St Benedict and Lent

As Oblates we make promises to conform our lives to the spirit of the Rule of St Benedict as lived in our monasteries of profession. We become oblates because we are attracted to the essence of Benedictine life, that is ‘to prefer nothing whatever to Christ‘ (ch 72) and because we know we need help to keep our eye on the ball, on our focus. Our threefold promise, echoing the monks’ vows, is one of continual conversion, of metanoia, of turning back to the Lord every day of our lives from where we’ve wandered, gone astray. Yet we so often don’t do what we know we want, what we should, even though we believe ourselves to be serious about this; in this we’re in company with St Paul (Romans 7:15); we fail, we experience setbacks; we forget!

Lent is a time when the Church asks us all to take stock; in preparation for our uniting ourselves with the Passion of Christ she directs us to pay attention and gives us the penitential tools of prayer, fasting and almsgiving. It seems that much is said about these tools but how often they seem to be articulated as a prescriptive ‘giving up of this and a taking up of that’, often with mind and soul stupefying minutiae.

St. Benedict says that the life of a monk, a monastic, ought to have about it at all times the character of a Lenten observance, that is a continuous Lent (ch 49). This being so we may ask ourselves the following question, ‘have we moved and grown since this time last year, kept our eyes on the ball… or have we stood still, making the same promises, using the same excuses to break them; have we become lax?’ What’s the relevance of praying more, fasting more and giving more for forty days when we’ve made lifelong promises of conversion?

But Benedict is wise and knows that we are weak; he’s a realist who knows we need encouragement and so he just asks that we increase what we usually do as monastics, to offer something above the measure required of us, and to be sure he gives examples. Importantly, he wants us to do it with the right attitude, with joy of the Holy Spirit.

St. Benedict’s chapter on Lent ends with the entreaty that whatever the monk decides to do, he must receive blessing from the abbot; the monastic life is not a private life but one of openness of heart, mind and soul to he who is their Father in the monastery. How does this work out for the oblate? Well, when we seek admittance to a monastery we join a communion of people, of monks or nuns and other oblates; our actions must be in line with our community. For this to happen we need to keep close to our community, in whatever way we can within our own circumstances, to keep in touch with the life-blood which is our monastery. In this way we shall not go astray, or when we do we will so much more quickly be able to get up again, return to the fold, to our right senses. And we shall know what we need to do, what we need to increase in our monastic practice so that with the joy of spiritual desire we shall look forward to holy Easter

Sue Thomson

Oblate of Prinknash Abbey