Br. Lucas Hall SSJE

Benedict of Nursia

Today is the feast of St. Benedict. He is one of the most influential people in Western history, certainly in the Church. Benedict, having learned from teachers in the Greek-speaking East, was one of a few sources in the West bringing forth the tradition of communal monasticism. He wasn’t the first, but he quickly became the most popular, setting the stage for a solid millennium of Benedictine monasticism being the primary form of Christian intentional community.

There is much to explore about Benedict, but I believe right now that his theology of community is possibly the most helpful. Monasticism in general is built on an idea of asceticism, a willingness to deliberately give things up, to go without something that would be more comfortable, easier, more pleasurable, as a path of spiritual development, of learning to rely more fully on God and God alone. Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury and Benedict enthusiast, has argued that in Benedictine monasticism, the chief expression of this ascetical theology is in communal living. Benedict’s Rule puts forth as necessary the idea that we cannot simply wish others away when things get difficult. The common line of thinking, “things would be so much easier if only I didn’t have to deal with that person,” must be uprooted. Not suppressed, not relegated to a private, unspoken thought, but uprooted. Killed, if you will, a death to self out of love for the other, a cross to bear.

For Benedict, your fellow community members are essentially the means by which you yourself are formed, shaped, honed, a source of productive friction. Without that productive friction, a tool becomes dull and less useful. The friction, often uncomfortable, is the very thing that keeps things moving in the right direction. That friction allows us to discover our own rough edges, our own pointy bits that may be in need of smoothing down. Williams argues that there is a serious lesson here, in a Western world so prone to think in terms of individual rights and the boundaries between them. When we’re so focused on our individual rights, we only ever have to think of other people in terms of what they impose upon us, how they burden us or violate our boundaries. This kills community.

But if Western society can idolize individualism to the point of death, there does exist a corresponding idolatry of the community, that can also lead to death. Benedict also advises against this. More gently, he encourages communities to develop the skills and abilities of the individual members, stating that if a member is skilled in some craft, they should be allowed to practice it, and given support in doing so. But more starkly, Benedict refers to individuals within a community whose behavior is destructive. He encourages forgiveness and understanding, to a point, but if a community member is so destructive and cannot receive correction, Benedict uses the rather harsh-sounding language of cutting the cancer out. We may bristle at referring to another person as cancerous, but our own contemporary language of toxic behavior is not much different. And the reason Benedict uses such language is precisely because of how cancer kills: it takes up more and more space, it drains more and more resources and attention, until eventually the system simply cannot sustain itself, and the whole thing collapses. This happens with bodies; it also happens with communities.

Ultimately what unites these two approaches, the need for putting up with others and the need for removing others, is humility. To put up with others in all their flaws and foibles, we must not seek to reform them on our own terms; we must remember our own flaws and foibles, and allow that friction to offer some mutual formation, in the hands of the God who forms all. But to remove others is to assess that someone else’s pride is not allowing them to endure that same sort of friction, an ability to cause friction but not receive it back. This does not mean the individual in question is irredeemable or evil, but in the current context, such a person takes up more space, more attention, more communal resources, and in doing so, risks the whole body.

So as we strive to heed the prayerful example of Benedict, it is worth remembering how central his sense of community was to his own vocation and in the legacy he has left us. Not an idealized version, not an abstract, but the roughness and friction of real, mundane life, lived with others, in the mutual striving after God.