let us now listen. i, at least, am and will.
from joan chittister’s commentary on the rule of benedict:
the fifth rung of the ladder of humilty is an unadorned and disarming one: self-revelation, benedict says, is necessary to growth. going through the motions of religion is simply not sufficient. no, the benedictine heart, the spiritual heart, is a heart that has exposed itself and all its weaknesses and all its pain and all its struggles to the one who has the insight, the discernment, the care to call us out of our worst selves to the heights to which we aspire.
the struggles we hide, psychologists tell us, are the struggles that consume us. benedict’s instruction, centuries before an entire body of research arose to confirm it, is that we must cease to wear our masks, stop pretending to be perfect, and accept the graces of growth that can come to us from the wise and gentle hearts of people of quality around us.
humility such as this gives us energy to face the world. once we ourself admit what we are, what other criticism can possibly demean us or undo us or diminish us? once we know who we are, all the delusions of grandeur, all the righteousness that’s in us dies and we come to peace with the world.
every day we have gives us another chance to become the real persons we are meant to be.
community – family – is that place everywhere where we can fail without fear of being abandoned and with the ongoing certainty that we go on being loved nevertheless. perfection is not an expectation in monastic life any more than it is an expectation in any healthy environment where experience is the basis both of wisdom and of growth.
a contemporary collection of monastic tales includes the story of the visitor who asks of the monk: “what do you do in the monastery?” and the monastic replies: “well, we fall and we get up and we fall and we get up and we fall and we get up.” where continual falling and getting up is not honored, where the wise ones who have gone before us are not present to help us through, life runs the terrible risk of drying up and blowing away before it is half lived.
the idea that the spiritual life is only for the strong, for those who don’t need it anyway, is completely dispelled in the rule of benedict. here spiritual athletes need not apply. monasticism is for human beings only. the abbot and prioress are told quite clearly that they are to see themselves as physicians and shepherds tending the weak and carrying the lost, not as drill sergeants, not as impresarios. what we have in monasteries and parishes and all fine social movements and devoted rectories and most families are just people, simple people who never meet their own ideals and often, for want of confidence and the energy that continuing commitment takes, abandon them completely. then, our role, the rule of benedict insists, is simply to try to soothe what hurts them, heal what weakens them, lift what burdens them and wait. the spiritual life is a process, not an event. it takes time and love and help and care. it takes our patient presence. just like everything else.
there is no failure, except in no longer trying.
the function of prayer is to bring us in touch with ourselves, as well. to the ancients, “tears of compunction” were the sign that a soul knew its limits, faced its sins, accepted its needs and lived in hope.
every life needs points along the way that enable us to rise above our petty daily problems, the overwhelming tragedies of our lives and begin again, whatever our circumstances, full of confidence, not because we know ourselves to be faithful, but because our god is.
and finally, never lose hope in god’s mercy.
what benedict wants is simply that we keep trying. failures and all. pain and all. fear and all. the god of mercy knows what we are and revels in weakness that tries.
these tools of the spiritual life – justice, peacemaking, respect for all creation, trust in god – are the work of a lifetime. each one of them represents the unearthed jewel that is left in us to mine. each of them represents the gem that we can be. benedict says that in the dark days of the spiritual life, when we have failed ourselves miserably, we must remember the god who walks with us on the journey to our best selves and cling without end to the god who fails us never.
monastic spirituality teaches us that everything we want to do will not succeed, but monastic spirituality also teaches us that we are never to stop trying. we are never to give in to the lesser in life. we are never to lose hope in god’s mercy.
we will fail often, but god will not fail us and we must not stop.
long life, in other words, is given for the gift of insight: to give us time to understand life and to profit from its lessons and to learn from its failures and to use its moments well and make sense out of its chaos.
god is in the here and now in benedictine spirituality. it is we who are not. it is we who are trapped in the past, angry at what formed us, or fixated on a future that is free from pain or totally under our control. but god is in our present, waiting for us there.
be blessed.
