November Diary 2011
We’re trying out some new things over here at the SBG Parish Office, one of which is bringing you the monthly diary and the quarterly music diaries in pdf form. Feedback on this and suggestions on what else we might do are always very welcome in the comments below – you don’t need a WordPress account to comment, just a comment to make.
Thanks for visiting and we hope you find the electronic versions of the diaries helpful!
Advent and Christmas Services 2011
Planning your December? We have been, too. Use the link below to download a pdf of our Advent and Christmas Services.
Advent and Christmas Services 2011
Christmas Tree in the North Transept
A View From the Roof
Vertiginous view of the lectern.
Climbing on the roof and into some out of the way spaces has its rewards!
Inside SBG: Easter 2011
Some photographs of Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday – the end of a wonderful Holy Week this year and all thanks to our Rector, our priests, our sidesmen, our servers, our music director, our choir and our organist.
The Rector and some of our very dedicated altar servers after Vigil
Fr Mark Young greeting parishoners after Vigil
The altar in Easter sunshine
Sunshine and incense in the south transept
The Paschal candle
The Distribution of the Butterworth Charity 2011
Wednesday in Holy Week: From the Rector
The Epilogue
I conclude this series of Lenten posts with the last chapter of the Rule, chapter 73.
Why not all the observance of righteousness is set up in this Rule.
We have written this Rule, so that by observing it in monasteries we may give proof that we have at least some goodness of life or the beginning of monastic observance. But for one who would hasten to the perfection of the monastic life, there are the teachings of the holy Fathers, the observance of which would bring a man to the lofty summit of perfection.
For what page, what saying of the divinely inspired Old and New Testaments is not a perfectly straight rule for the life of man? Or what book of the holy Catholic Fathers does not loudly proclaim how we may come by a straight course to our Creator? Then too the Conferences of the Fathers and their Institutes and Lives, and the Rules of our Holy Father Basil, what are these if not the tools for achieving the virtues of good-living and obedient monks? But on us who are lazy and loose-living and negligent people they bring the blush of shame.
Therefore whoever you are who are hastening soon to reach the heavenly fatherland, first with the help of Christ carry out fully this very small Rule or beginners, which we have written; and then one day under God’s protection you will arrive at those loftier heights of learning and virtue of which we have spoken.
The end of the Rule
This statue of St Benedict is in church of San Benito in Salamanca
photo by Lawrence OP taken from flickr under a Creative Commons licence
Inside SBG: On Location
Many of you will already have seen the T-mobile video filmed at SBG last week. Today the American television programme, Entertainment Tonight, came to film interviews with a few of the starring lookalikes. They were kind enough to let us take some behind the scenes photos of Jane Seymour interviewing the resemblers of Prince Harry, Camilla Parker-Bowles and Queen Elizabeth.
The Queen and Camilla by Aston Webb's Lectern
Jane Seymour and 'Prince Harry'
Tuesday of Holy Week: From the Rector
Benedictine Spirituality IV
The Bishop of Poitiers said of Dom Prosper Guéranger, founder and first abbot of Solesmes: “He has what every Benedictine ought to have: the constant and exclusive preoccupation with God.” And, according to Abbot of Saint-Maurice at Clervaux in Luxembourg, a house of the Solesmes congregation, the spirit that characterises the rule is one that insists on the soul’s moral development. The rule “is a manual of asceticism; it is also the code that regulates the daily life of the monastery according to the spiritual progress of those who live within its walls. Monasticism continues to be what it has always been: an attempt to live the whole Gospel, far from the world awaiting the City of which God is the architect and builder.”
Abbot Winandy picks up on a number of distinctive aspects of Benedictine monasticism as recreated by Guéranger — who had never been to a monastery when he founded Solesmes, but got all his ideas from books!
• monastic spirituality and monastic life are one and the same thing
• basic to every monastic vocation is the desire — a desire whose object is sometimes obscure and uncertain — to leave, to flee to escape from the world and creatures
• it is separation from the world that makes a monk a monk
• the life of the monk has only one purpose: to find God
• a life separated from the world and its agitation is a life of leisure, silence, peace
• asceticism is the foundation of a life completely given to God
• to gain self-mastery, silence is observed — silence imposes a barrier that “puts a stop to the sallies of a particularly refractory faculty”
• Benedict brought to the practice of asceticism a very characteristic note of discretion and of humanity
• the now classic formula associated with Benedictine monasteries, namely Ora et labora (prayer and work) omits one member — and not the least necessary one — of the traditional trilogy: prayer, reading, work
• reading is in itself completely directed to prayer.
• monastic prayer is first of all communal — the community prays together
• it is the liturgy that best orientates the whole life to God, keeping the soul eager to procure his glory and dependent on him for grace
A lot more could be said, of course; indeed, there is a very large literature on the topic and one book (currently my morning reading) looks at why the Benedictine principle is degraded by the return to an active role in the world. The message for we who are not monks or nuns is that we too need some degree of separation from the world, mental, spiritual and sometimes physical, that we need to cultivate silence and with it the reading that leads into prayer, that our work also can be consecrated to God, and that participation in communal prayer and the Church’s liturgy is essential to the life of every Christian. St Benedict also teaches us to be slow to judge, to be adaptable and to be merciful. If we have learned that much from the Rule we have learned a great deal, but some of those who have heard me on Benedict throughout Lent say that his our Holy Father’s most important instruction is No grumbling!
The Abbey of Solesmes
photo by Guillaumes72 taken from flickr under a Creative Commons licence
Monday in Holy Week: From the Rector
Benedictine Spirituality III
St Benedict says, in chapter 48 of the Rule, that “idleness is the enemy of the soul” and requires the brethren to be occupied “at certain times in manual labour and at other times in sacred reading.” The time allotted varied with the seasons. The fourth hour to the sixth were to be used for reading from Easter to Holy Cross Day; optional reading was also allowed after the sixth hour. Reading was allowed earlier, till the end of the second hour, from 14 September until the beginning of Lent, and a longer period during Lent, until the third hour. There is a reason for this. Benedict prescribes that during the days of Lent “everyone should receive a book from the library, which he should read through from the beginning.” Not everyone liked reading and one or two of the seniors were instructed to go round the monastery “during the hours when the brethren are engaged in reading, to see whether perchance they come upon some lazy brother who is engaged in doing nothing or in chatter, and is not intent upon his book, and so not only profitless to himself but leading others astray.” There was still more time for reading on a Sunday.
Sacred reading — lectio divina — is an essential element in the programme of the monastic day, and an essential part of Benedictine spirituality. It was more or less spiritual reading but with a distinct emphasis of its own. It supposed that the reader’s ears were attuned to the divine message even as he read the written word. The monk, reading the lives of the Fathers or sermons, Augustine’s Confessions or The City of God, or the writings of Gregory the Great, or monastic history and chronicles — by which I mean world history as written by monastic observers — constantly asked about God and divine action in the world. The monk was not reading for entertainment, nor for scientific study, nor even to prepare a sermon or a lesson. The monk read in all simplicity in order to learn more of divine things. Now this is difficult for us because we approach the written word differently: we are critical evaluators of what we read. This is not a false attitude, but it is a different one. Our sort of reading will not normally be a gateway to prayer. Lectio divina was. It applied to all reading — and the monks were, of course, not reading romances — the principles enshrined in the old collect for Advent II in the Prayer Book: they were to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest, and to do so for clear spiritual reasons. Meditatio and ruminatio were the key words. Reading was not limited to Christian authors and the presence and use of ancient pagan authors was justified in the monastic context only because they contributed to the linguistic and literary formation of the monks. The Latin and Greek classics had no autonomy and no other value or use. Incidentally, Benedict clearly had experienced those who were “unwilling or unable to study or read” and ordered that they were to be given some other task “so as not to be unemployed”.
Abbot Winandy of Clervaux commenting on monastic life at Cluny under Peter the Venerable quotes another distinguished Benedictine scholar, Fr Jean Leclerc. Peter’s idea of the religious life is described in these words:
Because it means the renunciation of legitimate dignities and of all that is great on earth and even in the Church, because it is “a hidden life”, the monastic state is the most lowly in Christian society, the least exalted in the hierarchy, so that Peter the Venerable can often find no other word to describe it except humility. Before this word denotes the monk’s private virtue, it indicates the place the monk occupies in the Church where he does not seek to shine. Just as we speak of “the pontiff’s majesty”, so ought we to speak of “the monk’s humility”.
Monks must have no other ambition than to be “humble and calm”; the greater the service they can render to monasticism, the more they ought to preach humility by word and example. And the life of Cluny was essentially contemplative, with no other goal than that of preparing all and leading some into the practice of contemplation: resting in God, the leisure of Mary at Jesus’ feet — not lazy idleness, the enemy of the soul, but the performance of purely spiritual acts rather than acts that are economically productive.
The same chapter of the Rule that specifies the time for reading refers to daily manual labour, and this mainly means agricultural labour, as monks “live by the work of their hands”. There are, however, other forms of work or craft available for those in poor health or not strong enough for agricultural work. The majority of monks were not priests: that only came later. When many, even the majority, were ordained, the attitude to work changed. Priests had other work to do, but many monasteries, and indeed the Cistercian reform itself, were founded in order to restore the place of daily manual labour. The monk was trained to be not an isolated ascetic but a well-balanced Christian existing in a small Christian society, which did not turn its back on the world: hence the need for monastic hospitality.
I cannot conclude without mentioning the integration of all monastic activities. Manual labour provided the necessities of life and prevented idleness. Reading led into prayer and might, incidentally, provide useful skills and models for the monastic chronicler. The daily round of community life guaranteed humility and obedience. The silence of the monastery nurtured the inner silence of the monk focussed on God. The walls and the enclosure kept out the defilement and temptations of the world. The guest-master and porter ensured that those guests who passed the gatehouse and lodge were worthy to be received in the house by those strong enough to withstand the world’s pressures. The daily office offered praise to God and, as God is everywhere present — the underlying principle of the Rule — so he is particularly watchful of those engaged in the opus Dei, the work of God which is prayer and praise. Hence the monks are told to ensure “that our mind is in harmony with our voice”. Such harmony is the mark of the true monastic life and expresses the spirit — and spirituality — of the rule of St Benedict.
photo by Benediktíni Sampor taken from flickr under a Creative Commons licence
Friday of the Fifth Week in Lent: From the Rector
Benedictine Spirituality II
For Europe, as it was being shaped into Christian Europe, it was the cloister that guaranteed the continuity of an authentic Christian presence and it was the monks who, increasingly backed by a broad political and social consensus, propagated the idea that the only true Christians were monks. Only in the monastery were the principles taught by Jesus truly realised: obedience, humility and renunciation of the world. The monastic community was an eschatological and angelic community, geared towards the end time, though existing in the mean time, and providing a glimpse, and indeed more than a glimpse, of the heavenly Church and the angelic hierarchy around the throne. John Cassian taught that the coenobitic community took its rise in the days of the apostles: the monastery was the expression of the apostolic and Pentecostal Church.
There were other strands. There were inevitably those who complied only with the minimum requirements of the faith and embraced wholeheartedly the liberty that the Apostle conferred because of weakness (as we have seen in the Rule). This was a concession which in some minds, such as John Cassian’s, led to a cooling of the faith and a relaxing of strictness. There were also those who fled the corruption of the world, as Benedict had, to become hermits, wedded to strict asceticism. Hermits aspired to what we might call a “free experience of God”. It was seen as the crowning reward of the solitary life. In Benedict’s hands it was consciously organised into coenobitic monasticism and the quest for God was placed in the hands of a religious superior. We might say that ascetic imitation, based on the teaching of the Rule and the example of other senior monks, replaced ascetic initiative, and the aspirant, postulant and novice are, therefore, urged to surrender their will to their religious superior and to imitate their seniors. The fifth to seventh centuries generated at least thirty monastic rules marked by borrowing, adaptation, rewriting and re-elaboration, much of it the fruit of the experience of the monastic life. The monastery was not intended to be a place of culture, a bastion against the disintegration and destruction that followed the Lombardic invasion of Italy, but as the rules provided that monks should be able to read, so monasteries became havens of literacy. There was a strict connection between the ability to read and the religious life of the monk. Western monastic rules generally set aside two or three hours daily for spiritual reading, and reading was the necessary preliminary to meditation, the oral repetition of biblical texts committed to memory. And, of course, the monastery needed to have a library, a school and a scriptorium — hence it became an exclusive and culturally privileged place.
photo by Digital Library @ Villanova University taken from flickr under a Creative Commons licence
