Friends,
While I was on study leave during the first half of July, I spent time at a retreat center in Spain where we talked about Benedictine spirituality as a pathway to peace. It was a good retreat.
Benedictine spirituality is a Christian tradition that began in the early years of the sixth century of the Common Era, and it is rooted in the life and work of Saint Benedict, whose main contribution to the Church was the reformation and reorganization of monasteries. While few details of Benedict’s life are known with anything approaching certainty, his legacy is preserved for us through the ongoing use of his rules for the organization of monasteries.
Now, I am not a monk, I’m not Catholic, and I live in the 21st century. So why would I—a married, modern, Presbyterian pastor—want to study the spirituality of a Catholic monastic theorist who died more than 1450 years ago? The answer to that question is that Benedict’s rule is both practical and spiritual. Some of it deals in the minutiae of running a monastery (when to pray and when to work, for example, and what kind of person should be in charge of the cellar), but all of the rule is infused with wise spirituality (there should be a balance of work and prayer, for example, and the person in charge of the cellar must be honest, humble, and possessing, at the same time, but with frugal responsibility and kind-hearted generosity; may we all be so richly endowed).
The rule also is infused with a passion for social justice. Monks from wealthy families and from poor families are to be treated as equals; special food is meant to be provide to those with dietary restrictions; the sick, the very old, and children are to be given the care they require. In the rule Benedict lists 73 so-called “tools for good works”, which are meant to be used in the workshop that is the monastery, and many of those tools are concerned with caring for the poor, making peace with adversaries, and living well alongside one’s neighbors.
But my favorite line in Benedict’s rule comes out of the first sentence of the prologue: “listen with the ear of your heart”, the rule instructs, so that you can receive cheerfully and execute faithfully the admonition of God. I love the idea of listening with the ear of the heart, and I hope that we as a congregation made up of people who believe lots of different things will forever be listening with the ear of the heart, for when we listen with the ear of the heart we will be listening with compassion and empathy, we will hear with love and a desire for justice.
I suspect the ear of the heart picks up the murmurings of the spirit better than do our physical ears, tied as they are to our logical brains. I trust the ear of the heart detects the harmonies of earth care and care for humans, of theological curiosity and a passion for social change.
So let us listen with the ears of our hearts, and let us be transformed as together we build a stronger and more vibrant community of faith.
God’s Peace,
Ben