It was with great joy as a community that we celebrated Adrian McLoughlin our postulant receiving the habit of a novice of the Cistercian Order. The rite of clothing was performed by Dom Rufus Pound, Monastic Commissary. As part of the rite the Postulant sits while a section from the Rule of our Father St. Benedict is read. Dom Rufus chose Chapter Seventy Two – ‘The good zeal of Monks.’
After Dom Rufus had questioned the Postulant about his intention; Fr Malachy, Prior and Fr Denis Luke, Novice Master then dressed the Novice in the habit, according to the norms of the Constitutions as a sign of conversion. We ask your prayers for Br Stephen of our Community.
Below is the Text of Dom Rufus’ reflection on Chapter 72 of the Rule of Saint Benedict.
The Reception of the Habit of Brother Stephen McLoughlin, 8th Sept. 2024
Ch 72 ‘The good zeal of Monks.’
We have just listened to that penultimate Chapter of the Rule, on the the Good Zeal Monks are to foster, but I want to draw your attention for a moment to the very last chapter which follows it, in which having given us this guide for life – this Rule which, it is clear, Benedict had gone to great trouble to write and re-write over the years in the light of lived experience — he then points us beyond it – saying this is only a beginning, a starting point, a few basic observances in the interests of acquiring “some small degree of virtue”, and intends it to be seen as merely a foundation leading to ‘loftier summits’, and opening doors of the heart and spirit to something greater & immensely broader.
I say this, because we can see a similar dynamic at work in Chapter 72: the practice of the virtues is meant to lead to a kind of transcendent, all-embracing & overarching virtue: , what Benedict calls ‘Good Zeal’.
There are doubts about the authorship of many chapters of the Rule, but no one, to my knowledge, has questioned that this chapter is Benedict’s very own. You could compare it to the hymn to love in 1 Corinthians 13. It gives us the perspective for reading the entire Rule, so as to interpret it according to the very heart of Benedict, the man. Aquinata Bokmann has suggested that you could even say that it’s “the climax of Benedict’s Rule, his testament as it were, that opens to us the real depths and lets us see his innermost concerns, those dearest to his heart.
At root, in these beautiful lines, which are almost a poem, you might say, Benedict is conveying Saint Paul’s teaching that the greatest of the virtues is love. As in First Corinthians: “It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. . . . So, faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” Or, in Benedict’s own terms from the end of the Prologue: “as we progress in this way of life and in faith, we shall run on the path of God’s commandments, our hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love.”
This is one of the most intense chapters of the entire Rule – just think of those superlatives, & absolute words: “the most ardent love“, “with utmost patience“, “no one is to pursue what he considers better for himself”, we are to prefer “nothing whatsoever to Christ. Also, it’s the only chapter in which all three Latin words for love are used: caritas, amor, diligere.
The word Zeal, as a key word, occurs four times in this chapter alone. It’s an interesting word, an interesting concept: it denotes energy and even passion, like a vital force that can be channelled for good or for evil. To have ‘good zeal’ is to channel it into love – and it’s worth noting in passing, that the word for ‘love’ here is ‘amor’, chosen deliberately as a stronger term than ‘caritas’. It also has overtones of intense striving, and the sheer power, the centrality of ‘motivation’ in an individual. If zeal is directed to virtue – to what is good, it is good, leading to God and everlasting life. If directed to evil, succumbing to envy and jealousy, it is destructive and evil, separating from God and leading to hell.
The Chapter is just too rich and dense, and there is too much to unpack in a short talk, so I want to focus – on this day when you embark on this important next stage of your monastic and life journey – on what is at the very heart of the chapter, the very heart of what Benedict understands as the way of love you are now embracing, putting on as you put on the habit of the monk. And what’s more, it’s extremely practical and down to earth.
In its structure, the chapter is basically a collection of Christian sayings, to which Benedict has added two monastic aspects: obedience and the relationship with the abbot. And they describe the way this good zeal is lived out in the monastery. Central though, in verse 5, we have the crux of the matter, the heart of the way: “bearing with the greatest patience one another’s weaknesses [whether] of body or behaviour’. And Benedict’s original words here are significant. The weaknesses in question can be of body or behaviour – ‘corporum sive morum’. And that word for ‘behaviour’ – ‘mores’, is the same word used when we make our profession, conversatio morum, what we tend to translate today as ‘fidelity to the monastic way of life’.
This good zeal has to do with tolerating, bearing, not just any annoying behaviour, but precisely weaknesses in conversatio. The Latin word for ‘that they tolerate’, they ‘carry’, they ‘bear’, is tolerent – a word used only here in the Rule, but an extremely significant and symbolic one. It is a verb that evokes the Suffering Servant, who “has borne our infirmities and carried our sorrows” – Christ, who “bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1Pt 24:2). The same word St Paul uses when he speaks of ‘bearing one another’s burdens’.
We see then, how it is that this good zeal “separates from evil and leads to God,” in the deep sense of uniting us with Christ, helping us in the putting on of Christ, and becoming more and more like Him in the midst of, and person of, our brothers, who are frail and weak, and often failing; it is in preferring nothing to Him and thus finding our way all together to life with him forever.
To finish, once again a quote from Aquinata Bokmann’s commentary on this chapter. She writes:
“that the entire Rule is a preparation for chapter 72, and in various regards this chapter can be seen as its climax or deepest dimension. It reflects the basic themes of the Rule: reverence, obedience, patience, bearing of weaknesses . . . .
Here we find the ardent and radical love of Christ and of the brothers, the importance of community and fraternity, Christ as the centre; the dynamism of our way to God, the interdependence of grace and human cooperation. . . Thus this chapter provide[s] us with the real key that will open the entire Rule in the spirit of Benedict.
If we live this chapter, we truly follow Christ in community according to the Gospel, providing service needed in our time and for our time.”
So then, dear Brother Stephen, that is the program, the call, the challenge put before you today. And I ask you now in the presence of your brothers, are you ready for the challenge?
- Are you ready to follow Christ along the path of the Gospel, as determined by the Rule of St Benedict?