Stability

STABILITY

The Rule of St. Benedict is in the spiritual DNA of every Episcopalian. It is at the heart of the Book of Common Prayer. It is in the structure and rhythm of parish life. This Benedictine way of living is balanced in stability, obedience, and amendment of life.

Not many Christians embrace the stability of the monastic life. However, we “secular” Christians still have the need for stability in our spiritual practice. In essence, we have the need to find God in the current relationships of our life. That means planting ourselves where we can bloom, and then choosing to take root and flourish there. It means deciding not to be blown about by every wind of whim or fashion, but to seek God where we are.

Stability means a certain consistency to life. Benedictine worship is not based on praying when we feel “spiritual,” for that might happen sporadically, eventually never. We pray when it is time to pray. Traditionally, that means at least upon waking and upon lying down to sleep, with blessings for meals in between. But the essential thing is to pray when we have committed with God and ourselves to pray, as part of our spiritual discipline. Many Episcopalians begin their day with Morning Prayer (or some adaptation of it), and close with Evening Prayer at sunset or with Compline at bedtime. One of the rewards of adopting such a plan is in the knowledge that in praying at those times, we are never alone, for others we will never meet are honoring their own discipline at the same times.

Sunday, of course, is the Lord’s day. Stability of life means worshiping in the chosen community, hearing the Word and receiving the Sacrament, not because we have nothing else to do that day, but because it is Sunday. We know that our community depends upon us to be with them. And we understand how much we depend on them, too.

Stability means a high level of commitment, along with hefty doses of tolerance, humility, and humor. We choose a congregation to be our spiritual community, and we make a home for ourselves in it. In some ways, it is like a marriage. There can be an early phase of “falling in love” with a congregation, and certainly there can be a wonderful “honeymoon period.” People prove to be people, however, and sooner or later, we learn to identify the faults as well as the strengths of our chosen community. That is when the true relationship really begins, for it is not in heaven that we find God, but right here among the failings and disappointments of life on earth! Sometimes, strange as this may seem, I have encountered people who join our church with the intention of changing it into another kind of congregation they think they would like better. That is like marrying someone with the plan of changing them to suit one’s own expectations later—a classic recipe for disaster. If we ever plan to love our church, we’d better love it in its weaknesses, even in its wrong-ness, or we will never really love it at all.

Sometimes, it can be necessary to change worshipping communities because of some deep and grievous difference. It should always hurt to do that, because it should never be done lightly. Yet one of the worst things that could happen to us is to settle into a congregation that never challenges us in any way. Where is the opportunity for growth in that? It is particularly dangerous to the spirit to change congregations in order to avoid the hot religious issue of the day, whatever that is. How can we know that God is not challenging us to rethink our prejudices and change our views unless we at least hang in and wrestle with the matter?

Stability takes work, and it takes personal sacrifice, which is not in tune with the modern age. It is, however, the seed-bed for spiritual growth.

(Next month: Obedience)

An Anglican Way

AN ANGLICAN WAY OF LIFE

I don’t know if you’ve noticed—but we Episcopalians do lots of things differently from our more radically Protestant friends. Most of those differences come from the opposite approach we take in the one basic area of conversion to Christ. The Evangelical Protestants focus their attention on producing a cathartic emotional experience that leads to a decision to accept and follow Christ, with the expectation that a Christian way of living, centered in Bible study and supported by prayer and further worship experience, will follow. Episcopalians, like Roman Catholics, work to draw our people into a Christian way of living, centered in prayer and supported by Word and Sacrament, with the expectation that commitment to follow Christ will grow out of that regular pattern of life. That is why Protestants come forward individually to commit their lives to Jesus, while Episcopalians come forward collectively to receive the food of life from Jesus. Protestant pastors plead with their congregation to accept Jesus as Lord and Savior; I plead with mine to embrace a spiritual rule of life.

The premier rule of life for Christians is the one devised by St. Benedict of Nursia early in the sixth century. In some form, it has been advocated by virtually all of the monastic communities of the Christian Church, and it has guided Christian living from Benedict’s time. But in the hierarchical nature of medieval society, monks and nuns had a leg up on ordinary folk in living the religious life, cloistered and controlled as they were, and isolated from the temptations of life “in the world.”

When Henry VIII closed the monasteries in England and seized their lands, he was, no doubt, interested in the wealth they represented, which he could use for much-needed political capital. Archbishop Thomas Cranmer cheerfully went along with the closure. Partly, his compliance must have had to do with his desire to keep his head attached to his shoulders. In his masterful work on The Book of Common Prayer, however, we can see that he was up to something else as well. He wanted to make the entire nation a kind of monastic community, modeled after the Rule of St. Benedict. Every parish church was to be a chapel for its community, the center of the religious life of the people surrounding it. Since villagers do have other cares to attend to besides worship alone, he simplified the traditional hours for the monastic offices, and condensed them into Matins (Morning Prayer) and Vespers (Evening Prayer). It all soon fell apart, especially in the cities, as the Protestant Reformation continued to fragment the religious life of the English people, but there were brief periods in English history in which something like Cranmer’s vision was actually accomplished. (For a taste of it, read the Barchester Towers series by Anthony Trollope or anything by Jane Austen.)

Benedict’s Rule remains valid, however, and it has three essential components: stability, obedience, and conversion of life. Over the coming three months, I intend to write separately about each of these components and how they fit into the spiritual discipline, or Rule of Life, for modern Episcopalians. Cranmer was right: Jesus’ teachings do not prepare us to separate from the world in withdrawal to a convent, but for life in active engagement with the world. We never needed Benedict more than now.