A letter from a Benedictine monk

THE DISPOSITIONS FOR PRAYER II:

Compunction in the rule and life of Saint Benedict

Calx Mariae is pleased to continue the series of letters from a Benedictine monk discussing some of the most important virtues and principles in the Rule of St Benedict – the rule on which the Western monastic tradition and Christian civilisation in Europe were founded.

In the Prologue of his Rule, St Benedict, the patron saint of Europe, writes: “We have therefore to establish a school of the Lord’s service, in the institution of which we hope we are going to establish nothing harsh, nothing burdensome. But if, prompted by the desire to attain to equity, anything be set forth somewhat strictly for the correction of vice or the preservation of charity, do not therefore in fear and terror flee back from the way of salvation of which the beginning cannot but be a narrow entrance. For it is by progressing in the life of conversion and faith that, with heart enlarged and in ineffable sweetness of love, one runs in the way of God’s commandments, so that never deserting His discipleship but persevering until death in His doctrine within the monastery, we may partake by patience in the suffering of Christ and become worthy inheritors of His kingdom.”

After looking at virtues like humility, obedience, prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice in the Rule of St Benedict, in this edition we continue with St Benedict’s teaching on prayer.

St Benedict's Vision of the Globe and the three Angels (1658 - 1660). Alonso Cano. Prado Museum, Madrid.

COMPUNCTION IN THE RULE AND LIFE OF SAINT BENEDICT Among the various tools of good works, St Benedict exhorts us to confess our past sins to God daily in our prayers, with tears and sighs, and to amend them for the future.1 How many of us really do this? Is confession of our sins part of our daily prayer and interior dialogue with God? Unfortunately, I often fall into the trap of confessing to God not my own sins, but, rather, the sins of others, and perhaps you find yourself falling into the same trap as well. But if, by His grace, we find ourselves confessing our sins to Him, do we do it with tears? Is our heart really in it? Do we feel remorse and contrition for our sins, or are we merely mouthing words we think are appropriate?

It may be tempting to minimize this mention of tears as a sentimental trace of bygone days and cultures, or as something negligible in St Benedict’s overall teaching on the spiritual life. But a glance through other parts of the Rule will exclude this idea soon enough. Tears are of a fundamental importance for St Benedict, as they are for the whole monastic tradition. In speaking about prayer, he tells us: let us be assured that it is not in saying a great deal that we shall be heard, but in purity of heart and in tears of compunction.2 In speaking about the observance of Lent, he tells us that we should try to wash away the negligences of other times by restraining ourselves from all vices and giving ourselves up to prayer with tears, to reading, to compunction of heart and to obedience.3 When speaking about how to pray in the common oratory of the monastery, he says one should pray not in a loud voice but with tears and fervour of heart.4 In each of these passages, prayer is inseparably bound up with tears. Indeed, tears constitute a wordless prayer in themselves.

St Benedict’s biographer, St Gregory the Great, tells us that we can learn how St Benedict lived by reading his Rule, for the holy man could not otherwise teach than he himself lived.5 So we know that St Benedict prayed with tears, since he so frequently encourages us to do so. Furthermore, St Gregory’s narrative of the saint’s life relates several key moments in which tears were an integral component of his prayer. We can begin by looking at his first miracle. Shortly after abandoning his studies in Rome, he sought for a deserted place where he could dwell in solitude, and stopped for some rest in a town known today as Affile, near Subiaco, where he soon began monastic life. He was initially accompanied by the nurse who had attended to his needs since infancy and who was very attached to him. This woman had borrowed a terracotta sieve for cleaning wheat and inadvertently dropped it off a table, breaking it in two. She was greatly distressed by this mistake (tools were much harder to come by in those days, and therefore considerably more expensive), and when St Benedict saw her lamenting this mishap, he was filled with pity, and taking the broken pieces aside, with tears fell to his prayers. 6 When he had finished praying, the sieve was miraculously repaired. In this first manifestation of St Benedict’s supernatural gifts, we see that his prayer of intercession was accompanied by tears – in this case, tears of filial compassion flowing from the fervor of a heart that implored, and obtained, God’s aid.

Another event that brought St Benedict to tears recalls the tears shed by King David for Absalom,7 and in some ways, the tears of Our Lord at the tomb of Lazarus.8 King David vehemently mourn-

ed for the death of his son Absalom, who, although he had turned into his hostile enemy, nevertheless remained in his paternal affection. Indeed, what pained the king most was the parricidal hatred that was killing his son’s soul, and, lamentably, took him to the grave. At the tomb of Lazarus, our Lord mourned not only for the bodily death of his friend, but above all, for the sins that had soiled his friend’s soul. His raising Lazarus from the dead was an act of mercy, therefore, in that his friend could now have more time alive to mourn his own sins and purify his soul before meeting death again.

Like King David, St Benedict mourned the death of a man who hated and tried to kill him – a priest named Florentius who lived near the monastery at Subiaco and was sorely afflicted with envy towards the holy patriarch.9 Despite this man’s industrious attempts at bringing spiritual and physical ruin to him and his monks, St Benedict, like Christ for Lazarus, genuinely cared for him, and loved him as a spiritual son, as a brother priest, and as a friend and co-worker in the service of God. Although this man’s hostility saddened him, what grieved St Benedict most was not the risk of being personally hurt, but rather the spiritual death this man was courting by means of his malicious and satanic envy.

This painful circumstance contributed to St Benedict’s decision to leave Subiaco, in hopes that the miserable priest would have less occasion to be tempted by envy and hatred. As he left the territory surrounding his abbey, his eldest disciple, St Maurus, came running to announce what in his eyes was jubilant news: the unfortunate priest Florentius, that sworn enemy of the monks, had just suffered a terrible death when the balcony on which he was standing collapsed, burying him under the rubble. Rather than rejoice at being vindicated by divine justice, St Benedict’s heart was pierced with sorrow for the poor priest, who died with such grave sins on his soul. Quod vir Dei Benedictus audiens, sese in gravibus lamentis dedit, St Gregory says, that is, Whereupon hearing this, St Benedict gave himself up to grave lamentations. How pregnant those words are, gravibus lamentis! The phrase suggests not simply moistened eyes, but copious tears. In seeing such tears, perhaps the monks looking on were moved to say the same thing which the bystanders said who were near Christ when He wept at Lazarus’ tomb: Behold how he loved him.

One final passage in the Life of St Benedict that indicates how important tears were for his prayer is in chapter 17, when a spiritual son of the great patriarch named Theoprobus entered his cell and saw the man of God bitterly weeping. St Gregory points out to us that this was not according to his usual custom of weeping at prayer, sed moerendo, that is, but with woe. What this means is that St Benedict was usually in the habit of weeping when he prayed, but on this occasion, his tears were filled with woe and lamentation, as if he were beholding before his eyes the tragic death of someone dear. Indeed, the cause of his tears was a vision of future destruction, for God had revealed to him that his monastery at Monte Cassino – the fruit of an entire life of hard and patient labor for him and his monks – would, according to the judgment of Almighty God, be handed over to godless men who would destroy it. But the bitterness of St Benedict’s tears was not only motivated by the foreseen loss of his whole abbey, which, in the final analysis, constituted a temporal good, but ultimately aimed at begging God to spare the lives of the monks who would be living there at that time. And his tears barely (vix) managed to obtain this from God’s mercy.

Let us fervently ask St Benedict to pray for us, that he may protect us, and that we may be given the grace to weep for the needs of those who suffer, for our own sins and negligences in charity, and finally, for the Church of God, that it may be protected from all spiritual harm. Endnotes:

1. Rule of St Benedict, 4. 2. RB, 20. 3. RB, 49. 4. RB, 52. 5. Life of St Benedict, ch. 36. 6. Life of St Benedict, ch. 1. 7. 2 Sam 18:32-33. 8. Jn 11:35. 9. Life of St Benedict, ch. 8.