Good advice is readily available on almost every topic. But when it comes to our church I am not so sure.
Some speak to us in hearty voices assuring us that all is well. Others are more strident, drumming their cadences out as though calling us into a campaign. And some speak so quietly that it is almost impossible to tell if they have something to say at all.
One of the quietest voices is that of a relatively obscure Benedictine monk named Adalbert de Vogüé. He lives in the abbey of La Pierre-que-vive, and he has thought about The Rule of Benedict for nearly fifty years. He has really thought about it, not quite in the same way that we have thought about the Westminster Confession of Faith. First hearing it read aloud daily as a novice, once in Latin and then later in French, he has become as adapt at listening to it as a doctor with his stethoscope upon a bared chest.
The result is that after all of this time, he has shared his thoughts about The Rule with us in his recently translated Reading Saint Benedict. One quiet man interpreting another. Adalbert de Vogüé is even reluctant to interpose his own voice. He suggests that we first read The Rule; that we learn to listen for the subtle echoes that it could awaken deep within us. If we do this and, if we are sufficiently patient, we gradually become aware of something else. We reach a point at which we can even begin to tell what was most important to Benedict. Dom Adalbert says that this was Scripture–Scripture as the word of God and as the means through which Christ continues to speak.
Benedict’s Rule is actually quite disarming. It is a temperate and humane set of instructions for those living in seclusion. Formulated from earlier documents and drawn from Benedict’s own experiences, it says that order is the path toward spiritual freedom.
One of the things that initially draws your interest is its historical significance. Wherever a deeper sense of spiritual life and a more influential pattern of community discipline appeared, The Rule was likely to have been close at hand.
There is, of course, nothing that addresses our specific church issues in it. There is nothing modern about it. Jack Welch would not like it. There are no performance objectives in the corporate sense and no General Assemblytype policy statements in our ecclesiastical sense. It is surprisingly focused and direct. One could read it through over a Grand Latte at Starbucks and still have time for USA Today.
Written in the sixth century by one who had taken a good look at corrupt café society in Rome and headed for the hills, only to emerge as the leader of a monastic movement, The Rule appears to take the concept of a purpose-driven life to the extreme. Adalbert de Vogüé admits that The Rule could be a little difficult. You have to learn to wait; he advises those who would read it, “to leave ourselves behind and to listen to another’s voice.”
I have found that reading The Rule in this way is much like listening to the quiet whispers from a child. One has to, as it were, bend down and listen past the jangle of modern sounds. You have to concentrate. You have to listen through our culture and then also through the syntax and overtones of a far distant era. You bend low to hear a voice from the childhood years of the church that Protestants find to be so quiet that it almost goes unheard. You have to learn to hear the general intent behind the specific words, much as a parent can learn to hear the meaning in a child’s cries deep in the night.
Benedict’s guidance for weaving the diverse population of Monte Cassino into a harmonious Christian community might be more relevant than we think at first. If reconciliation among the various partisans in our church is a priority, we might hear in Benedict’s quiet way something that could be of use even in the denomination as a whole.
Three themes are apparent: obedience, humility, and the deep absorption of Scripture into one’s life. They are woven together, one depending on the reality of the others before it becomes effective.
Obedience is not a cheery word in our culture. We are more inclined to think in terms of personal agency or self-determination. Autonomy in self-selection is our goal. Negotiation is our skill.
Obedience sounds like the problems leading to the Jonestown massacre or to perpetual emotional dependence. And Benedict’s recommendations concerning obedience to the abbot and others in senior positions strike against our souls as sharply as a scalpel into flesh.
The ultimate goal of communal obedience, however, is pedagogical. It provides a way in which we can come to terms with our deeply entrenched self will. Benedict is laying before us the contrarian insights of our own Reformation forebears. He is reminding us that until we struggle gainfully in grace to surrender it, our will remains our enemy rather than our friend. Self-will is not as benign as we tend to think. Benedict summarizes the practical psychology that had evolved during the early years of the monastic movement. And as Bernard McGinn reminds us, these “ascetical and contemplative practices … were of incalculable importance in the centuries to come.” (Christian Spirituality: Origin to the Twelfth Century).
Benedict would probably tell us that we do not have to do it his way. We do not necessarily need an abbot. What we have to do, however, is learn how to surrender our wills to God’s will. This involves surrendering what we might consider to be a very important ideal or ethical act for one that is explicitly in God’s will. It sets the decision in God’s court rather than ours. And it recognizes that our hearts are not the final arbiters.
As deeply indebted as Benedict is to Scripture as the Word of God, his assumptions about social hierarchy appear unwarranted. The transformative test case for us would concern obedience to the Word of God itself. Even so Benedict’s basic view is that obedience is a personal discipline through which a new community is developed. It is an indispensable element. And Benedict reminds us that until each one of us places his self-will on the anvil for God’s hammer, none of us will contribute anything to the reconciliation of people in our church.
The second theme is no easier for us than the first. Those of us who live in the land of vanity are not ready for humility. Benedict was not blind to this problem. He surely saw it in himself as well as in all who entered the community. The only difference for us is that we regard pride as a virtue and humility as a psychic wound that should be healed. Little are we aware of the distinction between the pathological humility that calls for therapy and the graceful humility that provides an indefinable source of strength. It is the Christological humility that Benedict addresses. Benedict believes this kind of humility can be intentionally cultivated.
Curiously, Benedict proposed a twelve-step program. This procedure was not merely for the badly addicted egoists but for everyone. To become a member of the community was to embrace this program.
The mind pauses at this point. What results would occur today if church membership classes, let alone officer preparation, involved twelve steps toward personal humility? And one wonders about clergy. What if the twelve steps became part of their preparation?
We Protestants have no monopoly on Scripture. In chapter after chapter, dedicating more space to it than any other topic, Benedict urges the importance of this third theme. The central piece is the weekly recitation of the Psalter. Other texts are then woven around it. The purpose, of course, is to praise God, and integral for this purpose is this penetrating absorption of Scripture in one’s heart. The Rule calls for deeper saturation with the texts. To drink Scripture into the unconscious mind is to prepare to praise the Lord with transformative power.
As I listen to these instructions, much as Adalbert de Vogüé implies, I recognize in them Benedict’s underlying conviction. Scripture provides communal adhesion. To wear nametags at a new member reception is not enough. We only become reconciled across our differences into authentic Christian community as we absorb Scripture into our souls. Perhaps our heartfelt hunger for Scripture, an aching illiteracy of the heart, leaves us demanding more than we should of one another.
We should never underestimate the cost of true community. Nor should we overestimate its general appeal. It is a hard won act of supernatural grace. It is hard won at the Cross, hard won through the Spirit’s intellectual claims, and hard won even through fear of the Lord’s commands. Benedict, in his quiet way, said that as we enter into such processes, Christ becomes personally present and miracles occur. He understood that personal sanctity is one of the fibers out of which the whole tapestry of the church is woven. The Reformed theologians knew that and urged it.
Dom Adalbert provides an illustration of what is possible when we listen receptively to the softer voices. If this is the case in listening to one who wrote centuries ago, what could happen if we listened to the quieter voices around us now?
RICHARD A. RAY is a former pastor, professor, and managing director/editor of John Knox Press (retired). He currently resides in North Carolina, and is general editor of the Kerygma Bible Studies. He serves as president of the Board of Directors, THE PRESBYTERIAN OUTLOOK.
