Malvern Priory Lunchbox - 20th January 2011
A BENEDICTINE AT DOWNSIDE AND LITTLE MALVERN
This was the title suggested to me. I suppose I could have made an entirely abstract talk out of it without any reference to myself at all - "A Benedictine etc" as opposed to This Benedictine.." . But I suspect that would have been rather a dry thesis and not what the organisers intended. I think you might want something a little less desiccated to go with your sandwiches.
I have put the personal details on a piece of paper as a sort of curriculum vitae. You will see that I have set it out chronologically, but as a process from Orientation, through Disorientation to (hopefully) Re-orientation. Of course my 'Re-Orientation' is not yet complete: but we're getting there - 'there' being the end of the road. This cycle comes from Richard Rohr's Things Hidden: but also from Bruggemann who sees the books of the Bible (and indeed the Book of Psalms in itself) as taking the reader through a similar cycle, if not necessarily in that order.
Taking this curriculum vitae as my raw material I now propose to do two things: firstly to attempt some distillation of this raw material and of my 77 years, down to some conclusions; secondly to answer your questions or hear your comments on the material or on my conclusions. I hope none of this will seem too pretentious. Inevitably it will be arbitrary: I have to be selective otherwise lunchbox will become dinner hamper.
Let me say straightaway that although they remain elusive and fleetingly experienced the values I have learned to prize most are silent prayer and true humility - and that these are not unconnected. That is so because when I do experience them - fleetingly - they give me the greatest joy in terms of peace of soul and the community of others.
Humility.
Quite early on I was told at Downside about the member of the community who wrote a book about humility. He went around saying 'Have you read my book about humility? It's the best book on the subject.' Perhaps it was: humility is truth. St Benedict lists twelve steps of humility: what he is saying is that humility is what it's all about. Richard Rohr says "Only grace, surrender and prayer, will succeed in converting us at a deeper level". Notice: grace = orientation; surrender= disorientation; prayer= reorientation. Rohr quotes William Johnston SJ: Faith is that breakthrough into that deep realm of the soul -which accepts paradox with humility. Fr Andrew Nugent is a Benedictine monk of Glenstal in Ireland, who we got to know well at Downside. He stayed some months with us to prepare to go to an African monastery as novice master after a distinguished career as headmaster of the boarding school at Glenstal. He was interviewed on Irish radio and at the end of his interview the reporter said: 'Many people find late in life there is something they always wish they had done but in a busy life never got round to doing, such as painting, or playing the piano or learning a new language. Is there something you would like to have done? Fr Nugent, a mature monk of some forty years as a monk said: Yes there is. I wish I could learn how to pray.
Prayer.
From the earliest days prayer has been the basis and of the monastic life. St Antony, Abbot, whose feast we kept last week died in 356 AD and is considered the Father of Western Monasticism. His inspiration was the gospel verse: 'If you would be perfect, go, sell all you have.' Initially the call was to the hermit, or eremitical, life; then groups of hermits lived together to support each other. St Benedict, who flourished around 500 AD, wrote a Rule for monks living in community, known as Coenobites.
My own monastery, Downside, has a long tradition, going from Augustine Baker (died 1641) to Abbot Chapman (died 1933). We consider ourselves 'mixed contemplatives' (some would say mixed-up contemplatives) because we try to keep a balance between our commitments for prayer and for pastoral work. "The effort very nearly kills us". That's not a boast or self-pity but a reference to Hilaire Belloc's Matilda "who told lies and was burnt to ashes". "Her aunt who from her earliest youth / had kept a strict regard for truth / attempted to believe Matilda: / the effort very nearly killed her..."
Humility and Prayer.
Let me attempt then to bring these two themes together, because I think it is precisely the linking of them that is the essence of the spiritual life, applicable to all of us in our different situations.
The sum of it is this. If you pray, that is if you simply place yourself in the presence of God, with empty hands, reminding yourself of his being; if you keep coming back to that, gently rejecting the distractions, perhaps with a mantra or a simple phrase, then you cannot but be humble. So: if you pray you can only be humble; if you are humble you can only pray. You can only pray, because you become aware that all else you do may be good, necessary, even virtuous, but it is as nothing compared to the divine being. For him we were made, not for what we might be able to do. So if you are humble you can only pray; and if you pray you can only be humble.
Fr Christopher Calascione
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