ST. BENEDICT AND LIVING IN THE WORLD
(third of four parts)
July 28, 1997 presentation at the Conference for Oblate Directors and Oblates

Dennis Okholm, OblSB, Oblate of Blue Cloud Abbey

It is one thing to learn to live as an individual within God’s created cosmos with the help of monastic disciplines that cultivate a rejection of the world in the second sense of that term. But, how can we impact the world (as created cosmos), and the church, with Benedictine distinctives without the negative influence of prevailing ethos ("world" in the second sense)?

Let me begin by saying that I am always concerned when I look down at my feet sticking out at the end of the bedsheets to see who my bedfellows have been, especially as it gets more crowded. For instance, I was very active in the nuclear freeze movement during the early ‘80’s. I was so as a disciple of Jesus Christ, because I believed that a Christian disciple could not tolerate the continued manufacture of weapons that were meant to destroy what God had created.

I joined the Princeton Peace Coalition, headed by an Episcopal priest. I marched with the coalition and 750,000 other people through the streets of Manhattan. But then the movement came to be co-opted by an anti-Reaganite ideology – an ideological frenzy that had little to do with being a disciple of Jesus. I was not a Reagan fan, but I began to realize that my concern for God’s created cosmos was being preempted by "worldly" attitudes and motivations that would only become more of the problem, rather than the solution.

So, similar to my experience, how can Benedictines impact the world without being commercialized as nun dolls, quaint relics, and so forth? And, how can this be done using the world (in the first sense) – such as computer technology, without having the world (in the second sense) – such as computer technology’s negative effects on community – corrupt Benedictine monasticism? How do we impact a world that has become filled with consumers of religion, satiating appetites with spiritual "junk food," so that instead of all that people become cultivators of a deep spiritual life?

Maybe the place to begin is with Benedict’s admonishments to fear the world) in the second sense of that term). These can serve us as wise reminders (just as difficult Bible passages do if we consider them in such a way that they work on us before we do a work on them! For example, look at the way we are so quick to explain away Luke 18:25 before we take Jesus’ words too seriously).

For instance, they might serve as a caution against too easily succumbing to the "Sally Field" syndrome ("You like me… You really like me!") In this regard, I don’t think the Mormons should have been concerned about Dennis Rodman’s assessment of their religion; if I were a Mormon, I would have been more concerned if Dennis Rodman had praised my religion. So then, consider Benedict’s admonishments to fear the world. For instance, Benedict wants us to welcome the guest from the world, but not before a prayer, because the devil is crafty and can enter the community through the guest. And even after prayer, Benedict only wanted the guest to have contact with the guestmaster (53.5, 23-24). Benedict wants us to pray for those who have come back into the cloister from being in the world, and those who have been outside are to be silent about what they’ve seen lest harm be done (67.4-5).

In other words, figuratively speaking, maybe we need to recover some sense of making the world wait four or five days outside the gate of the monastery (58.1-4). I am struck by the contrast of making the world wait outside until the community is convinced that the postulant is ready to adjust to the community (rather than letting the postulant or "world" set the agenda), and my shock at seeing Monte Cassino and learning from the monk who greeted us under the gate labeled "PAX" that the world
refused to wait outside the gate, destroying the monastery with worldly means of bombing raids during WWII.

The point I am trying to make with this metaphorical comparison is perhaps best said in a publisher’s blurb for a recent book entitled The Two Cities of God: The Church’s Responsibility for the Earthly City (Eds. Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, Eerdmans, 1997):

The authors assert that the popular slogan of the sixties, "Let the world set the agenda!" must be turned around. The church must set its own agenda in dealing with the world, and that agenda must feature most prominently the church’s life in the communion of the Triune God… In each case the authors agree that the church’s greatest witness and service to the world is in the church’s day-by-day service of God, both as an institution and in the lives of individual Christians – "a sign and agent of the heavenly city within and for the earthly city.

Apply this to Benedictine monasticism and you have a good idea what I am getting at.

(concluded in next issue) return to Jan - Feb 1999 index