THE
P RTAL
May 2017
Page 19
Bones for the
Spiritual Life
Benedictine Spirituality by Fr David Mawson
“ You will
surely have realised that you cannot become a spiritual person without an interior
discipline in your dealings with the world.” (Rule for a New Brother) Our spiritual lives need an inner
structure or they will collapse, just as our physical bodies will collapse without a skeleton to support them.
The Rule of Saint Benedict, on which the Benedictine
Way of Life is based, dates back over 1500 years.
There are very many men and women who follow the
Benedictine Rule as monks and nuns in monasteries
all over the world. Each of those monasteries, as well as
the resident religious, will often have a broader family
of people who, although not professed monks or nuns,
have a very close relationship with the monastery and
who follow the same Rule of life but in the secular
world. They are called Oblates – people who have
offered their lives to God in their secular situation
under the authority of the monastery. I have had the
privilege of being a Life Oblate for the last 40 years.
tells us how to behave, or act, or judge.
• Being obedient to the system of which we are part.
In a way all three of the traditional vows of POVERTY,
CHASTITY and OBEDIENCE are covered by the first
Benedictine vow of faithfulness to our calling. But
Saint Benedict asks us to look further.
What about STABILITY? For a monk or nun this
means stability to a community. Benedictines are
rooted in their own community and will stay with
that community. No matter where they go or what
job they are called to do they are still rooted in their
home house. For us as Oblates in the secular world
Saint Benedict had a vision for establishing what he this stability means getting on with things where we
called a School in the Lord’s Service – a sound common are. Doing as good a job as we can in our present
sense approach to God, the world and ourselves – situation without always hankering for new things or
based around the Benedictine Vows.
continually looking back at where we have come from.
Sometimes it means getting on with working on tasks
If you ask many people what they understand or relationships which may not be particularly easy,
by monastic vows they are probably likely to say but must still be done!
POVERTY, CHASTITY and OBEDIENCE. They may
The third Benedictine vow is CONVERSION OF
link this to the three knots which you sometimes see
LIFE. In a nutshell this means continually trying to
on the rope girdle worn by some monastics.
conform our lives to the way we know God would wish
But the Benedictine vows are not the same. The us to live them. We all have an inbuilt tendency to please
Benedictine vows are OBEDIENCE, STABILITY and ourselves rather than conform to the will of Christ. My
CONVERSION OF LIFE. and it is these concepts favourite illustration of this human inclination is the
supermarket trolley – the one with the wonky wheel
which lie behind Benedictine spirituality.
which always want to go its own way and inevitably
OBEDIENCE, of course, means doing as we are told! leads us to where we ought not to be – the cream cakes,
Doing what we ought to do and not doing what we the chocolate – the whisky? Our spiritual lives are a
continual struggle against our natural inclination.
ought not to do!
• Being obedient to God and doing what he wants
Saint Benedict knew this and he knew that God knows
us to do by persevering faithfully in our prayers,
this. He also knew that we cannot win this struggle on
in our worship, in our meditation and study of
our own – unless we are real saints. We need help and
the scriptures.
companionship on our spiritual journey and we need
• Being obedient to others in the sense of being
OBEDIENCE, STABILITY and CONVERSION OF
faithful to the demands they make on us. Being
LIFE - three solid bones for the skeleton on which to
charitable, honest, faithful and law abiding.
build our spiritual lives.
Respecting God’s creation.
• Being obedient to ourselves and our personal
Sound common sense from Saint Benedict.
responsibilities and the internal conscience which