A Different Way to Imagine the World: The Rule of St Benedict
St Benedict was one of many who put down rules for how a monastery should function. But what is truly astonishing, when compared to today, isn’t necessarily the rules themselves but the type of world monasticism envisioned. He was more or less an administrator of a movement that imagined life much differently than we do today. Reading his rule gives us insight on a different way to imagine the world. Life could function differently and be set up for very different ends. What I mean is that in the world that we currently inhabit we’re dominated by economic realities. We are consumers. We go to school to get jobs, buy homes, save for our children’s college, and put aside money for retirement. The economy dominates our horizons and it’s hard to imagine any other way to be. There are those who opt out, or more often long to opt out, by going off the grid and attempting to create a life that works by rules other than the market. But it’s so rare as to be remarkable or the stuff of movies (I’m thinking of Into the Wild or Captain Fantastic). These are one offs, and though a lot of us may long for a different way to live, it isn’t really a viable option for most. What is fascinating about monasticism, and what St Benedict is attempting to give definition to is a different purpose for human existence, not market forces but prayer, not the economy but holiness. In his prologue to his rule Benedict calls the monastery "a school for the Lord’s service." This is life build around the single goal of pursuing godliness. Monasticism imagined and pursued a completely different reason for existing. They saw life as directed toward different ends, and St Benedict attempted to give a practical structure to how that life should be set up. So how should life work according to St Benedict?
The Opus Dei
For Benedict the central practice for this life was the Opus Dei, the work of God, which involved eight different times day where monks gathered together to recite Scripture, predominantly the Psalms. He outlines a process for reciting all one hundred fifty Psalms every week. Monks were to do manual work to provide for the community, but their real job in Benedict’s mind was prayer expressed through their repetition of the Psalms. Physical labor was incidental to their lives and not actually its true purpose, because it wasn’t as if the monks were directly compensated for their activities. If they worked in the fields, practiced a trade, or did anything else, whatever they earned went directly to the monastery. They received what they needed by asking their abbot, the head of the monastery, for it. They were to be content with less and only ask for what they truly needed. Work is completely reimagined in this system. He says, "The work of God must take precedence over everything else." Here real work is prayer and jobs are just something you do to help the community function. According to Benedict jobs are done to keep monks from being idle, which would have a corrupting influence. In other words, you don’t exist for your job, you exist to do the work of God, prayer.
Community
The first section of The Rule of St Benedict describes four different types of monks. There are basically two kinds of bad monks and two kinds of good monks. The two types of good monks are either extremely self-disciplined, seasoned, and serious hermits who live by themselves pursuing God or there are those who chose to live in community with other monks in order to grow in godliness. Benedict thinks a true godly hermit is possible, but he pragmatically advises that the better route for the majority is to train for holiness in the company of others, that is in a monastery. Monks need the wisdom and experience of those who have lived the life longer and walked the path farther to help them along their own journey. They also learn to serve and gain humility as they submit to others around them. He says of the monks, "They must bear with great patience one another’s weaknesses of body and character and compete with each other in being obedient. No one should pursue what he thinks will benefit himself but rather what benefits someone else...." Despite this statement, Benedict is hardly an idealist when describing this community. He condemns grumbling multiple times, which suggests it was a persistent problem. He assumes there will be disagreements and monks who break the rules, and that community life will produce its own sorts of problems. Nevertheless, holiness is learned best in community, and according to Benedict it is worth the difficulty.
Obedience
As contemporary Christians we might feel a pull and a longing for organizing our life around prayer and community, however romantically and ideally we might imagine these to be. However, Benedict’s insistence on complete obedience to elders and spiritual directors deeply offends our modern sensibilities. One of our greatest values is individual freedom and we’re highly suspicious, and often for good reason, of any person or group who set themselves up as some sort of final authority. It rubs us the wrong way, but for Benedict, and the vast tradition of monasticism with him, the only way we could possibly learn to obey God is if we learn to obey the actual humans He has placed in our life to instruct us. Obedience can’t be learned in theory: it has to be learned through practice. He writes, "The virtue of obedience is not only to be practiced by all towards the abbot, but the brothers must also obey each other, aware that it is by walking along the path of obedience that they will reach God." Benedict insists that we need to see human authorities as the expression of God’s authority and humbly obey them, even though we know they’ll fall far short of God’s perfection. But the willing obedience offered up towards others is accepted by God as obedience toward Him.
The take away
So, what can we take from Benedict’s, and monasticism’s, different way of picturing life. One, despite the dominance of the economy, politics, entertainment, or whatever else that holds our imaginations captive, it is possible to imagine life otherwise. It is possible to imagine people living together in love, albeit imperfectly, in order to pray, worship, and pursue God. It can be done, because it already has been done. Two, it isn’t enough to have ideals. Somehow, they have to come down from the clouds and be put into practice in real life. We can’t love in the abstract. We have to love real people in real and tangible ways. It probably won’t look as good as our ideal, but imperfect love lived out is better than perfect love only thought about. Lastly, learning to pray is one of the most significant uses of our lives. Imagine reciting the Psalms eight times a day, week after week, year after year. They would fill your mind and transform how you think. You couldn’t help but pray. You couldn’t help but communicate with the God of the universe in a constant rich and deep communion, and Benedict would have said that is exactly the point.