Chapter Talk
Feb 18 at 12:45 PM
Wednesday Chapter talk attached.
For good stuff on Evagrius, see ldysinger.com (website of Luke Dysinger
O.S.B.).
Barry.
INTRODUCTION.
Chapter 67 of the Rule, ‘Brothers Sent On A Journey’, gives some
indication of what ‘enclosure’ meant to Saint Benedict:
‘no-one should relate to anyone else what he saw or heard
outside the monastery because that causes the greatest harm’ (v. 5).
Why does it cause the greatest harm? St. Benedict has already provided the answer,
in chapter 4 verse 20: ‘your way of acting should be different from the world’s
way’.
That verse is expressed in the Constitutions of our Order thus:
‘those who prefer nothing to the love of Christ make themselves strangers to
the actions of the world’. That is from the Constitution on ‘Separation From
The World’. ‘Separation’ seems to be the preferred Cistercian expression for
enclosure.
STRANGERS
1.
‘Strangers to the actions of the world’ – it was to make
themselves such strangers that the Holy Founders of the Cistercians ‘headed for
the desert place called Citeaux’ as the Exordium Parvum puts it. (The Exordium
Parvum being the first account of the origins of Citeaux).
They understood that ‘the more despicable and unapproachable the
place was for seculars, the more suited it was for monastic observance’. The
description of Citeaux as a ‘desert’ was quite deliberate, a piece of medieval
propaganda or spin. The Cistercians are of course only one example, out of
many, of the monastic reform movements of the 11th and 12th
centuries. Likewise, accounts of starvation diets among pioneer communities
took a standard form. St. Stephen Murat, founder of the
Grandmontines, more or less contemporary with the first Cistercians and located
only about 150 miles from Citeaux, is said to have lived off nothing but nuts,
berries and ‘floury dumplings’. As he lived to over 80 years of age, it would
be interesting to know what exactly the ingredients of those floury dumplings
were.
For the monastic reformers, strict enclosure or separation was a
vital element because it represented to them the desert of the Desert Fathers.
It was an integral part of their stated desire to return to the origins of
monasticism – the inspiration of the Desert Fathers and/or the ‘purity’ of the
Rule of Saint Benedict. However, the Cistercian historian Louis Lekai says
about this, ‘changes rarely generated universal enthusiasm among monks;
therefore those who prepared such moves were compelled to disguise their
intentions as attempts to return to certain ancient and hallowed traditions’.
So, concerning the purity of the Rule, as Fr. Hugh pointed out
the other week, it was never a question of a literal following of the Rule for
the Founders of Citeaux. The Exordium Parvum refers to ‘the monastic observance
they had already conceived in their mind’. In other words, their own particular
interpretation of the Rule.
The Exordium lists many things which the Founders rejected
because they were not found in the Rule; manors, tithes, serfs and so on but in
their enthusiasm for introducing laybrothers they conveniently omit to say that
St. Benedict makes no mention of laybrothers. Not such a pure interpretation of
the Rule after all.
STRANGERS
2.
‘Strangers to the actions of the world’. There are resonances in
that phrase with the Proper prayer for the Office of St. Anthony, Father of
Monks, which speaks of his ‘strange and wonderful way of life’. It is very
insightful of the liturgy to pick out ‘strangeness’ as a defining
characteristic of the monastic way of life.
The monk, sad to say, will always be strange to society at
large. Although enclosure today is under threat – the Internet, the
all-pervasive media, increasing numbers of lay staff – still, the monk has
separation thrust upon him whether he likes it or not.
Just by taking up monastic life, entering a monastery, wearing a
monastic habit, he becomes a figure of fun or suspicion or even hostility.
Let’s face it, he becomes like an alien from outer space to many people.
This can be hard to take, especially in the light of what is
perhaps the ultimate purpose of monastic enclosure or separation. This purpose
was given its classic expression by the great Desert Father, Evagrius of
Pontus. He wrote: ‘the monk is separated from all in order to be united to
all’.
In this experience, the monk shares in what happened to the
Saviour when ‘he came unto his own and his own received him not’.
COMMENT: Interest of the Melrose interview by Br Barry.
BBC not currently available.
Our Blogspot illustrations;
28 Apr 2014
Interview at Melrose Abbey. A monk from Nunraw Abbey was invited by historian Rory Stewart, to participate in the production. Br. Barry was warmly welcome by the staff. It can be difficult to open the BBC iPlayer - the pictures ...
Episode 1, Border Country: The Story of Britain's Lost ... - BBC
www.bbc.co.uk › Factual › History
 |
| historian and MP Rory Stewart |
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