CHAPTER 4: The Tools for Good Works (vv. 46-78)
6Yearn for everlasting life with holy desire. 7Day by day remind yourself that you are going to die. 8Hour by hour keep careful watch over all you do, 9aware that God's gaze is upon you, wherever you may be. 50As soon as wrongful thoughts come into your heart, dash them against Christ and disclose them to your spiritual father. 1Guard your lips from harmful or deceptive speech. 2Prefer moderation in speech 3and speak no foolish chatter, nothing just to provoke laughter; 54do not love immoderate or boisterous laughter.
5Listen readily to holy reading, 6and devote yourself often to prayer. 7Every day with tears and sighs confess your past sins to God in prayer 8and change from these evil ways in the future.
59Do not gratify the promptings of the flesh (Gal 5:16); 0hate the urgings of self-will. 1Obey the orders of the abbot unreservedly, even if his own conduct--which God forbid--be at odds with what he says. Remember the teaching of the Lord: Do what they say, not what they do (Matt 23:3).
62Do not aspire to be called holy before you really are, but first be holy that you may more truly be called so. 3Live by God's commandments every day; 4treasure chastity, 5harbor neither hatred 6nor jealousy of anyone, 7and do nothing out of envy. 68Do not love quarreling; 9shun arrogance. 0Respect the elders 1and love the young. 2Pray for your enemies out of love for Christ. 73If you have a dispute with someone, make peace with him before the sun goes down.
4And finally, never lose hope in God's mercy.
5These, then are the tools of the spiritual craft. 6When we have used them without ceasing day and night and have returned them on judgment day, our wages will be the reward the Lord has promised: 7What the eye has not seen nor the ear heard, God has prepared for those who love him (1 Cor 2:9).
8The workshop where we are to toil faithfully at all these tasks is the enclosure of the monastery and stability in the community.
Commentary by Philip Lawrence, OSB, Abbot of Christ in the Desert
Do we regularly take the time to yearn for everlasting life? Or are we caught up yet in the love of this life? It is a challenge for us to truly desire everlasting life. And one of the ways to remind ourselves of this desire is to remind ourselves that we are going to die. It seems to straightforward, and yet we do not want to remember it too often!! Especially while we are young we are normally not interested in thinking about dying. As we get older, at least for some of us, dying is a very pleasant thought because we trust that we shall be with God finally and without the sometimes bitter struggles of this life.
One of the most ancient methods of the spiritual life is that of watching the thoughts and struggling with them. Today not many persons practice this form of spirituality. Saint Benedict suggests it to us and perhaps we need to accept the challenge to at least try this form of spirituality some time in our life. It is so simple. Watch your thoughts. Take all the thoughts that are not in Christ and throw them on Christ. We will spend a lot of time at the beginning throwing thoughts on Christ, but eventually there can be a deep peace and tranquillity. We are much more comfortable today accepting all of our thoughts and acting as if they were from God. Our tradition asks us instead to place our thoughts in the light of Christ and throw out all those that do not reflect his love and his light.
Another important and tried way of the spiritual life is to listen to holy reading and allow our lives to be formed by that holy reading. In this reading God often calls us to pray. We must be prudent in what we read, and we must be committed to reading Scripture, the Fathers of the Church, the early monastic writers and the writers approved by the Church. We can read other theologies and other ways of thinking that will lead us out of the Church and out of monastic life. We are invited to use real wisdom in choosing what we shall read.
When Benedict asks us to obey the orders of the abbot unreservedly, he also gives a method of spirituality. There is a deep and sure form of growth in truly accepting the obedience that we profess in our vows. We can spend a lot of our life trying to make our own decisions and doing things our own way. There is peace and tranquillity when we finally hand ourselves over. It does not take away the pain of living nor the struggle of making mature decisions, but it is done in an entirely different manner than before we accepted obedience. Benedict obviously recognizes that we can have bad superiors, but this does not make him shy away from asking for obedience.
Harbor neither hatred nor jealousy of anyone and do nothing out of envy. This advice is again quite strong. We all have our bouts of anger, hatred, jealousy and envy. We are invited to accept them and not act from them. The same with quarreling and with arrogance. How strong we shall become when we begin to take these tasks of the spiritual craft seriously. When we are young we do not like them so well, but normally, even in Monasteries, we are less interested in spiritual growth when we are young. Our passions are stronger and reactions are in some sense more "primitive." The challenge is to grow and to mature and to put on Christ and his way of acting and living.
We must recognize that these tools are given to us as challenges to incorporate in our lives. It can never be said enough in formation and throughout our lives: if we are unhappy or angry or resentful, then we must recognize that all of those feelings and attitudes come from us. We must battle them. When we have achieved some peace and tranquillity, then we are finally approaching a point in our life when we can make more adult decisions. We want to be adults and yet often we act as children.
Saint Benedict tells us to stay in the Monastery and work at all these aspects of our lives. So often we think that life will be easier if we just leave. If we are called by God to leave, then life will be different, but not necessarily easier. So many monks leave monastic life when they are upset with something, when they are angry, when they are resentful, when they are depressed, etc. Such leavings are not the leavings of someone seeking God's will, generally, but the leavings of someone who no longer wants to stay and fight for that inner freedom that will allow a strong decision in Christ.
Our whole world is infected with this running from place to place looking for that place where I will have no problems. It is as though the whole world has gone insane and no longer recognizes that my happiness comes from within me and no external situation can take it away as long as it is firmly anchored in God. There can be much sadness and sorrow in my life, but always there is this foundation of seeking God's will.
There are many stories of the saints who have suffered incredible hardships and difficulties and who remained steadfast in their joy and contentment because they were seeking God's will. And there are plenty of stories also of saints who spent a lot of their life fighting against God's will and not accepting what was given to them in their lives until a more advanced age.
Monks have chosen a monastic way of life. Benedictines have chosen a life under the Rule of Benedict. How foolish for monks not to live as monks or for Benedictines not to follow the wise spiritual direction of Saint Benedict!
May the Lord our God give us the wisdom of His Holy Spirit to guide us in our lives. May that Holy Spirit strengthen us in the path of a virtuous monastic life.