ST. BENEDICT AND LIVING IN THE WORLD
(last of four parts)
July 28, 1997 presentation at the Conference for Oblate Directors and Oblates
by Dennis Okholm, OblSBTo work toward the redemption of God's created cosmos by witnessing against the "world's" prevailing ethos, it might be helpful to apply the image of resident aliens (borrowing from Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, both of Duke University, who wrote a book by the same title), with due emphasis on both words.
That is to say, the Benedictine monastic contribution to the world will come in remaining distinct from the world (in the second sense) by residing as distinct in the world (in the first sense).
This is not less than God's call to the exilic community in Babylon:
Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce…But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare… For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope (Jer 29:4-5, 7, 11).We cannot escape the world, but the most effective and transformative witness to the world is to be the monastic community in the world's midst, for, to paraphrase the text in Jeremiah, "in the welfare of the
monastic community the world will find its welfare." [Not in a medieval Corpus Christianum (such as some in the Religious Right want to establish].The call is what it has always been: to be in the world God created as loyalists to the cause of Christ - but to avoid being like the sarabaites which Benedict accused of still remaining faithful to the world by their deeds (1.7). The monastic community, with its oblates, is itself a culture or world - a world whose identity is shaped in a community life that is given its character by the story of Jesus of Nazareth and its
central act of worship - the Eucharist.
Benedict puts it this way: It is "a school for the Lord's service" (prologue, 45) - a "peculiar people," "a new and separate community," "a new society." It is not so much a counter culture as an alternative culture, called to conversion or transformation of the world through the monastery's faithful existence as it lives according to its eschatological vision - a future with a hope - as informed by a vision of where God is taking history, not where the world (in the second sense) wants to take it.[see footnote #1]This means that the monastery must become a "hermeneutic of the gospel" - living out a contrary form of life for the sake of the world (refer to Jeremiah again), which is what Benedict originally sought with his Rule. RB is nothing but a translation of the gospel into instructions whereby the gospel is to be lived out among us.
Ecumenist Leslie Newbigin (in his book The Gospel in a Pluralist Society) calls this "the language of testimony" - a language that challenges the world to be accountable to the truth claims of the gospel
- to God's ongoing story of salvation as revealed in Jesus Christ. For example, we are called to live out before the world the gospel's claim that praying for and blessing our enemies will be more salvivic than
destroying them. This rejects the "world's" prevailing ethos. Again, it means that we might elicit responses similar to the State Farm Insurance secretary who suggested that maybe there are more Christians out there when she heard of my son's honesty in finding the owner of a parked car he had sideswiped; it went against the "world's" prevailing ethos.As Hauerwas and Willimon put it,
Christian ethics arise, in great part, out of something Christians claim to have seen that the world has not seen, namely, the creation of a people, a family, a colony [let us add, a Benedictine monastic community] that is living witness that Jesus Christ is Lord.Or, in the words of Henri Nouwen, "The Minister's Temptations" (Pulpit Digest, Sept/Oct 1981:525-29),
We do not belong to the world. We belong to God. We will always be tempted in some way or another to reclaim the old self, to return to Egypt, and to reject the mad way of the cross. But we become true ministers of Jesus Christ every time we take his words on our lips and say to the tempter, 'Be off, Satan… you must worship the Lord your God, and serve Him alone.'Everyday, Benedictine monastics and oblates pray, "Animate us with the Spirit with which Benedict was animated." This is the Spirit of Jesus Christ - the only animating Spirit by which Benedictine monasticism will continue to survive as Benedictine Christians in a world that desperately needs its witness.
[#1] I am reminded here of Columba Stewart's wise comments at the 1996 ABA about recapturing that eschatology rife in the writings of Cassian and Gregory. As Jacques Ellul's writings have instructed me, we Christians are to call a future into a present as an explosive force. We are to help create history by inflecting it toward God's future. In the process, in good monastic style, we call the world (in the second sense) to judgment and conversion by a reality not fully existent but modeled by the monastic community now.
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