Thought for November 2024
The impetus for writing this reflection comes from moving house and, we hope, moving our semi-allegiance to one oblate group to a fuller commitment with another. My husband Chris and I left Cheltenham in February 2024, and moved into our new home on the Belmont Abbey estate in May. We have been novice oblates at Prinknash Abbey for a few years, but although invited to make full oblation quite recently we delayed, knowing that we hoped to relocate to Belmont eventually.. Reaching our 70th birthdays strengthened the resolve not to leave it too late. Although it is not necessary to live close to the house of one’s oblation, we felt it would be good to have a regular opportunity to pray and work ‘on site’.
So, we came to Belmont intending to make the most of our fresh start, and we have indeed found an established routine for daily Mass, for Vespers, for liturgical sensitivity to the calendar of days and seasons. There is a strong parish which shares the Abbey church, and the whole monastic community shares in some of the parish activities, especially when they take place in the abbey grounds. Parish groups exist for fundraising, socialising, practical volunteering, and prayerful study. What more can we ask? We have found the support network we were looking for.
To repeat: we find ourselves here – and we are still very much our recognisable selves in this different environment. The reminders and prompts are around us every day – but (speaking just for myself) – making time for Lectio Divina, and solitary prayer, and purposeful activity is no easier. Or rather – the time is available, but I am not automatically more available to the time. I hear the Abbey bells, beginning at 6.30am. Sometimes they are my calls to prayer – to Mass, Office, Benediction. But without those bells, I wonder whether I should set a personal alarm: Now be the time for Lectio. And at what time of day should I set it? Before or after catching the bus to Tesco? Before or after preparing a meal? Before or after putting on the washing machine/pegging out the laundry/bringing it in for ironing? I do these good and necessary things in obedience to the demands of daily life, but I haven’t yet found a compelling obedience to the particular demands of oblate life.
I regularly attended the well-organised oblate meetings at Prinknash, and appreciated the liturgy we shared, the reflections given to us, the opportunity to share news. But nobody told me exactly when to do Lectio, or how long to spend in prayer, or what to do when work is not a set task (though Tesco, and cooking, and laundry you always have with you). I shouldn’t be surprised or disappointed to find that a different oblate director – I have already had experience of two while at Belmont – or a different oblate group haven’t effected a startling change in my way of life. While I do not believe in adopting a pseudo-monastic way of life, there is the injunction in RB 4:20-21: Your way of acting should be different from the world’s way; the love of Christ must come before all else.
And there is the key: it comes back to how much I want the love of Christ, for me and from me, to be my motivation. That motivation is stimulated by, and measured by, the application of the ‘tools’ mentioned in RB 4:55-56: Listen readily to holy reading, and devote yourself often to prayer. Having a set time with a ready-marked text would be helpful, but I must not ignore the inner prompt to ‘listen readily’, which in my present environment is not an alien idea at all.
So, this is what I can conclude, having gone through the trouble and expense of moving house to another part of the country, making new neighbours, friends, and oblate companions: the new beginning brings me back to the opening words of the Rule: Listen carefully. And not only, or mainly, to the bells, and homilies, and invitations to participate in communal activity, but to what is being said to the ear of the heart.
Joanna Vials
Novice Oblate, Belmont Abbey
