The initial novelty of the romance wears off. It is here, at
the point where the novelty is gone, that the work truly begins. It is here, after the novelty is gone, that our Solemn Promises [Obedience, Stability, Conversion of Life] begin to truly take on their meaning. Our romance with
monasticism takes on the character of a good marriage. The consummated love affair continues and is
ever deepening.
Benedict’s theme of ora et labora [prayer and
work] was very attractive at the first. It was one of the elements of Benedict’s
school that irresistibly drew me to his approach to living genuinely as a
Christian. I needed what Benedict was offering me in the ora et labora department.
I still do. Even more now than at the beginning. I must concede that conversatio
morum [Benedict’s continual conversion of life] does not grow easier with
age.
One of the fruits of the divine office [praying the
liturgy of the hours] is the potential for a sense of mindfulness … a sense of
sensitivity and awareness … that progressively captures us.
My life began revolving around and resembling the shape
of Benedict’s example of living life centered in prayer and work. The
Benedictine ora et labora theme was greatly assisted by the fact that I
was newly self-employed and spent most of those income earning hours working
alone. [Alone? The silence of solitude is never our enemy. It is always our
ally. I think people fear and avoid solitude because it [solitude] causes us to
realize things about ourselves that we honestly do not want to see and admit.
Not only so. The Holy Spirit seems to have an affinity for entering into the silence
and emptiness created by solitude. Hence, by entering into solitude, we set
ourselves on a course for a head-on collision with God.]
I discovered quickly that the monastic performance of the
Opus Dei was practically impossible to duplicate outside the monastic
enclosure. [Benedict considered participation in the Divine Office … the
Day-Hours of/for prayer … to be the work of God and the high calling of everyone
that answers the call to monastic life.]
The world outside monastic enclosures simply does not run
on a monastic time schedule that allows for an exact performance of the Day-Hours
of Prime, Lauds, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline according to
Benedict’s prescription. I will not say that it is impossible to do it. I will
say that, for the vast majority of us outside the enclosure, attempts at doing
it are impractical. Some adaptation of the Opus Dei is necessarily in
order for external members of the community. Some internal communities have, in
fact, made adaptations to the structure of the Opus Dei and no longer
strictly adhere to it.
Why such a strong emphasis on prayer?
The answer is very simple; because monastics realize that
only through prayer can we possibly conquer the enemies of our souls that can
[and will] deprive us of the beatific vision of God after we pass through the
doorway of death where we hope to be joined together in perpetual fellowship
with all the Saints of the ages. If prayer receives such high priority within
the structured and controlled environment found within the cloister, how much
more important is it, then, here outside the cloister where our senses and
sensibilities are continuously bombarded by an environment that is carnally
base, out of control, and cares not one iota for our senses and sensibilities?
The work of prayer will always lead us to the work of
self-improvement; not self-improvement in the modernist ego-centered sense of
it, but in the sense of Benedict’s conversatio morum [conversion of
life]. The tools for good works listed by Benedict in Chapter 4 of The Rule are
the plumb and level that evidence our positioning … vertically in
our understanding of God’s holy expectations of us and horizontally in the way
we exercise these expectations toward others. The plumb and level are
used inseparably to measure our willingness to choose God’s will over our own
will.
Here, in these next few verses, Saint Benedict adds to
the list of tools telling his students …
(10) To deny
one's self in order to follow Christ (cf Mt 16:24; Lk 9:23).
(11) To
chastise the body (cf 1 Cor 9:27).
(12) Not to
seek after pleasures.
(13) To love
fasting.
(14) To relieve
the poor.
(15) To clothe
the naked.
(16) To visit
the sick (cf Mt 25:36).
(17) To bury
the dead.
(18) To help
the troubled.
(19) To console
the sorrowing.[1]
Benedict’s tools of good works remind me that there is
more to Christianity than having a mere profession of faith. He reminds
me that any profession or version of Christianity that is devoid of the Corporal
and Spiritual Works of Mercy is no Christianity at all.
Benedict also [and always] reminds me that I have yet a long way to go in
my own process of conversatio morum.
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