Benedictine Sisters of FL

Holy Name Monastery
Founded 1889

Benedictine Rule

Leadership

by Leave a Comment

This parable, like many of Jesus’ folksy stories, is challenging to explain.  “Make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth… “  (Luke 16:9)  But since it came from the mouth of God’s own Son it must be important for us to grapple with.  Our application is shaped and colored by the Scripture readings we had this past week and the section of the Holy Rule read each day at Evening Prayer.  (Chapter 2 Qualities of the Superior)

The Gospel tells us if we can’t be trusted in little matters we certainly cannot be trusted with great ones. Now don’t go figuring that you are not a leader in a Benedictine community because each is a leader in her own realm. It could be tempting to breeze through Benedict’s Chapter 2 with an attitude of “ho hum” – that’s for her, glad it’s not me and I hope she is listening.

To say that Benedict holds high standards for the superior may be an understatement.  Notice he places the chapter on leadership qualities early in the Rule, only after he defines the type of monastic for whom he is writing.  We know he is writing about the qualities of the leaders of the “strongest kind of monastics”; the ones who have chosen to live under a Rule and a monastic leader.

Benedict may have left it unsaid in Chapter 2, but he sprinkles exhortations about qualities of leadership for all the members elsewhere in the Rule.  Benedict echoes Jesus when he presses home that the “person who is dishonest in very small matters will also be dishonest in great ones.”  It does not require a great leap to apply this saying to all of us – the youngest or newest in community to the eldest and more seasoned member.

Benedict is waving a banner before our eyes of what each of us always need to be so that a call to leadership does not cause an abrupt change of lifestyle.  Benedict knew from his own experience that the leader’s role in community is time-limited.  He himself had experienced both a call to leadership and a call to a hermit’s life.  He must have foreseen, perhaps with a nudge from Scholastica, that the monastic must be prepared in all aspects of her life to move in and out of leadership roles.

If the individual member does not faithfully engage in a life-long endeavor to develop the attitudes, skills, and qualities that Benedict lays out for the superior, guess what?  An election or appointment to a leadership position will not ipso facto endow a generous, caring disposition.  If a person has not learned to be accountable for her own actions (or at least tried to be), and to be solicitous of others, an imposition of hands, a community affirmation, or a bishop’s blessing will not infuse the gift of saintliness.

Do you recall the lesson of the geese who fly in “V” formation?  As each bird flaps its wings, it creates an uplift for the bird following it.  [Drivers on I-75 try to take advantage of this dynamic by traveling in the tail wind of a semi.]  Combined, the whole flock of geese adds 71% greater flying range than if one flew alone.  Whenever a goose falls out of formation, it suddenly feels drag and resistance and quickly gets back into formation.  When the lead goose gets tired, it rotates back into the formation and another goose flies at the point position.   The geese in the formation honk from behind to encourage those in front to keep up their speed.

Benedict smiles upon the leaders in community, consoling them with the fact that they do not lack resources.  He quotes Psalm 33: “Those who fear God lack nothing.”  In helping others, the leader achieves the amendment of her own faults.  Benedict does not mention, but I bet he knew, the gratifying support the superior receives daily in unpretentious, quiet affirmations from individual members.  Like the story of the geese, when the leader is “shot down” by illness, or by words or attitudes in monastic life, individual members drop out of formation to help, protect, and reaffirm the leader until she is either able to again take the lead or fly in formation with the other members.

Jesus reminds us in the parable in the Gospel that, in the end, it doesn’t matter when you came into community, parenthood or ministry of any sort.  The reward for putting your hand to the plow will be the same: a day’s work in the kingdom for God’s daily wage.  The last will receive the same as the first.   It’s been that way for all eternity.  We’ll find when we get there (I’m guessing) that our view from the mansion God is saving for each of us is just as magnificent as that of Moses and Adam and Eve and our favorite saints: Everyone’s mansion has a “throne-side view” of heavenly glory.

 

~by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB

 

 

First Reading  Amos 8:5-7     
Second Reading  1 Timothy 2:1-8
Gospel Reading  Luke 16:1-13
Continue Reading

Two Lines

by Leave a Comment

Two Lines

 

Two lines jump out at me in this reading:

  1. What Jesus said to the young man – “You are lacking one thing.”
  2. The question the disciples ask Jesus – “Who can be saved?”

Jesus has already told them in this reading, four things they should NOT do: don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t bear false witness, don’t defraud.  I smile when I read how He sums up His list, it’s what my dad would say: “Do what your mother tells you.”  The only time I remember him raising his voice to me was one day when my mother asked, “Do you want to do some ironing now?”  I had said, “No, not now.”  Wrong answer!  Jesus offered the same directive to the wine servers at the wedding where he and his mother were guests – “Do whatever she tells you.”  And when dying on the Cross, what did he say to John (and all of us) – “Behold your mother.”

Jesus told the young man, “You are lacking one thing.”  That’s his challenge to us this week, figure out what’s the one thing we are lacking.  Benedict’s Tools of Good Works (RB 4) is a good examination of conscience or you might use Joan Chittister’s listing of Benedict’s counsels:

            • Don’t pamper yourself
            • Be transparent
            • Be gentle with each other
            • Don’t expect too much or consume too much
            • Live in the moment of God’s grace
            • Be willing to be formed
            • Have a holy attitude toward persons and all of creation, and
            • Remember the tools of the spiritual life are the work of a lifetime. …

Jesus said, “Do what your parents tell you.”  Benedict says the same thing in several places in the Rule, do what the superior tells you.  He gives a little wiggle room when he speaks of impossible tasks but in the end, he says obedience will save us.  I’ve saved my mother’s message to me when I wrote to tell her that we now had the option of using our baptismal names and were shortening our skirts.  In her own way she said, “I’ve tried to teach you the value of obedience.  Do what your superiors are telling you.”   RB 7 places tremendous responsibility on each of us to give good example when our founder says, “The eighth degree in humility is that a monk do nothing but what the common rule of the monastery and the example of the seniors suggest.”

Like many people, the young man in the Gospel knew something was missing in his life. There’s some of the young man in all of us … we know something is lacking. We are surrounded with media that tries to convince us what that the one thing is that will bring us joy and well-being.  Although we know full well that wealth is not a guarantee for happiness in this life, that spirit can slip through the walls, even through convent walls.  We can sense it when we doubt that the common goods available are not sufficient for us.  We can act like children who don’t want the crayons put into a pile in the middle of the table.  We each want our own box of crayons because we don’t like the broken ones or the ones that have the paper peeled off or the ones you can tell have touched another color or are just not the brand we prefer.  Like the young man we want our own possessions and we want them NOW, today.  And, we find it hard to part with any of them graciously even when we hear Benedict say (in RB 54) that the members should not presume to accept gifts sent by parents or friends without previously telling the superior who has the power to give the gift to whomever and the one for whom it was originally given will not be distressed.

Maybe instead of asking “What am I lacking?” we need to ask ourselves, “What do I have too much of?”  Jesus says, “Amen, I say to you, no one who has given up house, brother, sisters or mother and father or children or lands for the sake of the Gospel will not receive 100 times more in the age to come.”  We may tick off all the items on that list one by one but the challenge keeps coming back to haunt us, “One thing is lacking.”

Jesus counsels us: “How hard it is, it’s easier to enter the kingdom of God than for a camel to pass through the needle gate.”  It’s hard, he says but not impossible, “For with God, all things are possible.”

Just don’t get caught in Peter’s trap – quickly retorting, “I’ve given up EVERYTHING, Lord!”  You’ll hear the echo, “One thing is lacking.  Go, give what you have to the poor, and THEN come follow Me.”

~Reflection by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB

 

First Reading:   Wisdom 7:7-11            Second Reading:  Hebrews 4:12-13
Gospel:   Mark 10:17-30 (shorter form Mark 10:17-27)
Continue Reading