The 8th December was the beginning of a special Year of Mercy. The secular year started on 1st January, which the Church sets aside as a world day of prayer for peace. Peace and mercy go together and both are in very short supply at the moment as the major powers in the world struggle to contain both traditionally fought wars and more modern terrorist activities.
The Rule of St Benedict also starts with words of battle and weapons. The second paragraph reads – “To you, therefore, my words are now addressed, whoever you may be, who are renouncing your own will to do battle under the Lord Christ, the true King, and are taking up the strong, bright weapons of obedience.” Here the battles spoken of are perfectly compatible with a world where peace and mercy reign. They are fought within each of us and the more ground we win, the closer to God we become. The closer to God we are, the easier it is for us to make peace with those around us and show mercy to those who have wronged us. But there is no doubt that we have to battle to continue moving in the right direction. The forces of evil are always on the lookout for weak points in our defences and can push us back into the quagmire of our sins before we realise what is happening.
For St Benedict, obedience is the one weapon needed to wage this war and therefore is the most important quality for a monk to develop. The first paragraph of the Rule reads – “Listen, my son, to your master’s precepts, and incline the ear of your heart. Receive willingly and carry out effectively your loving father’s advice, that by the labour of obedience you may return to Him from whom you had departed by the sloth of disobedience.”
This first paragraph is so rich in meaning that we could examine almost every word and tease out layers of teaching. However let us concentrate on the idea of obedience. The Rule devotes all of chapter 5 to this topic and comes back to it in chapter 7, which has the heading “On Humility”. Chapter 5 begins with the sentence “The first degree of humility is obedience without delay” and the third paragraph of Chapter 7 begins with “The first degree of humility, then, is that a person keep the fear of God before his eyes and beware of ever forgetting it.” Has St Benedict become confused? Of course, the answer is “No”! He knew perfectly well what he was saying. Modern readers struggle because they tend not to be so steeped in the scriptures as these early monks were. St Benedict’s understanding of obedience is strictly scriptural. He is thinking of the obedience that Jesus showed to his father and the authority that this gave him when teaching the disciples or passing authority on to them. Through humility, Jesus was so attuned to His father’s will, it was as though there was only one thought process involved – the command and the response blend together into one action.
So the monk should be striving to grow so close to God that he instinctively knows and implements God’s will for him. He should be listening to God’s commands with his heart and responding almost without realising it. This attitude demands, not just obedience, but humility – the complete subjugation of ones own will to that of God. The monk should be so focussed on listening for God’s instructions and putting them into effect that there is no time for dwelling on his own personal ambitions. Of course, this is not easy and St Benedict suggests that one way of staying focussed is to be constantly aware of the cost of failure – the “fear of God” is not a negative fear that we might have of someone who bullies us but the positive fear of being found wanting by someone that we love.
Jane Coll
Oblate of Pluscarden Abbey
