Rule of St Benedict at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit

The Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, GA is a monastic community dedicated to the worship and contemplation of God under the Rule of St. Benedict.  The world into which St. Benedict was born was a troubled, torn apart, world.  Much like our world in the twentieth century there was great unrest and and uncertainty. It knew little safety or of security, and the church was almost as troubled as the secular world.   The fall of Rome in A.D. 410, seventy years before the birth of St. Benedict, had been a traumatic shock to the entire civilized world.  St. Benedict found the way to live in order in a time of dis-order was to live in God's order.  Benedict left the chaos and social disorder of his time by living in seclusion in a desert region south of Rome.  Benedict gained the reputation of being a holy man.  Eventually others sought him out wishing to join him.  Benedict then established 12 monasteries with about 12 monks each and established a new monastic Rule, a simple set of guidelines for a community life based around a balance of prayer, work, and study of God's word.  The Benedictine monk makes 3 vows.  He promises stability, obedience, and conversion of life.

Through the vow of stability, the monk promises to stay put in one place for life, and to find God in that place and with those same people.  

What is it then to be stable?  It seems to me that it may be described in the following terms:  You will find stability at the moment when you discover that God is everywhere, that you do not need to seek Him elsewhere, that He is here, and if you do not find Him here it is useless to go and search for Him elsewhere because it is not Him that is absent from us, it is we who are absent from Him... It is important to recognize that it is useless to seek God somewhere else.  If you cannot find Him here you will not find Him anywhere else.  This is important because it is only at that moment that you recognize this that you can truly find the fullness of the Kingdom of God in all its richness within you; that God is present in every situation and every place, that you will be able to say: 'So then I shall stay where I am'. -Anthony Bloom. 

The vow of obedience comes out of the call to listen.  The very first word of the Rule is "listen".  From the start the disciple's goal is to hear keenly and sensitively that Word of God.  To listen closely, with every fiber of our being, at every moment of the day, is one of the most difficult things to accomplish, yet it is essential if we mean to find the God whom we are seeking.  If we stop listening we are likely to pass God by without even noticing Him.  Now it is in our obedience which proves that we have been listening.  Obedience is derived from the Latin oboedire, which shares its roots with audire, to hear.  So to obey really means to hear and then act upon what we have heard.  We are not truly attentive unless we are prepared to act on what we hear.

The third vow of the Benedictine is conversion of life. This is more than the simple Christian ideal of being converted or “getting saved.” It certainly includes repentance and conversion in the traditional sense, but it is more than that. Not only is one to be converted, but he is to be dedicated to continual conversion during the whole of his life. His must become a life of constant conversion. A monk was once asked, What do you do there in the monastery?  He replied:  We fall and get up, fall and get up, fall and get up again.  Conversion means picking ourself up from our brokenness and lack of obedience and start again the pattern of obedience.  For conversion of life to be real, he must have a mindset that is always expecting transformation. Indeed, the Benedictine seeks not only to have his whole life transformed by the grace of God, but he also desires all of life to be conformed to the image of Christ.  

This Lord has Himself given us the time and space necessary to learn and put into practice the service of love that He continues to teach us.  In this school of His let us hope that following faithfully His instructions nothing distasteful nor burdensome will be demanded of us, but if it has to be so in order to overcome our egoism and lead us into the depths of true love, let us not become disheartened, nor frightened and so ignore the narrow path in spite of its tight entrance-that path which leads directly to the fullness of life.  (The Prologue, Rule of St Benedict)

Your way of acting should be different from the world's way:  the love of Christ must come before all else. (Rule of St Benedict 4 )