This year Easter falls on the last Sunday of March, so most of the month is part of the season of Lent. The Mass readings for Lent begin with Jesus’ journey into the desert and his stay there for forty days and end with his journey along the Via Dolorosa to Calvary.

People’s journeys are very much in the news these days as refugees flood across borders and seas in search of safety and a better life. While the numbers involved may be greater now than in the past, there is nothing new about this situation. Peoples have always ebbed and flowed across the continents, escaping war or famine or simply searching for something better than their current situation. The Israelites moved back and forth between the chosen land and Egypt as droughts and famines came and went. They were forcibly moved to Babylon and eventually came back to their homeland. The Holy Family themselves fled to Egypt in fear of their lives and returned when the political situation had changed.

Here in Britain, and perhaps more obviously in the Celtic fringes, there are few families who do not have ancestors who have emigrated to Canada, America, Australia, New Zealand or more exotic places. Some will have been forced off the land by changing agricultural practices and some would simply have been seeking a better life.

Another form of journey was the pilgrimage. It’s history goes back to the beginnings of Christianity. For the early monks of even the more far-flung monasteries of Iona or Lindisfarne, going on a pilgrimage to Rome or the Holy Land was often a longed-for event and was more common than some modern church historians acknowledge.

All this restless travel seems far removed from the stability of the Benedictine monastery. St Benedict has stern words for those monks who travel about, spending a few nights here and moving on to a few nights there. They ‘indulge their own wills and succumb to the allurements of gluttony … Of the miserable conduct of all such men it is better to be silent than to speak.’ (chapter 1) He recognised that there were occasions when a monk had to travel but regarded such journeys as a threat to the soul as much as to the body. The monk was to ask for prayers before he left and be prayed for while he was away. On his return,

‘at the end of each canonical Hour of the Work of God on the day they return, let them lie prostrate on the floor of the oratory and beg the prayers of all on account of any faults that may have surprised them on the road, through the seeing or hearing of something evil, or through idle talk. And let no one presume to tell another whatsoever he may have seen or heard outside of the monastery, because this causes very great harm.’ (chapter 67)

While the monks themselves were discouraged from travelling, they were expected to provide hospitality to other travellers. Indeed one of the main functions of the monastery, after the Work of God, in the form of prayer, was to provide food and shelter to the traveller: ‘Let all guests who arrive be received like Christ, for he is going to say, “I came as a guest, and you received Me. … In the reception of the poor and of pilgrims the greatest care and solicitude should be shown, because it is especially in them that Christ is received.” (chapter 53)

Benedictine oblates tend to think of Lent as a spiritual journey. The rule advises us to ‘restrain ourselves from all vices and give ourselves up to prayer with tears, to reading, to compunction of heart and to abstinence’. Perhaps this Lent in particular, we should also bear in mind that the Rule expects us to look after those making a physical journey, for whatever reason.

Jane Coll

Oblate of Pluscarden