St Benedict only wrote one book so far as we know, ‘The Rule of St Benedict’, and even then he only wrote parts of it, because a lot of it is simply quotations from several earlier Rules for monks. They all quote a lot of passages from the scriptures, so it’s interesting that Benedict at any rate doesn’t even refer to the passage we’ve just heard from the gospel of Matthew, or to the similar passages from Mark or Luke.

Benedict doesn’t talk a whole lot about leaving everything and following Christ. He does a bit, but he’s not as interested in poverty and chastity as were the founders of later religious orders like the Franciscans and Dominicans. Obedience however, he is very interested in. I’ll come back to that. He’s not much interested in the rewards either, apparently. Sitting on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel doesn’t appeal to everybody. Receiving hundreds of houses, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, children and fields is not a strong motive for the monks that Benedict wants in his monasteries. Inheriting eternal life however, he is very interested in, so I’d better come back to that too.

Now I’m well aware that most of the people in this church right now are not in a position, even if they wanted to, to become Franciscans or Benedictines or anything else. So let me warn you that I’ll be claiming that obedience and eternal life are relevant not just for monks and nuns, but for all Christians and indeed for all human beings. Before I do that, I want to do a sweep through the other two readings, to get some clues on what the selectors think St Benedict was good at. The reading from Proverbs talked about wisdom, understanding, insight, knowledge, justice and righteousness. The reading from the letter of James wants us to be wise, understanding, gentle, pure, peaceable, willing to yield, merciful, righteous and peacemakers.

The selectors think all those qualities applied to St Benedict. He thinks his monks should have them too. The scriptures think we should all be wanting to have these qualities. I suggest that the way to get them is to take notice of those two things I put in reserve a minute ago - obedience and eternal life.

Eternal life is probably easier to sell than obedience, so I’ll take that one first. I reckon everybody deep down desires to be happy, to be fulfilled. I reckon that’s what God wants for everybody too. There’s nothing that can stop Him giving eternal life to everybody and I believe everybody will get it at least in the next life.

But it can be had in this life too. Even when things are at their toughest, even when you’re being tortured in a concentration camp, or in a monastery, or while you’re listening to a homily, you can still wish that everybody could be happy and fulfilled, even including your torturers. Love of enemies is even more powerful in its life-giving effects than love of family and friends. If you want to love everybody, if you wish you could, then there’s eternal life running through your veins already.

Obedience is a tougher proposition. It means surrendering your freedom to run your own life, to run other people’s lives, to run the world. I don’t think I’m the only one who keeps trying to do those things. Of course it doesn’t work and I get annoyed and so does everybody else. They all want things run differently. Things run much more smoothly when I leave them alone, when I leave it to God to run the world and my life and everybody else. I’m much happier then and so is everybody else. That’s what I mean by surrendering my freedom to run things. It’s a phoney freedom. In fact it makes a slave of me, a slave to my self-centredness.

The first word in St Benedict’s Rule is Listen. One of the most frequent words is obedience. The original meaning of the word obedience is hearing somebody, listening to somebody. I reckon that a lot of the troubles we meet in life arise from not listening carefully enough to one another, not paying enough attention to the way things are in reality.

You can only really hear somebody else if you are silent yourself. You know how some people think they know you and never give you a chance to explain yourself properly. That’s exactly how your enemies feel about you. To turn them from enemies into friends, you have to surrender your own ideas and really listen to them.

Obedience may seem hard. Actually, once you make up your mind that you want to love, it becomes easy and enjoyable. Of course there’s a short-cut to that happiness, which is listening to God, obeying God. If you stop telling Him what you want and start listening to what He wants, eternal life really gets moving. ‘My child, accept my words,’ says the book of Proverbs, ‘treasure up My commandments, make your ear attentive, incline your heart, search for understanding’.

The scriptures and St Benedict are not stupid. They know that sometimes the only thing we can do is to part company with someone we can’t deal with. If we have the ear of our heart inclined to God, to reality, we’ll know instinctively what to do in all circumstances. Otherwise we’ll never get it right.

Benedict of Nursia is not a bad guide for anyone who wants to be wise, gentle, peaceable and willing to yield.

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked nor stands in the way of sinners...but his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season…in all that he does, he prospers. (Psalm 1:1-3)

These are the blessings of the man who meditates on the law of the Lord. Our faith is the most precious gift we have, because it leads to the supernatural. If we are to make it vivid, it must be by meditation. We are told that ‘faith comes by hearing’ and we believe what we are told by God through His messengers. Yet we have to do more than merely hear it. Meditation is aimed at making faith more real to us, realising in ourselves what we know and believe.

Faith has an effect on the emotions, imagination and the lower nature. It fills them with tenderness, love of God, fear of hell. By the Incarnation, God has given us means for doing this. He has arranged everything for perfecting our nature. He has given us food for our whole nature by the sacraments and by revelation. We have to take this food and chew it over in meditation.

So the first way is to think of our last end, of all the foundations of faith, of the life of Our Lord, or the Four Last Things (Death - Judgement - Heaven - Hell). Only in modern times has this been systematised, especially by St. Ignatius - prelude, points, preparation before, colloquy at the end, spiritual bouquet during the day – all this is excellent for beginners. St Ignatius’ second method is to take a prayer, eg The Lord's Prayer and to go over it - to speak to God about the first words, then go on to the next. This is good for those who do not have time for the longer method. Meditation, if not done during prayer, must be done out of prayer.

Another way is to read a book and think about it, an excellent method but dangerous to some who ought to be using higher faculties and waste their time in reading. Another way is prayerful study - for this, the Holy Scriptures are best of all and particularly the Gospels and Epistles. We get something extraordinary from Holy Scripture as from nothing else.

Then again, we ought to read the lives of the saints - such reading has often made saints, eg St Ignatius Loyola. We ought to read the lives of those who did greater, higher things than we can possibly do. It lifts us up, increases our faith and gives us higher aims. All this is Meditation. We must read books that suit us. We do not read now what we read twenty years ago, but we ought always to have by us a few – and they will be few – spiritual books that we like.

Now let us speak of the disappearance of meditation. Sooner or later it happens to all people who pray, but whether sooner or later depends on many things and enormously on one's character. If you have a strong imagination, you are bound to use it for God. We must use the whole of our nature for God. If you have a strong intellect, you are bound to use it for God. He made us clever to study Him and to get to know Him. An imaginative person can meditate more easily than an unimaginative person can. If we are sentimental, we must use that on God, or we shall use it on the world and on others.

Rule for Giving up Meditation - We must cease when we cannot meditate. As long as we can, we must. What happens when we can't? Some say that as you meditate more, you think less and speak to God more and this is true. People in the beginning can't speak to God or realise who He is. He is distant from them. Then He seems to come nearer and they can speak to Him and their prayer tends to become more like speaking to God in one’s own words (Fr. Baker says ‘forced acts of the will’) and gradually it passes into aspirations. I don't think that Fr. Baker means that one kind of prayer 'grows' into another, though one may read him so. I think that there is a great break.

Meditation stops, contemplation begins. St. John of the Cross describes this with the greatest care. The greater part of his writings were written for beginners although this is not generally realised. A contemporary of theirs wrote that ‘our Mother Teresa wrote for the advanced and our Father John of the Cross for beginners’. St. John says that almost everyone goes into the ‘Night of the Senses’. The first symptom of contemplation, is that one can't meditate in prayer, ie, nothing comes of it. The second symptom is that one gets no consolation from it.

Before this, one had pleasure in Holy Communion. There was something delightful in the spiritual life. It was like a honeymoon. Now one is full of anxiety. One feels one does not please God, one seems to be living as one did before one turned to God at all. Yet all the time one has an anxious haunting thought of God. One does want God – this is the most important point of all. This is the ‘Night of the Senses’, because all sensible love and satisfaction in the spiritual life has gone. Later on, when we know something about it, this does not trouble us much, or if we turn at once to affective prayer, we don't feel as much discomfort. The reasons for this are -

1. We exhaust the subjects of meditation. The thing is not so fresh. Each time we come back to meditation we have less to enjoy in it. We get tired - even of meditating on the Passion. It seems heartless, but it is true. Everything that has to do with our lower nature goes this way.

2. A bigger reason is this - meditation has done its work. As we meditate on the truths of religion, they have the effect of leading us to God. But when they have led us to God, we want to be with Him - we don't want to think about His Passion, we want to think of Him as present now, of what He is to us.

3. But there is something more and this is the real reason. John of the Cross tells us that something has happened – secret contemplation of God, unperceived perception of God. By filling our lower nature with the thought of God, we have prepared the way for God to come to us and He has come.

This obscure contemplation draws our will to desire God - we don't know why, we don't exactly want it - we don't know what we want. God has taken our will and we no longer want sensible pleasure. But the result is unpleasant, for we are not accustomed to this different life. It is like being in a desert or on the top of a mountain. Instead of being in a nice warm room with nice prayers that helped us, etc. We don’t know what to do.

Our Lord went into a desert and on to the top of a mountain to teach us, to be our model and we can do it symbolically. God wants us to be united with Him in another way - He wants us to leave ourselves and to seek Him more purely.

(Adapted from notes taken from a retreat given in 1921 by Dom John Chapman.)

I pass lightly over our next two calls – Tviron and Megistilavra. Both were idiorhythmic. Tviron looked decayed and had some simple and tatty brethren, but some very smart ones too. The tall young sacristan kept his church wonderfully clean and treated me, as a Catholic priest, with great respect. He also showed me one leg of the woman with an issue of blood. Megistilavra is like an Edwardian fortified town during a festival of flowers. Here too we arrived in time for a carillon, not rung from a bell tower but from an open structure that reminded me of Prinknash, except that this was festooned with vines. One bell-ringer tried a conversation with me in Italian but he was too busy with his bells. Later he spent much of the liturgy acting the buffoon. I met a brother who made cakes for all Athos, for feast days and who wanted to discuss, in halting English – Robin Hood!

Our next visit was not scheduled. I attempted to walk by rough tracks around the flank of the Holy Mountain to one of the monastic villages (sketes, but some sketes are virtually ordinary monasteries). At one point the path divided and we were soon lost in undergrowth. I came on a stone aqueduct and we followed this to a skete called Prodromou. This is not one of the twenty ruling monasteries, but a foundation made by Roumanian monks in 1852. A few ancient brethren were sitting about in the sun (it was Easter Tuesday). One of them, with skin like old leather, preferred to lie prostrate, like a tired dog at a gate. We were received by the guestmaster, a sweet, venerable old man and a breezy monk in his forties, who had recently arrived from Roumania. He told us the Roumanian Minister of Fine Arts had made a visit and undertaken to help restore the church. After a century it was in a far worst state than any of the other churches, with wall paintings five hundred years old. We were told we might find a boat at the headland. I begged half a loaf in addition to the single portion of Turkish Delight and tiny cup of black coffee, which is all poor Prodromou dispenses to guests – but lovingly. Elsewhere you can expect a liqueur as well. It was hard going down to a tiny natural harbour where a boat might call if you signal it and I would not have cared to make the journey in reverse. I pulled mussels off the rock and ate them with my bread dipped in salt water. A boat passed in the wrong direction and while we waited for its return I strolled round the headland. I was amazed to find an enormous, virtually hidden dock, entered through a vast masonry arch, with extensive harbour buildings, all derelict now of course but put up by the nineteenth century Roumanians. I began to understand the suspicion with which the Greeks sometimes view the attempts of Slav monks, to restore their ancient homes on Athos.

I would like to make special mention of Pavlos (named I think after Paul of Zeropotamos, another Athonite house and not the Apostle), a great cenobitic house of plain appearance, it’s nineteenth century church one of the few with unadorned walls. This monastery has an atmosphere of great warmth and simplicity. As we rested by a ford on our way there a young monk came leaping down the path, pausing briefly to greet us with a huge smile. Later it transpired he was on his way to meet a party of distinguished Orthodox ecclesiastics. I was on my way out of the monastery for a stroll when the brother at the gate called me to sit down beside him. This was to allow free path to the approaching cortege. I think I have never seen a more distinguished body of men in my life. I can’t think what they took me for, with my beardless face, but it was the one place on Athos where I was greeted with kisses. More of this cortege later.

There is a story connected with Pavlos. I tell it as a sample of the legends you find all over Athos, like flowers in what the monks are pleased to call ‘Our Lady’s Garden’. Pavlos claims to own the gifts of the Magi. After the capture of Constantinople, a Turkish prince stole these relics but gave them to his Christian mother, who brought them back to the Holy Mountain. She landed below Pavlos, but as she made her way up from the shore, she was met by another Lady, who told her she was the only Queen who ruled there. The gifts were handed over on the spot and today a simple wayside shrine marks the place. As the guide book puts it, Mary is ‘the only woman with a place set for her on Mt. Athos’

Most monasteries have near the gate a structure resembling a bandstand. It is an outsize gazebo offering shade, for, as in biblical days, the favoured place for recreation is ‘at the gate’. I sat in one of these pavilions at Pavlos and sketched a hermitage on the terrace below. There are hermitages all over Athos, many forming villages and they range from old time vicarages or expensive looking modern villas with a private church attached, down to an almost inaccessible cleft in the rock. In this case the recluse is lowered food on a rope from above, as was the young hermit Benedict at Subiaco.

At Gregorios, I met another convert from Roman Catholicism to Orthodoxy, a young man from Peru. His recollections of worship at a college run by a religious congregation were distressing. Here the abbot summoned me to his room where – in all charity, as they say – he expressed his uncomplimentary views of western religion, mostly picked up while studying at an Episcopalian College in the States. I suspect he lumped us all together. At this monastery (beautifully clean), I was invited by a young Greek layman to venerate a collection of what he called ‘bones’. I lined up with a company of schoolboys who bowed before each relic and kissed it. We must have looked rather Japanese – I cheated and kissed two relics each time I bowed. The guestmaster here made me think of St. Benedict’s description of that official.

One hears much of decayed and emptying monasteries on Mount Athos. Such perhaps was Prodromou, but the reader has gathered that this lonely and lovely monastery shows signs of new life. So in fact do most houses. A recent report in ‘The Times’ listed several revived communities, mentioning Stayronikitas but, I think, omitting Gregorios, which has in fact been re-peopled with a younger community from a highly populated Greek island. Simonpetra and Filotheos have young and vigorous communities, but the young, by report, are likely to be more intransigently Orthodox.

Our last two calls were to monasteries that really did look dilapidated. One was Xiropotamos, of which a complete wing had been burnt out. You can visit this monastery without meeting a monk. The office of guestmaster had been delegated to a young lay employee, quite a card. He publishes a simple menu in French and Latin. It read: ‘Les haricots—ad nauseam’. However, in hope of a consideration, he can fry eggs well and turn up a bottle of wine. You can also listen to his transister radio while you eat.

From Xiropotamos we walked down to the Russian monastery in light rain. In photographs it looks enormous, but much is burnt out or simply falling to ruin. Most of this vast establishment was built in the last century and it is no less picturesque for that. In 1903 it had nearly one and a half thousand monks. Today it is said to have about twenty. I had reached the fourth floor and was busy sketching when my companion called up from the courtyard – ‘I’ve found one, over a hundred, and speaking French!’ Later we found a younger layman, a Russian exile, who told me that the cortege that had so impressed me at Pavlos was led by the Bishop of Vladivostock and the purpose of his visit was the revival of the Rousikon. At the time of our visit this monastery – its name is Panteleimon – was unable to dispense hospitality. I gather from news reports that some of this promised help from Russia has arrived and also that the pilgrimage of the Bulgarians to Zografos has borne fruit. It seems to be time for me to plan another visit.

I realise that I have simply chatted and tried to convey impressions, rather than write a serious dissertation on icons or liturgy or even monastic history. So have many people who have published books or articles about Athos, but most have implied imminent decay, even extinction. I seem to have made my visit at a moment when it is possible to strike another note. I hope to have made this apparent. Recent news suggests that my optimistic impressions were justified. If only the West had an Athos of its own.

When I spoke of the two Roman Catholics who had settled in Orthodoxy (no doubt not the only two), I pass no judgement, nor do I keep any secret thoughts on the matter. In the light of the present Holy Father’s own phrases when speaking of – or to – Orthodoxy, I would consider it absurd to say that they have gone into schism. My young Swiss and my young Peruvian might have encountered the kind of spirituality they wanted and found their little homes in the west, but in fact they didn’t and I think we are collectively to blame for that and that this western fault increases from day to day, either in spite of the Council, or because of it – I would not like to say.

Readers may wish to know whether I celebrated Mass. The answer is – no. Athonite attitudes to the Roman Catholic Church are not the first reason for this. The monks would find it hard to understand why a priest should want to go off and celebrate a liturgy of his own when they provide the Liturgy. Most priests go to Athos in disguise. I consider this a poor return for the hospitality offered. If more priests went there and behaved normally, or a little better than normal, showing great reverence for all that is best in Orthodoxy and patience with what they find a little awkward, the wounds of centuries might begin to heal.

The Eucharist is above all else the mystical sacrament. We must consider for a moment what this means. Words like ‘mysticism’ and ‘mystical’ are often used very loosely today and carry connotations that we do not want here. We are not concerned with telepathy, clairvoyance, prophetic glimpses into the future, Tarot cards or astrology. The Church has traditionally used the word mysticism in a different and deeper sense. Mysticism is about uniting with God. A mystic is one who has a strong sense of the reality of God and whose mind and will have been swallowed up into God. Mystical theology is that branch of theology which treats of union with God, what this means, how and why it is possible and also, very importantly, what conditions need to be fulfilled in order to bring it about. Even so, many people reading this statement will be left feeling that mysticism is not for them. It is for advanced souls, for professional religious. But if we reflect for a moment, we shall see immediately that this cannot possibly be so. Union with God is not a secondary element in our religion, nor some kind of ‘optional extra’. It is what our religion is all about. Every Christian who prays frequently and sincerely and who strives to live a generous and unselfish life, is to some degree, a mystic. Not all will be granted the ecstatic experiences of St. Teresa of Avila or St. John of the Cross. But some awareness of the reality of God and some sense of God’s closeness to us, is possible for quite ordinary people and is far commoner than is generally realised. How deep it is and how far it goes depends upon God’s grace and upon the extent to which we are able to surrender to the action of God within us, putting aside our own feelings, preferences, personal ambitions and so on. But if we are genuinely religious at all, then we already enjoy a certain degree of union with God and the way towards deepening and strengthening it is always open. This truly is the ‘Path of Life’, of which the psalmist speaks and which has provided the title for this book.

As diners at ‘The Wandering Monk’ restaurant sit down to their all-you-can-eat gourmet lunches, not many of them notice the white van pulling out of the driveway across the road. For these patrons, whether they know it or not, are dispensing as well as receiving Benedictine hospitality.

Roughly 120 people (mostly business executives) crowd every lunchtime into ‘The Wandering Monk's Guild and Bakery’ in New Haven, Connecticut, USA, to sample such delights as beef burgundy and marinated chicken with deliciously cooked vegetables, fresh salads, home-made bread and rich truffles. Appropriately enough, monkfish and 'hermit cookies' also sometimes appear on the menu! In the morning, croissants and coffee are offered for those who eat on the run and at night, private parties and business meetings are catered for.

But those who truly depend on this service do not eat here. Across the road, in an inconspicuous corner, is a soup kitchen which uses the profits from the takings at the restaurant, to provide sandwiches, fruit, juices and other healthy snacks to over 1,000 needy children who live in the city's ghettos. Every day, the food is delivered to schools and various social service agencies. This is a deliberate policy, to avoid the 'soup kitchen mentality' where people queue up in lines, as in a refugee camp. Vital as this service can be, where children are concerned, it is felt that they are much better off sitting down to eat with their families or school friends.

The originator of this idea is Brother Denys Cormier of the Emmaus Community of St Benedict. With a staff of six volunteers, he supervises work in the restaurant and the soup kitchen. A self-confessed insomniac, he reads cookery books in bed and gets his ideas for menus in the middle of the night!

Local people are delighted with the project. There are many people in the USA who do not know that children still go hungry in their country, despite the legendary generosity of the American people to charities. Local New Haven residents come to the restaurant because of the food and the cause. ‘The kids that he's helping are in our city.’ said one woman to the press, ‘I see them as my responsibility and a lot of us don't know how to help. Brother Denys is providing us with a way to do that’.

Although popular, ‘The Wandering Monk’ retains a monastic atmosphere. Furnishings are absolutely simple. People eat at long wooden tables, while Gregorian chant plays in the background. The place is unlicensed. In the middle of each table is a wicker basket and a small sign asking for a minimum $5 donation. No bill is otherwise charged for the food. There is no need - the baskets constantly fill to overflowing with $20 bills.

‘Building Community’ is a much-hyped phrase at the moment. I can think of no one who fulfils the reality more than Br Denys and his helpers.

(adapted from an article by Brigitte Greenberg which appeared in the US press)

The Benedictine Oblate

Newsletter of St. Gregory’s Chapter

MEETING PLACE

PRAYER LIST

ITEMS OF INTEREST

HOMILY BY ABBOT PLACID – Obedience and Eternal Life

WHEN MEDITATION FAILS

MYSTICISM

REFLECTION