Chapter 63: Community order (paragraph 1)
So, apart from those whom the superior has promoted for a more cogent reason or demoted for specific faults, all the others retain the order of their conversion to monastic life so exactly that one who arrived at the monastery door at the second hour must accept a place junior to another who came an hour earlier, whatever their age or former rank may have been. (From para. 1 of Ch. 3 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)
Order in a community or a family or even my daily life derives from conversion -- turning towards a discipline of seeing God in all things, in all relationships, and in finding stability in Christ in the midst of all that disrupts order.
The Rule’s words on the official pecking order in the monastery first strike me as tedious. I grudgingly, though, accept them as Benedict’s sobering recognition of human nature. Then I recall John Main’s comment, speaking of ongoing conversion of life: “Benedict saw the Christian life not in terms of an intellectual assent to certain propositions but much more as a lifelong and wholehearted commitment to the truth. . . . we . . . need to understand conversion as a coming to completion in the light of God” (“Way of Unknowing” Kindle loc 1420). Fidelity to my twice-daily meditation and the repetition of the mantra are the path to my coming to completion in your light, Abba. Through this simple practice you begin to show me—as you did Therese of Lisieux and John Main--where I fit in your garden, as the tiniest wildflower or a redwood tree.
ReplyDeleteIn the marketplace, in the workplace, we are oftentimes conscious with ranks. The higher the rank one gets people think of him highly. Thus, pride is nurtured. But in the monastic tradition, the opposite is true. One must decrease for Christ to increase in him. Thus, holiness means humility. So this is the paradox that I have to deal with as a monk in the marketplace.
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