Transcript Abbot Clement’s Talk on Tuesday, June 28, 2005

I think it= s always good once in a while to reflect of Chapter I of the Rule. The four kinds of monks. It tells us not just what kind of monks there are but also the style in which they live their life.

Starting from the worst, the Gyrovagues, Benedict makes it clear that they have a hard time to be stable. They= re always on the move is his words. Meaning that they have a hard time staying in the present moment and facing things as they are. So they look at the monasteries as places to find good food, good wine, few days of being treated like guests, then take off and go to another place. So their life is rather very worldly. It= s worldly even in a sense of not even being open to God. It= s more open and preoccupied with themselves and how they can get the next meal, next needs they have from this or that monastery and after a while they have a pretty good list of which monasteries have the best wine, best food, best clothes, best care, etc. So that= s how they live their life. The fact is that in the depths of each of us is the will or the opportunity to run from ourselves. To run from the truth of things. So the Gyrovagues are a reminder that we have to pay attention to this tendency in us.

Sarabaites are not as bad as the Gyrovagues according to Benedict. Their self-preoccupation is rather a little more understandable. We can understand them rather well. We have our own ways of saying it: A I know what the monastery is, it= s a place where you can have your own room, get three meals a day, and you have to put up with a few things and do them, but you do them, so you really have your own little comfortable world and don= t disturb it. It= s interesting that the contrast between the first two monks and the second two groups is really one of being tested. The testing comes from being under a rule, an abbot, and in a community. So life itself is a test and this group has mastered the way to live in the present without being tested.

Not to have to see - see themselves, see others, see the situation as it is they manage to close it off and they are as Benedict says: A conformed to the world.@ If you look at that as our world, if you listened to Pope John Paul and now the present Pope, the world is always described this way, the present world is consumerism, it is indifferent to religion, to religious dimension, and it is closed to transcendence. So that means not simply closed to God, it means closed also to my neighbor. I don= t get out of myself toward my neighbor. So this is the Saabaite= s world and again in the Rule to remind us that this is possible for us because we all have a tendency to be enculturated with the culture we live in and therefore we are influenced by it.  Without knowing or recognizing it we can fall into these vices.

The two groups who are held out is obviously the Cenobite and the Hermit. The Hermit is described as someone who has learned cenobitie routines, skills, and virtues to such an extent that now he can do those things on his own.

But Benedict still gives the best rating to the Cenobite. He calls them fortissimus. I suppose that word has a lot of meaning, not just a matter of being strong or courageous, but I think vigorous because the element that he points out in these two groups is that they have learned how to battle against Satan and where does Satan show up in the push and pull of our flesh and in our thoughts. Flesh here doesn't just mean sexual and sensual push and pull but that whole dimension of living life closed off from God. For Benedict the issue is to see that monastic life is a battle and to see that Satan exists. He doesn't stress Satan, but the fact is we have an enemy who hates us. He not only hates us but he hates Jesus and all his works so he= s very happy to get us to be less fervent to excuse ourselves from little things and therefore diminish the glory of God that should be rising from Martin Luther King and Buckeye Road, from us.

But the real focus is if we use the prologue the third verse of the prologue tells us also a military stance it says that we having renounced ourselves to fight under the Lord, Jesus Christ, the true King. And we do it with the weapon of obedience. It= s interesting because a lot of times we look at obedience as merely an imposition rather than what it really is. It= s a listening and a yielding to the guidance, the truth of things that Jesus manifests to us. What is Jesus manifesting to us? The kingdom and all the riches that God has planned and offers. Not just in the past, but in the present. So there are treasures available to us all the time that Jesus is offering and we are willing and want and eager to take up the beautiful and powerful arms of obedience so that we fulfill our calling but also further the glory of Christ himself.