It’s strange that St Benedict doesn’t mention this parable that we have just heard – it is, after all, right up his street. Benedict is concerned that our life should be lived wholeheartedly, not half-heartedly. He is concerned about deep roots, and about our heart being set on a treasure – what is the treasure that our heart is set on?
This theme comes out in Benedict in a particularly surprising way. It’s generally assumed that nuns and monks will be living a quiet, disciplined, ordered life, control and the passions, and the style of life that favoured slow living, life in the slow lane. But Benedict’s Rule is full of rushing. In the prologue we are told to hasten, lest we lose the light of life. And he quotes the Scriptures:
– I will run in the way of your commandments.
– Run while you have the light of life
While we have time … we must run and do now what will profit us for ever. At the end of the Rule he asked us, “are you hastening towards your heavenly home?”.
All this talk of rushing suggests urgency. He says, it is high time for us to arise from sleep. That suggest an urgent situation. Urgency suggests energy and indeed LIFE – being full of life. But, you might say, why the rush? All of this is not so much about speed as about being purposeful and energetic in something that you are sure about.
It’s interesting to look at the historical background. In the 6th century the Ostrogoths ruled large parts of Italy, but the Byzantines re-conquered it from them. Then the Ostrogothic king Totila brought bigger armies and got it all back – he besieged Italian cities, including Rome and Naples, and was by all accounts a ruthless warrior. Gregory the Great tells us that King Totila at a certain point arrived at Monte Cassino with his hordes, and demanded entry. Benedict found himself faced with the terrifying Totila, but the effect of Benedict’s behaviour and words was that Totila ended up on his knees. And he and his soldiers went on their way, to go off and besiege and Naples. Benedict’s community lived in violent and dangerous times, and life for many people was precarious.
So the background to Benedict’s Rule was a society whose situation was dramatic. This meant that the situation of the monastery was dramatic. Benedict’s wisdom and seriousness and commitment was surely fired up by this. In such a world, monasteries were vital.
Our own situation today is of the same order. I don’t need to try and explain why the situation of our contemporary world and society is dramatic. While there are many good things about it, there is a deeply worrying loss of bearings and orientation and, we have to say, standards. The poor are forgotten. The super-rich can pay for what they want, including funding politicians who are supposed to represent all of us. Today there are nuclear weapons in the hands of madmen, and wars in places we never thought would see war again. We in Britain and Europe are now being told we need to prepare for the possibility of war. Meanwhile the church in many ways is struggling. And so, as in the time of St Benedict, the situation of the monastery, and of religious communities in general, is dramatic. Our situation still requires that sense of urgency hich Benedict urges on us.
What, then, can monasteries do about the drama around them?
Firstly, we live this life because we live it. You can’t see it in a utilitarian way as setting out to achieve this or that. Like David Attenborough or any football star, you do it because you do it, because this is what you were made for. Our life is a gratuitous gift without thought of any outcomes.
However, there are things that we can add to this. People want to come to religious communities to find what they can’t find elsewhere. Religious communities can be a support and encouragement to people. John Chrysostom said the monastery is a lighthouse. St Bernard said the monastery is the church’s teeth. As teeth chew for the whole body, so do religious communities do for the church. We also try to be of practical and spiritual service to our neighbours as far as we can. There are quite a lot of things like this that we can say. But there is something else beneath these practical considerations. It is this:
Religious communities by their life do something invisible. Or rather, God is doing something invisible through this life. You can compare it with intercession. We pray for people who need our prayers, partly because you can do no other but bring them to God. But there is also a real sense that intercession bears upon the divine economy, it feeds into God’s way with the universe. It works together with God. When we ask someone to pray for us we really mean it, and this is because there is an innate instinct that it will not be fruitless or empty. God will take our intercession up as part of his cosmic and supernatural operation.
The life of religious communities very definitely has that about it. The simple fact that we are living this life under rule, and praying together every day, and all the rest – this is used by God in ways that are invisible to us, and yet the living of this monastic life is a vital part of God’s desire for the church and for the world. We affect things. And not just this community of the Resurrection at Mirfield. We always live and pray conscious of the vast network of communities of people around the world – little monasteries in Greece – a large monastery in France – hermits hidden away – and so on, spread over most of the world. This unity of our life with the life in all those other communities is like flames rushing together into a great fire. It is daunting, it places us under something bigger than ourselves, and bigger than this place. And St Benedict is so insistent about the urgency of it, and the drama of it.
And what we say about religious communities is also true about every parish, in its own way, every parish priest, and every congregation. All the same things apply in their own way.
The parable of the sower is only one example of the way Jesus tried to point us repeatedly to the heart of things. We are called to have deep roots in good soil, we are called to have our hearts where our treasure is, and not on something less. We are called to build a house built on rock. How difficult. How can we do it? We simply have to allow God to do it in us through the means God has provided. At the very end of his rule Benedict uses another image – he talks about us climbing to the peaks of mountain;, and he says, “under God’s protection you will reach them.”