This is the homily I preached at the midday Eucharist today. It’s only meant to be a few minutes long.
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“Listen my son to the instructions of your Master, turn the ear of your heart to the advice of a loving father; accept it willingly and carry it out vigorously; so that through the toil of obedience you may return to him from whom you have separated by the sloth of disobedience.”
This is the opening paragraph of the Rule of St Benedict, a writing which has had more impact on the Church and Western civilisation than we will ever know. Some have said that it introduced or developed a number of concepts of secular government, the most important being a kind of democracy, but also such entities as written constitutions and authority limited by law. As we all know it is a rule still used by thousands of Benedictine communities around the world, including the Sisters here at West Malling, and for this book to be still be being used today, 1500 years after it was written, it must have something of an edge. And yet when we read it or have it read to us, we hear little but down to earth, honest common sense. This is no grand legal document, no spiritual manifesto, and yet this rule is still “in fashion”; while the rest of the Church has been battling away with reformations, counter reformations, persecution and triumphalism, this little book of humble advice has remained.
One of the problems with trying to get to grips with the personality and life of a Saint such as Benedict is the tendency of hagiographers to unapologetically embellish the facts, in order to paint a Saint in a particularly good light, however we do know that Benedict was educated in Rome, and left in his early 20s to pursue a holy life as an anchorite, living alone in the wild. This was not uncommon – ever since the Roman emperor had converted to Christianity in the 4th century living in the wilderness was the new martyrdom, and it was seen as the height of Christian discipleship. Monasteries developed as a result of this, although to begin with they were simply meeting places for the hermits who lived nearby, but gradually houses were set up and those within them lived by rules, but those monks who lived in them were generally seen as the weaker brethren, and the hope was that one day they would go out to live the solitary life when they were stronger. Paradoxically Benedict seems to imply this is still his ideal, when he sets out his list of the four types of monk, one which mirrors St Basil the Great who lived a short time before him. Basil however felt community living was by far superior to the solitary life, and himself wrote a rule which is still used in some communities today, and which Benedict pays homage to in his epilogue.
So what made Benedict special? Why did his rule go on to govern the lives of the religious for centuries after his death? Well we know that he himself lived a solitary religious life to begin with, and ended up the abbot of a number of communities, and initially made mistakes, which he must have learnt from. Benedict was a pioneer of religious living, and he took seriously the work and experience of many who had gone before him – with him the evolution of community had reached a stable end result, and stability it was that he considered essential for not those in a community but for all Christians. I would argue that a lack of stability is one of the most serious problems for anyone trying to live as a disciple of Christ today, and even as an ordinand my attempts to order my life, say the daily offices and keep a healthy balance of work and rest are often thwarted by both my own lack of willpower and the expectations of the world around me – and without stability I am hugely limited in how much I can serve God and the Church. It could be said that Pilsdon is an experimental community, that the members and guests and trustees are all pioneers, trying to establish stability in their lives and the lives of those they serve, a pioneering community which stands in the tradition of Benedict and all those before and after him who have aspired to achieve a balanced life.
Much of what we know about Benedict is from his rule, and we know that he was humble. It is not written in the style of many other famous monks around his time, it is written in the style of a loving father. Perhaps it is this love and humility which makes this simple rule stand out amongst the world. But he was also deeply devoted to God, and asks us to be the same, asking Jesus to bring any work we begin to completion, and welcoming the stranger as if they were our saviour himself. As we come forward to receive communion today, let us meditate on the values with Benedict set in place in a time of great turmoil in the region he lived, and in our own turmoils, both private and public, allow ourselves to be conformed to God’s will, and to live as disciples of Christ.