“Never turn away when someone needs your love.” Rule of Benedict (Chapter 4)
There was a time in monastic life when sisters were very
restricted as to how often they could visit their family, “particular
friendships” within the monastery were discouraged (i.e., there were no BFFs)
and sisters didn’t make friends outside the monastery. I wasn’t a sister at the
time but, as I see it, there was a rationale there. It was the idea that by
committing to religious life you gave up everything so that you could focus
entirely on following Christ with no distractions.
However, sisters move with the times and there is a softer
approach now which recognizes that, as humans, we need connections with other
people; we need to love and be loved. How that’s lived out varies from
monastery to monastery and how we live may look different from how it did in
the past, but I think underlying our life and our approach to relationships is
still the belief that Christ comes first and that expressions of love and care
toward others are part of how we follow the Gospel and Benedictine path of
loving.
How does that pan out in daily life? Well, we are encouraged
to maintain family relationships and close friendships and it’s fine to have
friends outside the monastery. However, I find that it’s quite complex to keep
a balance here. For instance, major religious feasts call me to be with my
community. What are we if we don’t celebrate Easter and Christmas
together? Yet it’s a real tug at the
heart to be absent from people with whom I have lifelong connections and also
to have to live with the knowledge that I spoiled other people’s Christmases by
coming here. Yet, I truly want to be with my monastic community because these
times are part of the cement that bonds us together as monastics and
differentiate us from a group of women simply choosing to live together.
Another significant lesson I have learned is that there are
some people, including sisters, you like and naturally feel drawn to and,
actually, that’s okay. These people will be your friends, the people with whom
you recreate. However, community doesn’t work if you focus solely one person.
You have to be open to others and you have to care about each and every one, whether or not you see them as
chums. You can be close, but you can’t be exclusive. I learned that you can’t
choose who you like, but can choose
to be generous with your love and at least try to include everyone.
This brings me to celibacy. Celibacy is included in the
monastic promise of “fidelity to the monastic way of life.” I think this is
probably something that each person handles differently. For me, the challenge
is that it’s hard to give up that one-to-one relationship, the specialness of
joining yourself with one other person. I love the theory of sharing my love equally
with sisters, of channeling to the whole world the energy that would usually go
into the one primary relationship, but it’s one of those things that sounds
aspirational in theory and turns out to be very difficult in practice. I guess,
though, that’s one of the points of monastic life: challenge yourself to be
greater than you are, try to want what’s best for others and just keep going
along the particular path you have chosen.
Karen
Rose, OSB February 8, 2019
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