This is a reprint and a slight re-working of a homily I gave for the feast of St. Benedict this year, July 11, that seemed apropos to re-offer as I head into this Congress of Abbots.
I’d
probably shouldn’t say (or write) this in public, but I feel like we
Camaldolese, especially we American Camaldolese, have always had a sort of
ambivalent relationship with the Benedictine Confederation to which we belong
now since 1964 (as one untimely born, as St. Paul might say) though we have
been under the Rule since our origins. This is also in spite of the fact that
we are the oldest surviving Benedictine reform and congregation. (We are, I am
told, the only congregation who dared to add extra initials to the sacred
OSB––OSB Cam., indeed!) And because of that ambivalence, I feel like we unfortunately
sometimes only have a kind of grudging respect for the great Saint Benedict,
patriarch of Western monasticism. Since my time as prior, while recognizing the
uniqueness of the Camaldolese charism and particularly of a Camaldolese
hermitage such as New Camaldoli, I have tried to emphasize the universal
evangelical monastic values that are embedded in Benedict’s Rule for Monks, and
use those underlying values to understand why our Holy Father Romuald left us
securely with the Benedictine container to hold our Camaldolese energy.
There is one place where I
respectfully disagree with the great Thomas Merton; during that last conference
he gave in Bangkok, Merton told a story about a Tibetan lama who escaped his
country to save his life. Before leaving, when still faced with the decision of
whether or not to go, he sent a message to an abbot friend, asking: “What do we
do?” The answer that came back was: “From now on, Brother, everyone stands on
his own feet.” That doesn’t completely work for me. If he meant that we can’t
rely on social, political, economic forces to shore us up, that’s fine. But if
there is anything we have to model in the name of Jesus it’s that, just as the
monks gathered in communities as the Roman Empire collapsed and offered an
alternative society, from now on we have to take care of each other.
* * *
I’d
probably shouldn’t say (or write) this in public, but I feel like we
Camaldolese, especially we American Camaldolese, have always had a sort of
ambivalent relationship with the Benedictine Confederation to which we belong
now since 1964 (as one untimely born, as St. Paul might say) though we have
been under the Rule since our origins. This is also in spite of the fact that
we are the oldest surviving Benedictine reform and congregation. (We are, I am
told, the only congregation who dared to add extra initials to the sacred
OSB––OSB Cam., indeed!) And because of that ambivalence, I feel like we unfortunately
sometimes only have a kind of grudging respect for the great Saint Benedict,
patriarch of Western monasticism. Since my time as prior, while recognizing the
uniqueness of the Camaldolese charism and particularly of a Camaldolese
hermitage such as New Camaldoli, I have tried to emphasize the universal
evangelical monastic values that are embedded in Benedict’s Rule for Monks, and
use those underlying values to understand why our Holy Father Romuald left us
securely with the Benedictine container to hold our Camaldolese energy.
There
were several pivotal moments in the life of Saint Benedict. The way Saint Gregory
the Great lays it out, one significant one was when Benedict left the remote
Anio Valley where he had lived as a hermit for three years in the sacro
speco near Subiaco and also had his first experiences as an abbot, and moved
up to Monte Cassino, a plateau that can be seen from very far away. Some would
suggest that this move from the valley to the high plateau had a symbolic character.
As Pope Emeritus Benedict wrote, in his wonderful essay on his namesake, a hidden monastic life has its own reason for
existence (it’s own raison d’etre),
but a monastery, a monastic community,
has another one, a more public purpose
both for and in the life of the Church, and for and in society, the purpose of
giving “visibility to the faith as a force of life.” As Abbot Jeremy Driscoll
says, this is our evangelization as monks––our life itself is an evangelizing
word. And that’s what the Rule is, and the Benedictine heritage in general:
faith as a full force of life: “I believe this and so I live like this.”
Take a quick look at the late
fifth/early sixth centuries: the Roman Empire had officially come to an end when
Romulus, the last emperor, was deposed in 476 by the barbarian leader, Odoacer,
who himself was later overthrown by Theodoric the king of the Ostrogoths. And
now Benedict (who is born around 478) is watching the collapse of the entire
Roman civilization as the barbarian tribes begin to dismember an empire that
was “already seriously weakened from within by misgovernment and oppressive
taxation, and scourged by famine and pestilence.” In Gaul, the northern
provinces are being sacked by barbarian invaders; the Vandals are spreading
pillage and terror in Africa; Italy is prey to the Goths, the Huns and the
Vandals.[i]
Monastic life in various forms is holding on, extant throughout Italy and other
parts of Europe, including a widespread hermit tradition. Fortunately the
breakdown of order in society and all the pillage and destruction didn’t
destroy monastic life. On the contrary, what it tended to do instead was draw
monks out of their isolation and drew them to band together more in
communities. There were still lots of hermits, but this is when more communal
(cenobitic) life grew in popularity.[ii]
It’s not much different 50 years after Benedict’s death when Gregory the Great
is writing his Life and setting up Saint Benedict as a model. The Roman Empire
was in the last stages of collapsing by then, the Emperor had abdicated, Rome
was infected with famine and pestilence, floods and
earthquakes, and the Greeks and barbarians were invading.
In some way Pope Benedict did
something similar to what Pope Gregory the Great did in his “Life of Benedict”
in the Dialogues: he set Benedict up
as a paradigm, someone with a solution for what he saw as troubled times in Europe.
Pope Benedict’s memory of course is such that he speaks with the authority of
someone having had a front row seat in history. He is speaking of Europe only recently
emerged from “a century that was deeply wounded by two world wars and the
collapse of the great ideologies, [which were] now revealed as tragic utopias.”
He wrote, “Europe today is in search of its own identity. Of course, in order
to create new and lasting unity, political, economic, and juridical instruments
are important; but it is also necessary to awaken an ethical and spiritual
renewal that draws on the Christian roots of the continent.” Without this
“vital sap,” he says––without ethical and spiritual renewal––we are exposed to
the danger of succumbing to the ancient temptation of seeking to redeem
ourselves by ourselves.[iii]
The ancient temptation of
seeking to redeem ourselves by ourselves… This is the problem with ideologies
and even of philosophies: they can give a rational outline of what we think
should be, but in some way, just like the Law itself, as St. Paul rails against
it, philosophies and ideologies do not have any power. As Etienne Gilson wrote about Saint Augustine and his being
influenced by the Neo-Platonist Plotinus, for instance, we shouldn’t confuse
adhesion with conversion, that is adhesion to a philosophy versus conversion to
spiritual renewal. “That Plotinus should advise us to rise above sense, to rule
our passions, and to adhere to God, that is all well and good! But will
Plotinus give us the strength to follow this excellent advice?”[iv]
And he appeals to Romans 7: We do not do
what we want but what we hate––in this case, we do not always, we can’t
always follow what we think is the right thing to do, the way to live; we can’t
count on our ideologies and philosophies to save us. There has to be something
more to give us the strength. And so we heard the famous phrase from John 15 as
our Gospel passage on the feast of Saint Benedict: ‘Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in me,
neither can you unless you abide in me.’ And so St. Paul says, Who will save me? Thanks be to God through
Jesus Christ our Lord!
And so for Benedict: the
experience of God came first; without an experience of God we may have the
knowledge but we do not have the strength. Philosophers and idealogues
rationally figure things out and then hope to climb that ladder to union with
God or some other utopia. But monastic life isn’t based on an ideology or a
philosophy. Monks start out with union with God and then try to make sense of it;
but even more importantly monks at their best build a life around that
experience of the Divine, to protect it, to nurture it, to deepen that
experience, then to pass it on and share it. What Robert Taft says about ritual
applies here: Our life is ideology
and experience in action. Our philosophy is the way we live. I think of the
desert fathers; their response to a query might very well be, “Come and live
with me, see what I do, see how I live.” Or Gandhi: the story I heard was that
he was trying to keep silence during his journeys from place to place when he
visited England, but the reporters kept chasing him, even as he boarded the
train. One of them yelled to him, “Mr. Gandhi, what is your message?” And
Gandhi-ji wrote on a little piece of paper and held it up to the window of the
train, “My life is my message.”
From the valley of Anio to
the high plateau… “Benedict’s spirituality was not an interiority [that was] removed
from reality. In the midst of all the anxiety and confusion of his day, he lived
under God’s gaze and in this very way never lost sight of the duties of daily
life” and the duties of the human person with his or her very practical needs.
Seeing God, Benedict understood the reality of the human person and humanity’s
mission.[v] That’s
why he said that his monastery was a “school of charity.”
There is one place where I
respectfully disagree with the great Thomas Merton; during that last conference
he gave in Bangkok, Merton told a story about a Tibetan lama who escaped his
country to save his life. Before leaving, when still faced with the decision of
whether or not to go, he sent a message to an abbot friend, asking: “What do we
do?” The answer that came back was: “From now on, Brother, everyone stands on
his own feet.” That doesn’t completely work for me. If he meant that we can’t
rely on social, political, economic forces to shore us up, that’s fine. But if
there is anything we have to model in the name of Jesus it’s that, just as the
monks gathered in communities as the Roman Empire collapsed and offered an
alternative society, from now on we have to take care of each other.
And so, what are we facing
now in 2016, and what is our response, our solution, what is the alternative
that we are proposing? In the face of domestic and foreign terrorism––from
Columbine and Sandy Hook through 9/11 and ISIS; in a day and age of “Black Lives
Matter” and policemen being gunned down; in a political arena that is as
ideologically polarized as anything we’ve ever seen and an election cycle that
one Republican senator described the other day as “a dumpster fire”; with a
global immigration crisis due to warring states... Political, economic, and
juridical instruments are important; but it is also necessary to awaken an
ethical and spiritual renewal. That’s the vital sap. We sons of Benedict and
Romuald have been placed on a high plateau, a city built on a hill, responding
to the call of the Gospel and being an evangelizing word by how we live
individually and communally, offering an example of faith as a full force of life.
