Following the Way of St Benedict in a Time of Crisis
A talk given by Mother Anne at St Augustine’s College Induction Day 14th September 2024
As abbess of the resident community of nuns I warmly welcome you to this ancient abbey dedicated to Saint Mary. I pray that your training here will be a time of growing more deeply into your relationship with the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. These are difficult and disturbing times that we are living through and we need deep foundations to support us as we try to discern a Christian response to what is happening around us.
St. Benedict too lived in difficult times as the Roman Empire was collapsing around him, crumbling under the onslaught of barbarian hoards. Civilisation as he knew it was coming to an end. In the face of all this he created communities founded in the gospel and shaped by his ‘little rule for monks’ as he called it. It’s a rule that has stood the test of time and still has much to teach us today in our current time of crisis whether or not we are monks.
It was the rule by which the original nuns of this abbey lived from the time of its foundation in 1090 by Bishop Gundulf of Rochester through to 1538 when they were turned out by Henry VIII.
The abbey then fell into secular hands until the late 19th century when it was once more restored to Anglican Benedictines in 1891.
Nearly 500 years of prayer in medieval times and now more than a century in modern times has made this a thin place where many people sense God’s presence in a very powerful way. We are the inheritors of the centuries of prayer in this place and in our turn seek to continue that work.
We are often asked what Benedictine Spirituality is, as distinguished from the many other spiritualities on offer within and outside the church. It is hard to give an answer as it is simply living by the gospel of Jesus Christ in a particularly focussed way. Perhaps it is better to talk about Benedictine spiritual practices, a distinctive set of practices that shape our Christian lives and transform us more and more into the likeness of Christ.
As you may know, the Rule of St Benedict starts with the word ‘Listen’, listen to your master’s teaching. We are called to respond generously to the words of a loving teacher who longs for us to return to obedience to God. The word ‘obedience’ shares the same root as ‘listen’ – if we truly listen to a situation we will find ourselves called to respond, as a mother responds to her crying baby. It is not a blind and mechanical obedience but an obedience of love. The Rule contains practices that clear away the distractions that keep us from listening well and enable us to open our hearts to God’s word and to God’s world.
In a society that is intent on keeping us entertained, distracted and consuming these practices are profoundly important.
The Prologue of the Rule then moves on to an exhortation to take up the weapons of obedience and fight for Christ. These days we are uncomfortable with military metaphors but it is important to realise that we are actually engaged in a battle and need the courage of warriors. There are forces at work in modern life that prey on our fears – of being without, of not being attractive and successful, fear of others who are different, and many other things that seem to threaten us.
These forces shape our culture of over-consumption and destruction of the environment and we can easily feel powerless to do anything about it. We need to embrace the spiritual warfare to which Benedict calls us by following a way of life that gradually unpicks our self-centredness, helps us to face our fears and opens our hearts to living more lightly on the earth. His Rule opens us to living out the gospel in all that we do, bringing something of the kingdom of God to birth, a kingdom in which all of creation can flourish.
To bring this down to earth I’d like to tell you about the life we live here at Malling Abbey and the ways in which I have experienced it shaping me. I hope it may give you something to think about as you ponder the way your own life is shaping you in your journey into living out the fullness of God’s kingdom.
So what kind of a life do we live here? As I have said, the Benedictine life is designed to enable us to open to God and to listen to God’s word, and respond to that word in all our daily activities. There is an emphasis on silence and withdrawal from the distractions and busy-ness of everyday life, all the things that fill our minds and crowd God out.
When I first came here I had been working as a software engineer in the internet business and now found myself entering a very different world. At that time, in 2009, we had no internet connection – I had to go ‘cold turkey’. There was no more surfing BBC News in odd moments, which previously had filled hours of my time and frequently left me feeling mentally fogged and not really taking any of it in. I had always felt that reading BBC online news was a worthwhile use of my time, but if I couldn’t take it in and respond in prayer to what was happening then was this really a good use of time?
Now I get my news from weekly magazines at a much more considered pace.
We are now online as we could not function without it in the modern world but we still try to keep our usage very limited to leave space for the things that matter. There are many things that can fill our lives that are not in themselves bad but which crowd out the ‘one thing necessary’ as Jesus says. We need space and time to listen quietly to the message of the Gospel and allow it to change us. One writer on monastic life titled one of his books “An Unexciting Life” – which is a good description of what we aim for.
The first thing I became aware of when I entered the monastery was the way my senses came alive in this very bare and undistracting environment. I was much more aware of natural rhythms. I found myself noticing the changing light, the movements of the moon, the changing colours in the garden through the seasons. I entered in September so lived with the coming of the muted golden colours of autumn in those early weeks. Then came Advent Sunday – I was startled by the bright purple of the vestments! I realised that before I joined the community my senses were being numbed by constant bombardment of noise, colour and bright lights. I would never have been struck by something as simple as a purple chasuble.
In the outside world there had been little space and time to take in the natural world and to enjoy simply being present to what was around me. Here at the abbey I could feel myself opening to God’s presence in all things.
Of course this lack of distraction also confronted me with myself, with no opportunity to run away. I have had to face the dark and difficult parts of myself. This growing in self-knowledge is an important part of the Benedictine journey. Simple things like noticing my irritation as someone else takes the last piece of cake. That irritation puts me in touch with my underlying greed and envy and facing these reactions in myself is the work I must do if we as a culture are to overcome our profligate ways. Each one of us has to undergo that deep conversion towards a selfless life that makes space for others, for all of God’s creatures.
It is a painful journey but gradually the inner voices of envy and discontent are dropping away. I am finding a great joy in a growing sense of God’s presence deep within my own heart as well as in the natural world around me.
Benedictine life provides a structured and balanced life of prayer, study and manual work. Our timetable is structured around regular prayer together in Church – we follow the traditional Benedictine pattern of a seven-fold office which with the Eucharist makes for 8 services per day.
Our life is structured around these times of prayer, which is strikingly different from the life I used to live where prayer was inserted into a life patterned around my work and leisure activities. It expresses the priority of following Christ and making my relationship with him the centre of my life.
As a monastic community we live our whole lives, as far as possible, within the enclosure of the monastery. All of our work is within the Abbey, the practical and spiritual work of keeping the place running. Because we are so seldom out all of us are able to gather for the offices through the day and we can eat all of our meals together. It makes for a very focussed community life, and provides us with the challenge of no escape from the annoying habits of others!
Working day by day with the difficulties of living closely with others is an important way in which we grow in love, and of course that is not unique to monastic communities – any of you living family life knows the challenges of this path. But for one who was a wealthy single woman living alone it has been important for me to make the move out of my comfort zone and into community. I could easily have continued on a very self-centred path, even with a bit of prayer inserted into my days. Since coming here I have been challenged in ways I could never have imagined, especially since being elected as the Abbess!
Our days start very early with our Vigils office of psalms and readings at 5.00 am. Such early rising gives us an extended time of corporate and personal prayer before engaging with the business of the day, which is very precious.
I find it a beautiful thing to be holding the world in prayer as the village wakes up around us – hearing the cars and the first buses and trains as people head off to the day ahead. Those sounds become part of the prayer rather than a distraction.
Our offices through the rest of the day are simple and brief and based around praying the psalms, along with scripture readings. I have found it an extraordinary experience to be immersed in Biblical texts throughout the day. As those of you who are praying some kind of office regularly know there is a lot of repetition over time – it’s very unlike the emphasis on novelty and change to keep people engaged that is so much the way in the world (and dare I say the church) outside. But with the constant repetition these texts become part of our mental furniture, and different bits of the scriptures collide off each other in creative ways as they surface at odd moments.
It’s worth thinking about what we let fill our minds through the day and what is forming our mental furniture.
Advertisers know all too well how to plant words in our subconscious that then influence our behaviour. We need to be pro-active in choosing what words are forming us and what values are influencing us. The Benedictine practices of praying the office through the day and regular immersion in the scriptures through Lectio Divina are very important antidotes to all the forces at work in wider society.
Through the middle part of the day we have times for work, including the manual work of providing for our daily necessities of cooking, laundry and cleaning and also caring for the grounds of the Abbey. As a small and ageing community we do have staff to help us but we still do what we can of the physical work around the place. It is important to us to engage with simple, practical work on a regular basis to keep us grounded in the reality of our bodily nature and our relationship with the natural world around us.
Apart from our worship in the Abbey Church, the other important focus of our common life is the Refectory where we eat together 3 times a day. Our shared meals reflect the shared meal of the Eucharist and St. Benedict intended that our eating together be treated with as much seriousness as the Eucharist. The vessels of the kitchen should be treated as if they were vessels of the altar.
We keep silence at meals, with one of the sisters reading to us during the midday meal – food for our minds as well as our bodies.
The emphasis on being quiet in our speech, movements and actions encourages us to become more mindful and gentle in everything that we do. I found that as I worked to be quieter with my cutlery in the refectory I was engaged in a practice of love and non-violence that began to flow out into the rest of my life – as St Paul says in the letter to the Philippians ‘Let your gentleness be known to everyone’, something I often say to myself as I go through a door! This is where peacemaking starts.
As Benedictines we take vows of “Stability, Obedience and Conversion of life”.
By stability we mean a commitment to stay with this community in this place for the rest of our lives. In that security and accountability we can go deeply into our relationship with God and with our sisters through the challenge of not running away when things get tough. The stability of a regular rhythm of prayer, spiritual reading and work enables us to put down deep roots that resource us through those difficult times.
As I have said, obedience actually derives from a word that means “listen” – we vow to listen to God and follow his way as embodied in our community life. It may mean doing something that is not what we would choose, but in letting go our own agendas we grow in love and inner peace. There are times when this is very hard, as letting go our own agendas is the work of a life-time. That’s not to say that we have no opinions of our own but that we try to hold them with love and openness to others who think differently. That is a skill we all need to be developing in these times when society is becoming so polarised.
Our vow of conversion of life commits us to a monastic way of life – of silence, prayer, worship, solitude and simplicity, lived out in community. It grows out of stability and obedience, and reflects our desire to grow into the likeness of Christ – so in fact we don’t really have three separate vows but three strands that are closely intertwined in forming our lives.
The Rule of St Benedict asks us to seek God, to put him first, to find our fulfilment in living lives of simplicity and love of others. So many of our problems are created by the rampant consumption of us in rich countries, and can only get worse as more and more people wish to emulate our life style. In very practical ways our lives can witness to different values from those of wider society.
But I believe it is so much more than a practical witness that Christians can offer. Each one of us can be like trees, creating a healing atmosphere around us and gradually changing the world simply by the way we are, not by what we do. Trees are quietly there, planted in a particular place and creating their own micro-climate – bringing shade and humidity which protects other creatures and encourages the rain to fall. In places where deserts are encroaching planting trees is an important way of turning that tide back. Cities are cooler and more pleasant when there are trees around. We also know how important trees are in absorbing carbon dioxide and so helping to counteract global warming. Without trees we human beings could not survive.
Benedict’s call to stability asks us to put down roots and to grow in a particular place, just like trees. Our roots go down deep into God’s love and enable us more and more to act from that heart of love, changing the atmosphere around us. The way we do every little thing in our daily lives, not just heroic acts of self-denial, brings a bit more of God’s love into the world.
Our deep roots give us the courage to face the fears we feel when confronted by the state of the world and to allow God’s peace to transform those fears into hope.
We can gradually change the deserts of alienation and despair that are such a feature of modern life into communities of loving care for one another.
We know now that trees are not solitary but communicate and support one another through their roots. I find that a powerful image of how each one of you planted in your particular place has roots that interconnect with the rest of the body of Christ, deep underground. We are all tapping into those same springs of living water.
I believe that gathered communities like us at Malling Abbey provide a deep heart to which all of you can connect. I see this place as a deep well filled with God’s love, replenished day by day by our prayer here and the prayer of all who are part of our extended family, connecting through those underground roots. When life is tough for one of us we are sustained by the prayers of others, whether or not they know what is happening.
Before I came here I was involved in environmental activism and the alternative economics movement, and was a member of the Green Party. But I came to realise that good though all that was, much more was needed. Humanity will not be able to change its ways without a profound spiritual renewal and a turning towards ways of love and respect for all people, and all created things. Only through God’s gift of the Holy Spirit can we do this.
I was drawn into monastic life because here I saw a life that made space for this deep work of God and that seeks to bring God’s kingdom to birth in grounded and practical ways.
You may not be called to monastic life – although, pause a moment, maybe this is God’s call for you? God does still call people to this path – but however your path through life unfolds I hope that you will find inspiration in the Benedictine tradition. Perhaps you can become an advocate out there in the wider church for this gift of St Benedict? We need those who can inspire people to embrace monastic life, whether in the form you see here or in the new forms that are emerging, so that this gift can be passed on to another generation.
The fact that you are here today tells me you are seeking to know God more deeply. As you offer your own life for God to work in and through you, you are making that offering for all of humanity. Your self-offering helps to open a path for others to find God too and to bring about that spiritual renewal that is so necessary for the thriving of all that God has created. You will be held in our prayers and may God bless you through the coming years of your training here.