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Joanna Gilbert, who is in her early 20s, is a member of the Lay Community of S. Benedict (LCSB), a new dispersed lay community of about 300 people that seeks to draw on the Benedictine Tradition and its message. Below she shares her conviction of the Benedictine values of humility and obedience for the Renewal and Evangelisation of today's post-modern generation.
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It seems to me that in contemporary society, some of the most basic human values needed in order to see God have been discarded as irrelevant to modern life. We live in a culture that gives pride of place to personal choice and insatiable consumerism, an impatient culture that expects everything in an instant. Going against the grain, St Benedict promotes the values of humility and obedience as the means to making God visible and Incarnate in today's world. "Are we turning the Gospel into a consumer product!" It strikes me that, at times, as evangelisers we could be tempted to compete with this society's values, running the risk of turning the Gospel into an instantly gratifying consumer product. Yet, working with young adults I feel people are thirsting for something truly authentic. This is why for me the principles for evangelisation and renewal that we can take from Benedict speak volumes. Essentially they are deeply human principles. At the very heart of his Rule, St Benedict presents us with an understanding of what it is to be a person in which humility and obedience are central: a picture of humanity at odds with the contemporary view. For over a year, I've been working with a team of young adults and the chaplain of the Lay Community of St Benedict - himself a Benedictine monk of Worth Abbey - setting up retreats in university chaplaincies, focused on exploring the wisdom of Benedict in contemporary life. Groups have taken off in Manchester and Leeds in particular, and meet together twice a term, exploring highly counter-cultural themes like obedience and humility. 'Obedience' is unlikely to sound an appealing subject to modern students, since in today's world it is associated with being told what to do by others. But - as we have explored with students across the country - the word is actually derived from the verb 'to listen'. It is through becoming closed to listening to God that humanity has lost its way. As St Benedict says, "The labour of obedience will bring you back to him from whom you had drifted through the sloth of disobedience". Our young adults are beginning to discover that, quite contrary to being oppressive, Benedictine obedience brings true freedom. "Obedience and humility: counter cultural values that bring freeoom" Our culture also views humility negatively as it associates it with low self-esteem or false modesty. But Benedict explains that central to humility is honesty and oreality: the importance of seeing ourselves as we truly are - no I more and no less - and being 31 fully human and earthed. This enables us to recognise our dependence on God. The pride and self-sufficiency which the world promotes, on the other hand, prevents us from seeing our need of God and one another. Humility brings us back into proper relationship.
"Living in such a way that one's life would make no sense if God did not exist" It is with this vision - to create an authentic image of God through community, prayer and service - that this year four young adult members of the LCSB are planning to set up a residential community in Brighton. It will be a house of prayer and sanctuary, rooted in Benedictine principles, and a place of outreach. Their vision is that this symbol of Christian community will raise questions in others: "Always have your answer ready for people who ask you the reason for the hope that you have" we are told in 1 Peter 3:15 . As Christians we are called to turn the values of the world upside down, opening up the hearts and minds of people to listen to the message of life. Cardinal Suhard once wrote, "To be a witness consists neither in propaganda nor even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that one's life would make no sense if God did not exist" . "Making God visible through witness" Making God visible through witness, we need to persevere in listening as Christ did, 'with the ear of our hearts': a kind of listening utterly central to Benedict's message, yet alien to our culture. Benedictine spirituality is rooted in Lectio Divina. This slow, personal reading of Scripture enables us to hear God's living, transforming Word, and thus create the new humanity. Lectio will form a central part of life in the house community, as it does already in small groups of LCSB members who meet regularly for prayer and fellowship. It is a way of reading Scripture which involves an openness to the Holy Spirit speaking deep within us. Lectio resists cultural pressures through its patient, control-free dependence upon the God whom we trust will speak. It is not about being preached to or handed 'the answers'. There is no quick fix; only a lifetime of prayerful engagement with the sacred text; a lifetime of listening in which the self is emptied and a space is created for the Word of God to dwell. "Ability to listen is crucial" As evangelisers, our own ability to listen to God, ourselves, and others is crucial. All around us, we can see the tremendous damage caused by the self-obsession and pride that is in direct opposition to Christ's obedience and humility. As Benedict encourages us, 'our way of acting should be different from the world's way'. So the Lay Community of St Benedict and the whole Church are faced with an exciting challenge: to conform our lives in obedience and humility to the life of Christ, thus making God visible, and enabling the Incarnation to continue in our time. For further details of LCB
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It
is clear, however, that these values are becoming largely unfamiliar
to young Christians. Yet they are essential. Benedict draws his picture
of humanity from the life of Christ. It was in obedience to the loving
will of the Father that Christ journeyed in humility to Calvary: "He
humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross"
(Phil 2: 8). His was a deep listening with the heart to the voice
of the Father, through which the Father's and Son's wills became one.
Consequently we can say these deeply human values are essential to the
Church's mission of evangelisation. Fr Raniero Cantalamessa OFM Cap,
the papal preacher writes in his book "The Life of Christ",
"faith presupposes a basic will to obey. Faith itself is obedience!"
The Lay Community of St Benedict is beginning to discover that it has
a contribution to make towards the 'new evangelisation' in our time.
I believe that one of the great challenges of an evangelising Church
is to create a counter-culture which can open people's hearts to faith.
Through the 'Northern Unis' groups, and local and regional meetings
across the country, the Lay Community of St Benedict promotes the Christian
mission to live out the new humanity signalled by Christ. It may not
sound instantly exciting but in order to do this we must seek to be
intimately connected to the person of Christ through the patience and
perseverance of daily taking up our cross to follow Jesus in his path
of obedience and humility. It is a hidden inner journey travelled over
a life-time. And we have to make it in the face of an impatient, results-oriented
world. True Christian community or 'Koinonia' is lived out in the ordinary
day-to-day activities of life. The fruit that it bears, however, is
the creation of an authentic image of the loving God.