December 2000 – February 2001                                                                                                                  Issue 00/4

MEETINGS

December – This will be our Christmas meeting to be held on 17 December at 2.00pm. As in previous years we will hold it at the Camillus House premises. This will be a purely social event and we ask each oblate attending to bring a plate and drinks. Relatives and friends are also cordially invited.

PRAYER LIST

ITEMS OF INTEREST

The series of lectures entitled ‘Psalms – an acquired taste?’ as mentioned in our previous newsletter were a huge success and for those who missed them or could only attend some of them, we now have available the set of six lectures on tape. These have been well produced and we are able to offer them to oblates for $34.95 a set, including postage. For those attending our regular meetings, these tapes can also be borrowed from our library – see Rhod Metcalf to arrange. We request any orders for tapes to be lodged together with a cheque made out to the Benedictine Oblate Group prior to the end of this month, December. They can be sent to the editor at the above address who will organise their despatch.

The Oblate group pilgrimage to New Norcia and Bullsbrook Shrine took place on Sunday 3 September.  Seven Oblates met at the church for Mass at 9.00am. and completed a full day of prayer, lunch and social interaction. Unfortunately as the event clashed with Father’s Day, we did not get the turnout we expected. One of our recent enquirers Steve Storer really got into the spirit of things and decided to visit a third pilgrim site by calling in at the Schoenstatt Shrine at Armadale on the way back home to Rockingham.

LIBRARY – BOOK LIST

Good news for those oblates who like reading. Our library is finally in operation and is located at Camillus House for the convenience of those who regularly attend Chapter meetings. As the group has committed substantial funds to the building up of the library stock, we encourage all oblates to make use of it. Our Librarian is to be commended for continually keeping an eye out for new and suitable publications, also all those oblates who have kindly donated their own books to it. The complete list by author and title, as at the time of printing is as below. We will give updated lists in future issues.

FAITH FORMATION

Conversion

Conversion – Conversatio Morum – The Benedictine Way. The Benedictine vow of Conversatio Morum is to live Monastic life according to the Rule of Benedict. In practice this has become the conversion of his manner of life and moral conduct, translated as fidelity to monastic life through self-discipline, ie. The special monastic discipline.

The novice promises that he will daily reform his life and work at perfection according to the Rule. Monks and nuns reached holiness because they lived the monastic life and were model Benedictines. This is The Benedictine Way.

The novice promises to pursue only one end – Union with God, and that he will seek Him in His will, in much Lectio Divina, to go to Him in continual prayer, join his brothers in the prayer of the Church and Christ in His sacrifice of glory to the Father. Our daily life is the immediate church for us and through it we will seek God in perfection through penance – the penance of our daily life and community

The vow of Conversion means that the Holy Rule is going to be a manual for the monk, a working document that provides words to live by for his way of life, not a museum piece that serves merely to give a likeness by tradition. The Benedictine Way is essentially a mentality: how you view the world, your vows, your faith.

Monasticism is a response to a call or, maybe something more urgent than that – it is an inner compulsion – the love of Christ compels us. There is a demand within us, in response to some kind of experience, to live a radical yes to what is ultimate. This experience called for a redirection – a conversion within us. There is a need to be present to the ultimate meaning of life in such a way that we let go and renounce all that is not necessary to our doing this.

The monk seeks the one thing necessary – the pearl of great price – the treasure of life and to concentrate on this ultimate goal.

This does not mean we have to renounce all the necessities of life. St. Benedict states quite clearly in his Rule – our poverty is to be an individual poverty of spirit, sharing of our talents and charity. To be free from possessiveness in the way of endowments, where each is to have what he needs; for some this will be more, for others less but all hold in common and all is to be held in common and put at the use of everyone.

To undertake monastic conversion means that one actually assumes the life patterns of the monk. Many people can lay claim to a monastic mentality but unless they assume the monastic practices of celibacy – poverty – obedience to a definite superior, they are not monks in the Benedictine sense of the word.

As Oblates we live out the spirit and values of the Rule in and as our state in life allows. We are not called to take the heady vows of a monk but we can and we should, embrace the Rule, its mentality and the practices of monasticism in our lives as far as we are sensibly able.

Reflection on the Prodigal Son – Catechism 1439.

The process of conversion and repentance was described by Jesus in this parable. At the centre is the merciful Father, the fascination of illusory freedom, the abandonment of the Father’s house, the extreme misery in which the son finds himself after squandering his fortune, his deep humiliation at finding he is obliged to feed swine and still worse, at wanting to feed on the husks the pigs ate. His reflection on all that he has lost, his repentance and decision to declare himself guilty before his Father. The journey back, the Father’s generous welcome, the Father’s joy – all these are characteristic of the process of conversion. The beautiful robe, the ring and festive banquet are symbols of that new life – pure, worthy and joyful – of anyone who returns to God and to the bosom of His family, which is the Church.

Only the heart of Christ who knows the Father and the depth of His love, could reveal to us the abyss of His mercy in so simple and beautiful a way.

Reflection on ‘I want to know Christ’ – Phillipians 3:10-14.

‘Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal…’

Profession whether simple or solemn cannot be an end in itself in an absolute sense. It is an end with regard to the future and Paul insists on saying that we must be straining forward to what lies ahead. The road that lies behind is to be forgotten – no more useless regrets, no more ‘if only’s’, no complacency about the spiritual riches we have accumulated. In the presence of God we are always unworthy servants – forgiven sinners – poor men. We are not to close our hands but to keep them open towards the Lord in order to receive the generosity of His love.

Christ is always ahead of us. We are supported by the ladder that links earth to heaven which Jacob saw and God calls us to ascend to Him.

This ladder is for us the Rule of Benedict. The ladder is Christ and we are constantly at the beginning with respect to what is above us.

The created being can always become greater. If God is infinite in reality, the soul is infinite in potential. Its divinity consists in transforming itself into God. If it is infinite in potential, its creation must take the form of a process of growth, without which it would simply be finite in the way that the material world is. In this perspective, continual progress is constitutive of the soul itself and it keeps itself constantly orientated towards something higher than itself.

The Call to Conversion then, is a call to spiritual maturity. In RB72, Benedict gives us the vision he had for his communities in a life of charity. There are no favourites. For a community to operate on the basis of each being given what they need requires much spiritual maturity. Benedict calls these needs ‘infirmities’. It is only the outpouring of the Spirit into the hearts of the members of the community, that allows them to live in charity. A community manifesting the life of the risen Lord.

The spirit of the vow of Conversion of Life is simply to bring to fulfillment in a monastic context, the promises of baptism, that we renew every year during the Pascal Vigil.

I do reject sin, so as to live in the freedom of God’s children.

I do reject the glamour of evil, and refuse to be mastered by sin.

I do reject Satan, father of sin and prince of darkness, in order to pass to the Father.

The conduct outlined in RB4 for those who filled with the Spirit have chosen to follow the ways of Christ are:

1. Striving to develop a profound love of God and neighbour.

2. A reverence and respect for all people.
3. They do not count serving the needs of others as any great inconvenience.
4. They prefer nothing to the love of Christ that has been poured into their hearts and therefore, strive to have this love become the dominating power in their lives, activities and relationships.

The primary demand of the Gospel is conversion. The monastic vocation is meant to sound the very depths of this demand.

Through this institution, God has willed to call to Himself people in whose poverty He can manifest the glory of His grace and the greatness of His mercy.

To let God transform our nothingness into the image of His Son is indeed, the grace of our vocation.

REFLECTION

God is the goal of each human person and for the Christian believer Christ as man is the way to that goal. Our relationship with God is expressed in a special way in prayer, both that of the liturgy (spoken of shortly at last Wednesday’s talk) and private or personal prayer. Each requires the other and each nourishes the other, helping us to remain focussed on God. We don’t come into the world as isolated individuals, nor do we come to birth as Christians independently of others. We are by nature social, oriented to community and called into the community of the life of the Trinity of Persons in God.

BENE DICTUM, BENEDICTE! 

Another extract from The Chapter newsletter, 1995. We wondered whether Fr. David might consider enlarging and framing this and perhaps hanging several in guesthouse rooms? We think this might be from chapter 74 of the Rule!

Concerning Guests

If any pilgrim come from distant parts, if he wish as a guest to dwell in the monastery and will be content with the customs that he finds in the place and do not perchance by his lavishness disturb the monastery, but is simply content with what he finds, he shall be received for as long a time that he desires. If, indeed, he find fault with anything, or expose it, reasonably and with the humility of charity, the Abbot shall discuss it prudently, lest perchance God had sent him for this very purpose. But, if he have been found gossipy and contumacious in the time of his sojourn as guest, not only ought he not to be joined to the body of the monastery, but also shall it be said to him, honestly, that he must depart. If he does not go, let two stout monks, in the name of God, explain the matter to him.

GUARDING THE WALLS

By Rt. Rev. Dom Aldhelm Cameron-Brown, Prinknash Abbey. Gloucestershire.

Today we still have much to be thankful for in this country. Most people are still honest and decent and the staff of British Rail are more polite and friendly than they were some years ago, but it is sad that we have to keep all the outside doors of the monastery locked nowadays, even during the day, something we would not have dreamt of doing a few years ago. When I was young, girls at university did not ask to be protected from the possibility of rape.

So the monk is to be like the man in the Gospel, who draws things both new and old out of his treasure house. What has this to do with Oblates? Well, the life of Oblates must reflect the life, the spirituality, of monks and nuns, otherwise there is no point in it and our spirituality is the life of the Gospel, interpreted through the Rule of St. Benedict.

One thing is central to the Rule: seeking God. We seek God through a life of prayer which is ever deepening. We seek God through the love and service of our fellow men and women. How can we seek someone who is already so close to us that in Him we live and move and have our being? ‘Seeking’ is one way of putting it. The idea of the journey is an apt image for life in the Spirit, for Benedict and others. But we also know that God dwells within us and we dwell within Him. In seeking God we aim to make His continual presence more real for us.

So if the monk is called in these days to guard the walls for Christ’s sake, the Oblates too are called to live by the standards of the Gospel, which used to be taken for granted in this country. They are called to maintain the truth and holiness coming to us from the past and to look out for and encourage the new seeds of life in the Church and in the world. Some of them may think, ‘I am too old for that’ but we are never too old to pray, never too old to suffer and to offer our suffering to Christ.

To offer ourselves to Christ, to surrender ourselves and our whole lives to Christ, there is the nub. Benedict tells us to prefer nothing whatever to Christ. ‘Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened and I will give you rest’. Christ will indeed give us rest, for He also said, ‘No one knows the Son except the Father, just as no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Father chooses to reveal Him’. Jesus is the revelation of the Father and in the knowledge, the security of His love we find rest. Even amidst the storms and winds of this world we find rest.

So as Oblates we do not just sit down and bemoan the way things are going. There is a lot to be sad about. But these things are matters of urgent prayer. So we need to face the future, not with facile optimism, but with faith and hope, knowing that Christ is the Lord of history; He knows what He is doing and in the end, not perhaps in our lifetime, but in the end, as Julian of Norwich said, all manner of things shall be well.

ANYWAY

People are unreasonable, illogical and self-centred,
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives,
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies,
Succeed anyway.
The good you do will be forgotten tomorrow,
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable,
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight,
Build anyway,
People really need help but may attack if you help them,
Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth,
Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.

THE RHYTHM OF LIFE

Each morning you look down from the monastery upon a thick carpet of cloud that rolls in over the ocean during the night. It hides both road and beach. By mid-morning the California sun has burned away the fog and little by little the concealed beauty of the coastline’s panorama is restored to view with an exhilarating clarity. This rhythm of nature, concealing and disclosing, is like the rhythm of the life of the monastic community and of all prayer. There are times when we are content to see and know nothing. At other times we see and praise and perhaps even try to describe what it is we are seeing. Liturgy and chant, silence and stillness, thought and contemplation. The rhythm of the spiritual path is word leading to silence and silence leading back to the word, investing words and signs with new meaning and power. These rhythms are not constructed by the mind. Better to say that our mind is itself constructed around this rhythm. To be conscious of it is to obey it and to be true to ourselves. All these perceptual rhythms display the intangible, unknowable movement that is the divine life filling and guiding each of us and that is ‘all in all’. A good, happy human life is one that has reverence for these rhythms and senses this original movement of God flowing through them all. Benedict understood this with such profundity in his ‘little rule for beginners’, that he did not need to conceptualise it but simply describes a way of life that could capture it, harmonising the rhythms of the body, mind and spirit. Of action and contemplation, solitude and community, youth and age, sickness and health, work and rest.

Book Reviews

Michael Casey is a Cistercian monk and is Prior of Tarrawarra Abbey in Victoria, Australia. He is also the author of The Undivided Heart and the recently revised Towards God, to which The Art of Sacred Reading forms a companion volume.
A unique guide to the contemplative reading of spiritual texts.
The originality of The Art of Spiritual Reading is that it makes accessible to today’s Christians an important aspect of the Western tradition and ties in with the growing interest among ordinary people with spirituality and the Bible. An extremely good and useful book – a worthy companion to Michael Casey’s Towards God.

Dorothy A Lee – Professor of New Testament, United Faculty of Theology. Melbourne. In The Art of Sacred Reading, Michael Casey writes exquisitely – and with astonishing learning – about an ancient Christian technique of prayer. Drawing upon his personal spiritual resources and deep familiarity with the Bible and the sacred texts of the Western tradition, the author has crafted a remarkably fine book.

Lectio Divina – the ancient art of sacred reading – is much more than a way of simply comprehending the words printed on a page. Understood properly, sacred reading expands into an entire approach to living. At its heart is the application of the ‘prayerful’ life, which Michael Casey explores in this most engaging book of spirituality.

Many ask today how they can benefit from the writings of the ancient Western teachers of spiritual wisdom. Few people are more qualified than Michael Casey to answer this question. The Art of Sacred Reading will fascinate and delight its readers. More than that it is likely to change their lives.

Reflective personal reading is rapidly becoming a lost art. Michael Casey invites contemporary Christians to practice the ancient discipline of lectio divina as a way of deepening communion with God and with others. Spending time with The Art of Sacred Reading is itself an exercise in holy reading.

Michael Downey, Editor – The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality.

Comment

Our thanks and appreciation to Clare Anderson of the UK who was the Editor of The Chapter newsletter and who is on our mailing list for our own newsletter. As you can see Clare we are putting back issues of The Chapter to good use!

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