Worcester and Canterbury to name but a few, are direct heirs to an earlier Benedictine foundation. The Anglican tradition of worship is infused with and shaped by the daily rhythm of monastic prayer (observed in all cathedrals), thanks to the achievement of Thomas Cranmer in condensing the seven monastic Offices into the more manageable Morning and Evening prayer, translating them into English. But essentially what the visitors found was not to do with words but with the space and its silence. Believers and non-believers alike were grateful for what the buildings themselves gave them.

This visual approach has also been true of my own self. The cloisters were always attractive to me in the Canterbury years, and I would picture the role that they played in bringing all those elements of the monks’ daily life into a unity centred on the church itself, so that everything flows in and out of prayer. But over the more recent years, as Canterbury itself becomes a more distant memory, I have found that a further image has recurred and worked vividly in my subconscious mind, as images and symbols are wont to do. The cloisters form the centre of the entire complex of buildings which support a busy institution, and yet here we find it is kept as open, uncluttered space. I realise that I ought to be able to say the same of my own interior space, and so it is that, in my imagination, I try to take myself to one of those cloisters that has come to mean so much to me. I picture the abbey of Bec Hellouin in Normandy, (where St Anselm was once abbot) and I recall a cloister in a bright sun, with sharp light and shadow thrown on the ground (another powerful image) and the spray from the fountain sparkling as the sound of cascading water fills the air. I walk in my mind round beautiful paving stones, and sense that I am placing my feet where others have trod, but with this important difference — that they would not have been a lay person like myself.

A concern with the visual, the imagination, the arts, is becoming increasingly apparent, like some undercurrent which crosses any divide of the religious or secular. I am aware of an emerging interest in poetry and a widespread awareness of the power of poetic language and the role of symbol and image. It is in Benedict’s language, his choice of words that I believe the Rule holds such an attraction. It has certainly been the source of great delight to me, above all in the new depths and insights that it brings to the Prologue. As I now discover that the many allusions to the scriptures (in which St Benedict was saturated), I remind myself that the word ‘allusion’ has its roots in the Latin word ludere, to play and I rejoice that Benedict brings a lightness to his words which I find lacking in much of the creedal and doctrinal expositions, which in contrast appear so heavy and threatening.

Benedict takes us back to the scriptures. The Rule is totally biblical. This helps to explain why more and more from the Protestant traditions are realising this and no longer look at the monastic tradition with alarm. Benedict is pointing all the time to the figure of Christ and to the teachings of the gospel and in making the very radical values of the gospel practical and immediate in daily living, he is giving us no excuse not to live them out. His purpose is to take us by the hand and lead us to Christ. His concern is that we should learn, love, live in and through Christ. Indeed, increasingly I have come to think of his Rule as the ‘Christ-rule’.

Then I reflect that Benedict himself in lifetime must have been something of a Christ-like figure. As we watch Christ in his earthly ministry, energising, bringing men and women to life, opening eyes that were closed, cleansing ears that were deaf, so we see Benedict bringing energy, new life, resurrected life. Thomas Merton would tell the novices whom he taught at their monastery that we come to God with the whole of ourselves: with body, mind and spirit, with all our five senses. By following the way of Benedict we become more, not less, human. The restrictive and negative emphasis which my earlier evangelical upbringing (possibly inadvertently) had instilled in me has at last finally been totally liberated, for I cannot read the Prologue to the Rule without being aware that here is a message of exuberant energy.

As the Rule becomes increasingly popular, I notice that some people are beginning to claim that they are ‘Benedictine’ (perhaps in contrast to other labels such as ‘Jesuit’ or ‘Franciscan’?). This would have been both shocking and embarrassing to Benedict himself. There is also a further danger, part of the popularisation which can all too easily become trivialisation, that may take us away from what is foundational in the Rule. Because Benedict shows such an excellent grasp of the human psyche, it becomes tempting to turn to him in order that he might help us live better lives. In this way the Rule becomes a ‘How To’ guide, a category of the self improvement or good management manual, useful not only for personal therapy but helpful in improving business relations, or indeed parish organisation.

It is all too easy and too tempting, to make Benedict more and more accessible. But while we are grateful for his good sense, his balance and moderation, it is important not to neglect the passionate fervour of a man who was also charismatic and mystical and who, in the vision at the end of his life, saw the whole world gathered up into one ray of light. The foundation for this was laid early on in his life, when he fled Rome for the cave at Subiaco. During those months spent in solitude and silence, St Gregory tells us that he held himself still before the gaze of God, a time which ended on Easter Day when a local priest visited him, calling out the Easter greeting, to which Benedict responded ‘Easter indeed it is brother since you are here.’

What powerful symbolism here! The final words of the Prologue point us to the Paschal Mystery and we must never forget its central role in the Rule. It is good to remind ourselves that Benedict is giving us resurrection theology. But as always with the Rule, it is nothing abstract, for as Fr Laurence Freeman OSB reminds us, ‘the resurrection is a way of living not just a way of life.’ He speaks of the surprising energy of the Resurrection, saying that through us, it can flow throughout the world and bring with it ‘life and the pure contact of life’. If we want to see how this can be lived out there is the example of Fr Christian Chergé, the Trappist monk who addressed the General Chapter of the Cistercian Order in 993 with words simple, clear and challenging, tragically later to be put to the test in his own death in Algeria: ‘Our Christian identity is always in the process of being born. It is a paschal identity.’

The Easter scene in the cave is charming but it is also vitally important. It is a reminder of how in the Rule, Benedict tells us to see Christ in all who come: he must have been writing out of his own experience of this encounter. He has himself been aware of the gaze of God upon him and he now turns that gaze upon this priest, the first person whom he has seen in many months. He thus sees beyond the exterior facade to the true self. I think of the ikon at St Catharine’s Monastery in the Sinai Desert which shows the face of Christ with the ‘differing eyes’: one eye of clarity; piercing into our innermost depths, cutting through all the masks and deceptions. The other eye of compassion, without judgement. So when that same gaze is turned on to me through his Rule as his disciple, I feel as though Benedict sees beyond the inadequacies and failures and looks instead to the true self, the risen self, the resurrected self ‘in Christ’.

Benedict is constantly pulling me back to Christ and I am grateful that I now recognise that the three vows can also deepen our awareness of the role of Christ in our lives.

Stability: Christ the Rock; Conversatio: Christ the Way; Obedience: Christ the Word.

Living where I am surrounded by the pattern of the rising and reclining of the seasons, its pattern of death and new life, I do not need Benedict to remind me to keep death daily in mind. I cannot easily forget the Paschal Mystery; Easter has become for me the pivot of the year. Further, as I grow older I find myself thinking about death itself without real dread. But watching the diminishment of so many friends, whether it is the physical deterioration or the undermining of memory and the various and insidious forms that dementia can take, I want to turn to Benedict while there is still time and to better prepare myself in advance. My delight in his use of language, particularly when I read the original Latin alongside the English, suggests to me that I should start to learn some of his phrases by heart so that I will have a stock available when I might need it. The Latin carries resonances, even for those of us whose Latin is rusty or non-existent. This is after all sixth-century Latin, with a beauty and a rhythm of expression very different from what abbot Patrick Barry calls ‘the sonorous heaviness of classical Latin’.

The final paragraph of the Prologue has some of the most lyrical and wonderful writing of the entire Rule: ‘our hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love’, is quite incomparable. But the Latin’s delicate reiteration of sound is even better: dilatator, dilectionis, dulcedine. Reading with the intention of finding such phrases is rather like beachcombing: collecting small shells and pebbles and holding them, feeling their weight and pondering them as Mary did in her heart — and as I do. I remind myself of the root of that word in the Latin pondus, weight. Two Latin words deificum lumen (rather clumsily translated as ‘the light that comes from God’), carry a marvellous resonance when we realise the passage from St Paul that Benedict had in mind and then they can become words of life : ‘the light that shapes us into the likeness of God’. Then they can resound in the echo chamber of my heart and fill what might otherwise have been an empty void with the presence and promise that is Benedict’s gift. If I am then able to let these words become familiar, a source of strength and comfort, the Rule will then still accompany me and will serve me in the changed circumstances, just as it has always served me.

PRESENTATION

This book therefore takes the shape of prayerful reflections. It is intended for quiet, personal, contemplative reading which may lead into prayer, journaling, Lectio Divina. If it also lends itself to being used as material for a shared exercise I shall be very glad. In writing, as I said earlier, I thought of it in the form of a personal conversation with Benedict, approaching the text with questions around the shaping of the disposition of my heart. I would intertwine the time at my desk with time in the garden, a slow pace of writing, when the natural seasonal activities made it difficult to become too cerebral. Both the external practices and the interior attitude are of course inseparable, since they both flow from that basic question: Am I truly seeking God? The novice is asked what he or she seeks, not what they want, as Christ asked of his disciples in the Gospels and still asks of us today. God is the Father seeking the prodigal as we find in the very first image of the Prologue. He knows my name, he is calling me and my vocation is to live out the baptismal gift of becoming the beloved, again an image with which Benedict addresses us right at the start. He opens up the path for us, promising not that it will get easier as life goes on, but that change will come, will come in our hearts.

Very conscious therefore that the Rule is wisdom addressed to each individual heart, when writing this commentary, I read the text without any reference to the titles which always stand at the head of each chapter. Almost inevitably they will predispose