St Paul tells us in the second reading (Rom. 8:9,11-13) "Your interests are not in the unspiritual, but in the spiritual" - today I offer a short (ish) reflection on how we can learn from those who live the monastic life how to live our own lives according to the Spirit.
Just before the pandemic, Mount Saint Bernard’s Abbey, a Trappist monastery in Leicestershire opened its doors to a film crew. The monastery was going through some drastic changes. They had only 25 monks left, and more than half were over eighty years’ old, the farm they had run since 1835 was no longer making money as the monks could no longer run it on their own. In order for the monastery to survive, the Abbot decided to close the farm and open a brewery to replace it. The film catches the signs of new life, as a few new monks joined the community and the brewery was opened, but it is punctuated with deaths and funerals as several of the older members of the community died during the filming.
Watching this film, called “Outside the City” (which you can buy or rent on Amazon!) a few years ago sparked an interest for me in the lives of Benedictine monks – there is another excellent documentary available for free on YouTube called “Watchmen of the Night” which follows the daily lives of the monks of Le Barroux Abbey, a traditionalist Benedictine monastery in the Vaucluse region of Provence, showing you their daily lives, their work in the fields and in their bakery, and their sung prayers in the abbey church.
The monastic life is fascinating, largely enclosed from the world, living in community with one another but mostly in silence, devoted entirely to what they call “the work of God” – which means the prayer of the Church (the Mass and the sung prayers throughout the day) and their own silent prayer, which they offer for the whole world. Their life, if it is lived well, is the perfection of the Christian life. There is no higher vocation than that holy silence. They live what Saint Paul wrote about in the second reading:
“Your interests are not in the unspiritual, but in the spiritual… there is no necessity for us to obey our unspiritual selves or to live unspiritual lives. If you do live in that way, you are doomed to die; but if by the Spirit you put an end to the misdeeds of the body you will live.”
The monastic life, lived by monks like those who live at Mount St Bernard or Le Barroux, is one devoted to the spiritual life, denying even their own bodies; they shave their heads, they fast throughout the year, they close their bank accounts and trade in their secular clothes for the monastic habit, and they choose silence over the easy chatter of the world.
Why Am I telling you all this? Am I trying to tell you that if you want to be saved you have to abandon everything, give up every penny you have and all your possessions, shave your heads and go into a monastery or a convent? Obviously not. Most of us do not have the immense spiritual strength it takes to live well as monks or nuns, to embrace poverty, and community, or to live in silence in the radical way that they live.
I’m telling you this because their extraordinary lives are a lesson to each of us about how we can live our ordinary lives; they are the ideal, the perfection of the Christian life, and so they give us something to strive for. In our own imperfect way we can follow some aspects of their lives to enrich our own spiritual life and follow the way set out by St Paul; denying ourselves and living for the Spirit of Christ.
What can we learn from the monks and their rule of life? How can we bring that into our own lives? I picked up a copy of the Rule of St Benedict, the rule followed by the Benedictines and the Trappists, for my own spiritual reading, and as was going through it I realised – this isn’t just for monks, its lessons about humility and hospitality, and prayer are universal. I would encourage you all to get a copy of this book, especially if you’re parents, it’s only 103 pages long but it’s bursting with wisdom that’s just as useful for families as it is for monks, but, because I know some of you think I can go on a little bit, I will limit myself to just one lesson from the Rule for today.
St Benedict says “Nothing is to be preferred to the work of God.” (Rule, n.43) Put another way, he’s saying “prayer comes first.” The most important lesson we learn from monks about growing in the spiritual life is to give it priority. Even though they work long hours on their farms or in their other work, they come to the chapel seven times a day to pray the office or to celebrate Mass. How many of us remember to pray throughout the day? To say a short prayer in the morning and the evening? To pray before our meals? To give a little time for prayer during the day? How many of us say a daily Rosary, or stop in at one of our open Churches to pray each day? Begin small, but give priority to your prayers before anything else.
One of my spiritual directors gave me a good saying to remember; your prayer should be like your food – you never wake up in the morning not knowing when you are going to eat, so don’t wake up not knowing when you are going to pray. St Francis de Sales used to instruct people to pray for half an hour every morning, unless you were too busy – in which case you were to pray for an hour instead! The point is this: set a time for prayer every day and be disciplined about it. Pray for yourselves, pray for your families, pray for your friends, but give priority to prayer.
Prayer is the fuel for all the other good disciplines, we cannot be humble, or meek, or gentle, or diligent, or anything good without prayer; the Holy Spirit lives in us from our Baptism but he only grows in us through our prayers. Our prayers help us to die to ourselves, so that even in a less perfect way, we can embrace the spiritual life by which we will come to be saved.
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