AWAKENING A BENEDICTINE HEART
Since 2023, the Lay Community of St Benedict, who are connected with Worth Abbey, have organised St Benedict’s Week – a week of talks, podcasts and events celebrating Benedictine spirituality. If you look at their website www.lcsb.uk you can find this year’s talks.
This year the week culminated in a Study Day at Norwich Anglican Cathedral, which I helped organise and attended along with over 90 delegates from 17 Benedictine and Cistercian communities.
As part of the study day, Abbot Brendan Thomas from Belmont Abbey and Abbot Javier Suarez from the worldwide Benedictine community of St Ottilien engaged in a colloquy about aspects of the Benedictine heart. This made sense to me as if we are to awaken to the Rule of St Benedict then for the Rule to take root in us, our hearts must be awakened also. In fact that is the whole aim of the Rule. This awakening is gradual as St Benedict tells us at the end of the Prologue: ‘through the continual practice of monastic observance and the life of faith our hearts are opened wide’. Heart surgery after all takes time and is an intricate procedure.
But what are the features of a Benedictine heart, or rather, what is the Rule gradually awakening in us? Abbot Brendan and Abbot Javier first described the Benedictine heart as a listening heart: listening with your whole self, in the present moment. They likened the refectory in the monastery to a school of the gospel. The monk is listening to the reading whilst being attentive to others.
A Benedictine heart is therefore a communal heart which means not only being constantly aware of others and being a team player but also allowing oneself to be dependent on others if necessary. This communal heart is counter-cultural as individualism is sadly a hallmark of modern culture. Abbot Brendan and Abbot Javier therefore suggested that, as Benedictines, we have a call to attempt to purify culture by our way of living.
A Benedictine heart is also ready to embrace suffering, to endure suffering and be capable of self denial. They spoke of the nobility of sacrifice in community life.
At its core a Benedictine heart seeks peace: peace for others and peace for itself. To seek peace is an active aim for Benedictines. True peace is not avoiding conflict but working through it. Peace has to be found even among thorns if necessary.
It is also, of course, a prayerful heart. St Benedict in Chapter XIX of the Rule reminds his monks to tune their minds to the words they are chanting or saying. We must also bring our minds in tune with the words of the gospel so as to nurture a heart filled with the zeal of love.
In conclusion, Abbot Brendan and Abbot Javier spoke of the Rule not so much as an awakening but as a journey leading to an expanded heart, a heart which, rooted in prayer and contemplation, embraces every person and situation it encounters.
So let us awaken and continue on our journey!
Neil Zoladkiewicz
Oblate of Ealing Abbey
Chair of the UK Oblates Team
