Why Monastic Life?
A talk given by Mother Anne at St Augustine’s College Induction Day 3rd September 2022
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.
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. These practices offer tools to enable us to engage with and transform ourselves and the world around us into a better place, to bring something of the kingdom of God to birth. Although originally intended for monastics I think that they can provide inspiration for you too, whatever form of life you live.
So what kind of a life do we live here? 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. Before I came here I had been working as a software engineer in the internet business and found myself entering a very different world. At that time we had no internet connection – I had to go ‘cold turkey’. 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. 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 keep our usage very limited to leave space for the things that matter. One writer on monastic life titled one of his books “An Unexciting Life” - which is a good description.
When I first entered I found this very bare and undistracted life caused my senses to come alive. 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. That’s something our culture needs to rediscover if we are to live with more respect for our environment. I realised that before I joined the community my senses were being numbed by constant bombardment of noise, colour and bright lights. 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 confronts us with ourselves, with no opportunity to run away. We have to face the dark and difficult parts of ourselves. This growing in self-knowledge is an important part of the Benedictine journey. It is painful but for me has brought 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 rather than prayer inserted into a life patterned around our work and leisure activities.
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.
We are amongst the earliest risers of the Anglican religious communities with our Vigils office of psalms and readings at 4.30 am. Such early rising gives us an extended time of corporate and personal prayer before engaging with the business of the day, which I find very precious.
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. 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 church) outside. But with the constant repetition I am finding these texts are becoming part of my 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.
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. We are planning to provide opportunities for you to contribute to the work in the grounds if you wish – an opportunity to engage with the physical realities of this place. I do hope that some of you may be able to do this as it would be lovely to dispense with the leaf-blower!
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. This becomes a practice of love and non-violence in all the simple things of life – where I believe 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.
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 we offer. We are 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 us, deep underground. We are all tapping into those same springs of living water. I feel that we here at the abbey, gathered closely together, 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.