Benedictine Oblate Newsletter - No. 11 - January 2010!
! ay!of!Life A!W
The Benedictine Oblate Community of The World Community for Christian Meditation
The Contemplative Oblate Today Sometimes people ask me – what led you to become a Benedictine monk? Before I answer I usually think of the desert father whose reply to the question ‘what is a monk?’ was this - ‘ a monk is one who asks himself question equally honestly in several different ways. Here today I would ask you ‘why did you become an oblate’? The Benedictine life has perhaps the greatest range of manifestations of any religious order in the Church – from missionaries and educators, to farmers and hermits. As St Benedict says early in the Rule ‘there are different kinds of monks’. He says the coenobites are the best but also that the whole Rule is only ‘a little rule for beginners’ who are being trained for the ‘single-handed combat’ of the desert of solitude. He seems to see solitude in some form as the goal of monastic life. Only experience reveals what solitude means in terms of the individual vocation. The multi-dimensional approach to monastic identity explains the rich diversity and adaptability of the Benedictine charism over 1600 years. And all these different aspects of Benedictine identity apply equally to oblates. What draws a person to become an oblate? How do they live oblation at different stages of their lives – as young parents or working professionals and later in retirement? What does it mean to be an oblate today at a time of great crisis in monastic history when many monasteries are closing or struggling to survive? I would like to explore some of these questions within the challenging theme of this Congress and especially through the understanding of contemplation. This will lead us to look at the praxis of realizing this, the practice of meditation. Traditionally Benedictine life has been seen as ‘mixed’ – that is neither solely contemplative nor active. Monks are meant to earn their own living. Benedictines are not mendicants. This distinguishes them from Franciscan friars and Buddhist monks. Again, this mingling of the contemplative and active dimensions of the Christian life has stimulated a great diversity of expression. The Cloud of Unknowing says that ‘no life is completely contemplative or completely active’. That is good Benedictine common sense. And perhaps there is an even deeper meaning in merging contemplation and action, as this is what Jesus seems to mean by the ‘one thing necessary’ in the Martha and Mary story. Jean Leclercq used to say: was Jesus a monk? If so, should we not all be monks? If not, do we have the right to be a monk? This tension of identity is at the heart of the Benedictine life and the Gospel and indeed of human life itself. Even the bi-hemispheral structure of the brain illustrates this tension of complementarities. It is a tension that Benedict handled wisely and brilliantly in his Rule. Monks and oblates live it out differently by their obedience to the same Rule. In a secular age like ours, filled with conflicts and confusion and with shifting ideas about the meaning of religion and spirituality, the Benedictine wisdom accumulated in many eras and cultures has immense potential and value – provided we are ready to grow with the times. The monk is like a tree planted beside fresh streams – rooted in stability and so able to grow, to be like a Kingdom-tree in which the birds of heaven come to roost, to be continuously converted. The growth needed today is a recovery of the contemplative energy of the Rule. 1
ARTICLES IN THIS ISSUE The Contemplative Oblate Today
1 -7
The Congress – a personal view
7
Houston Oblate Community
10
The Oblate Path – My First Step
10
Final Oblation
10
A Reflection – My Final Oblation
12
Canada
13
Book Corner
13
In Loving Memory
14
Editorial
15
Contacts
16
Benedictine Oblate Newsletter - No. 11 - January 2010! Recovering the contemplative dimension
spiritual experience in order to ‘find the other half of (his) soul.’ Main, who channelled a specific monastic form of contemplative prayer to the world, was led to form a new kind of Benedictine community based on meditation, the ‘pure prayer’ of the desert tradition. This has since taken shape both as a ‘monastery without walls’ and in a particular new form of Oblate life. Including meditation in the Office and liturgy was one of John Main’s great insights. This is what he said about it:
Peoples’ search for spiritual experience in our time often leads them to leave the Church. Many feel that Christianity has little to offer except rituals, moralistic certainties, rules and conformity. Yet monasteries are often an exception to this rejection of ‘religion’ in the West. Perhaps this is why the present Pope urges monasteries to renew Europe and create a ‘civilization of love’. Monasticism retains a genuine fascination and represents a real alternative way of life. The phenomenal popularity of the film ‘Into Great Silence’ clearly reflected this.
Each of our four sessions of meditation is in community. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of this physical and spiritual being together. Shared silence is a self-authenticating faith in God’s presence among us. Learning to meditate in common is the greatest of our exercises of communal love. In these moments we hold open with and to others the most precious part of ourselves – the heart where our treasure also is, our faith in the presence of Jesus.2
Since the Second Vatican Council there has been a widespread recovery of contemplation in the mainstream of the church’s life, faith, theology and prayer. The marginalization of contemplation that followed the separation of prayer and theology after the 12th century, its increasing ‘specialization’ in cloistered communities and the suspicion with which it has often been held since the 16th century have all diminished dramatically. People of all walks of life – in many forms of vocation – practice serious forms of contemplative discipline in their prayer that formerly would have been seen as strictly ‘monastic’.
It is a hopeful sign that each of these three very modern and prophetic monks remained within the monastic institution and the church. But, in order to achieve their vision they were pushed closer to the edge. Is not this itself a lesson for us as we consider the contribution of Benedictine spiritual culture to our world? Monasticism by its very nature, like Jesus, is marginal. It gives most when it is closest to the edge. This is certainly how it began – in the desert and as ‘flight from the world’ and from ecclesiastical hierarchy. Desert monks dreaded to be made priests. Benedict himself was not a priest and was cautious about introducing clerical status into the lay-structure of the monastic community. Living on the edge is hard to sustain. By the end of the great ‘age of monasticism’ in the 16th century monks had largely been assimilated into the institutions of church and state.
In Vita Consecrata, John Paul II pronounced on this reemergence of contemplation into the mainstream of ecclesial life very clearly: Even in the simplicity of their life, cloistered communities, visibly represent the goal towards which the entire community of the Church travels. As an expression of pure love that is worth more than any work, the contemplative life generates an extraordinary apostolic and missionary effectiveness. 1
Great spiritual flexibility and freedom from status was often to be found in the monastic life of the oblate or lay brother. But this had become devalued by an excessive emphasis on the clerical status of the ‘choir monk’. When John Main originally entered the monastery he asked to be lay brother. The abbot dismissed this by saying it was an impossible option for a university professor. The weakening of the spiritual influence of monasticism is connected to its loss of marginality and the confusion of the monk with the clergy and of the monastery with religious and secular institutions. The high price of this institutional respectability and acceptance by the centres of power in the church was the decreasing quality of contemplative experience. Medieval monastic culture is one of the great achievements of western civilisation. But how contemplative was it really? Research shows that the big monasteries were often more like prayer-factories while the deeper centres of
No opposition between contemplation and action here. Since the Council every Pope has called on monastic orders to renew their contemplative life and to share it with the people of God. Thomas Merton, Bede Griffiths and John Main are three of the many prophetic figures in this process. Yet, let us remember that their prophetic vision led them to unusual and even disturbing insights and experiments. Contemplatives tend to rock the boat and challenge complacency.
How contemplative is Benedictine life? – The prophet’s response Merton was quite critical of his monastic culture for its lack of contemplative depth. He was more popular outside the cloister as ‘Thomas Merton’ than within it as ‘Fr Louis’! Griffiths felt he had to leave his English monastery and go to India and immerse himself in its
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John Main, Monastery Without Walls, The Spiritual Letters of John Main, Canterbury Press Norwich 2006, p.29
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Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Vita Consecrata, 2
Benedictine Oblate Newsletter - No. 11 - January 2010! spiritual life were more likely to be found in the small priories and granges at the edges of the monastery’s political empires and estates.
discover different priorities from those we have come to take for granted.
Understanding the historical problem of the contemplative element in Benedictine life forces us to look closely at the Rule – what it has and what it doesn’t have. There are many elements in the Rule that allow us to see it as part of the Eastern mystical tradition of the monastic life from which it came and which Benedict looked back to with reverence and even a certain nostalgia. Benedict’s emphasis on ‘peace as the quest and aim’ of the life has often been reduced to a local and domestic security (no small thing in a world where things are falling apart). But he understood it more in terms of the ‘hesychia’ of the desert – the silence and stillness of heart in which contemplation arises. The opening of the heart to the abbot echoes the relationship of disciple to master in the Desert monasticism to which he looked back as a golden age. Benedict emphasises the constant need for control of thoughts – the guarding of the heart that is at the core of desert ascesis. And he saw spiritual progress in terms of the stages of humility. The Rule is geared towards achieving the state of contemplation, a way of preparing for the coming of the Kingdom of heaven at an interior level. If the Benedictine life does not mean a direct path to contemplation what on earth is it for? Education, social work, a quiet, secure life without responsibility, an escape without a return, a taking without giving? These are indeed the dangers of monastic life
For example, Benedict does not speak much about the Mass. Probably it was not celebrated daily in his communities. This does not mean he did not love or revere the mass or see it as an essential and formative part of the monastic life. Nor does he speak about a method of contemplative prayer – although he says that all forms of prayer should be prayed in a contemplative way, - that is, with attention and mind and voice in harmony. But he does point, beyond himself and the Rule, to the great practitioners of the inner life within our tradition for more detailed instruction on what he himself does not speak specifically about. This issue is handled with refreshing and radical clarity by the eminent Benedictine scholar of the Rule of St Benedict and of pre-Benedictine monasticism, Adalbert de Vogue in his essay ‘From John Cassian to John Main’. He identifies what he calls a ‘lacuna’ in the Rule and says that John Main’s contribution to modern Benedictine life offers a genuine way to fill the missing link.
But what does Benedict say specifically about how to develop and maintain this state of contemplation? Are the opus dei of the monk and his lectio divina enough? Benedict himself seems to say ‘no’, when he says that the full observance of the life is not contained in his ‘little rule for beginners’. He does not speak about particular forms of prayer apart from those of the daily Office and lectio divina – although he refers to the personal prayer of the monk being extended beyond prescribed limits, by the direct action of the Holy Spirit. The life he regulates for in the first seventy-two chapters of the Rule is designed to create the optimum conditions for contemplation. But then comes the all-important last chapter. Here, for those who want to go further into contemplation, he simply but decisively points to other authorities – especially to John Cassian whose Conferences he had already drip-fed into the monastic formation by having them read daily at mealtimes.
The role of mediator played by Cassian in Main's story is interesting in several ways. First of all, in the historical dimension it offers an example of having recourse to a pre-Benedictine author to enrich and correct the post-Benedictine tradition. As Baker had already done - but somewhat differently, as we shall see - Main returns to a source of the Rule to supply for a lacuna in it which is left open or imperfectly filled by those who make use of it.3 John Main had become a monk in the 1950’s and was told to give up the form of simple, non-conceptual and image-free meditation that he had originally learned in the East – essentially the ‘monologistic’ or prayer of one word that he was introduced to and later called the ‘mantra’. Later, while headmaster of a Benedictine school in Washington DC and at a very busy period of his life, he was approached by a student fresh from the ‘trail of
Contemporary and contemplative I would like to suggest that if Benedictine monks and oblates, today are to contribute to the spiritual and social crisis of our time that this Congress is considering, then we must examine more closely this question of how we pray in the Benedictine life. In the process we may
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Adalbert de Vogue, From John Cassian to John Main, in John Main: The Expanding Vision, ed. Laurence Freeman, Canterbury Press, Norwich 2009 3
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Benedictine Oblate Newsletter - No. 11 - January 2010! From this moment of discovering Cassian’s teaching on meditation, his ‘how to’, John Main’s sense of the monastic life was transformed. He continued as headmaster for a few years. He then established a lay community – proto-typical ‘oblates’ – at his monastery where he led them in an intensive novitiate formation grounded in meditation and integrated with the familiar forms and structures of daily Benedictine life. His vision had a destiny. It expanded to become a ’monastery without walls’, The World Community for Christian Meditation. Within this community, over the past thirty years, a new kind of Benedictine Oblate Community has developed. More recently, and still emerging within the Oblate Community, a residential Oblate identity has formed. This allows for an oblate to make final oblation and at the same time to commit to residential life in a stable Oblate community for renewable three-year periods. In 2007 The World Community and The WCCM Oblate Community received canonical status during the 25th anniversary of John Main’s death. His insight that ‘meditation creates community’ has been proven true by the development of this global spiritual family.
the mystic East’ with a simple but pointed question. Was there anything in Christian monasticism that corresponded to the meditation practices of the East? In helping this young seeker – with his very contemporary question about experience – John Main was led first to Augustine Baker and then to Cassian. Here he recognized a method of contemplative prayer that Benedict would have known, that we find in the medieval tradition and that is enshrined in the Orthodox church as the ‘prayer of the heart’. This is what he called Christian meditation. De Vogue notes that Latin Christianity did not retain a parallel to the Jesus Prayer of the Eastern Church. With Cassian’s formula or mantra, however, there was indeed a parallel method and one to which Benedict pointed. But it became largely forgotten or neglected in Benedictine monasticism. John Main’s recovery of it, according to de Vogue, is an evolutionary moment of significance for our time. He points to an irony in monastic history. Benedict adopted Cassian’s mantra “Deus in adiutorium meum intende” (O God come to my assistance) as the opening of the Office, perhaps as a reminder of what the Office is preparing us for.
At what level do monk and oblate become one?
Cassian's role as liaison in this matter is all the more essential as Latin monasticism has not produced a phrase analogous to the Jesus Prayer, nor has it even used any other Christian mantra in a sustained way. It is something strange and cause for regret that the Deus in adiutorium recommended by Abbot Isaac has as far as we know not been used in the West in the way the author of the Conferences suggested. No echo has come to us of a school of spirituality which cultivated it as a phrase for continual prayer. Instead of this unceasing, personal practice at which Cassian aimed, we find only examples of liturgical or ritual use, whether in the Rule of St. Benedict himself or in his contemporary and countryman Cassiodorus or in the Franco-Celtic monasticism of the following century. 'These do witness indeed to the fact that the message of Abbot Isaac was heard: the verse he recommended is greatly respected and its richness of meaning is perceived. But it is not used for continuous prayer. The very end which Cassian had in mind has been lost sight of.4
John Main did not think that this form of meditation, the oratio pura or pure prayer of the Desert monks, was the only way to pray, or even the best. He took it for granted, however, that as it did not replace other forms of prayer, it would only enrich lectio and sacramental prayer. His contribution to the contemplative renewal of Christianity has been recognized by the monastic world. To Bede Griffiths John Main was the ‘best spiritual guide of his time’. De Vogue saw him as bridging Christian to the non-Christian world as Cassian had bridged Latin and Orthodox churches. But his teaching has been more widely practiced outside the cloister. Only a few monastic communities have recognized what de Vogue understood as the ‘lacuna’ and learned what John Main understood when he filled it in his new form of Benedictine community – the integration of times of silent meditation with the times of lectio, divine office and mass. Many Oblates of course do this normally, integrating meditation morning and evening with their Office, lectio and daily routines.
In his Tenth Conference of Abbot Isaac, Cassian describes the reasons, the theology and the stages of this way of prayer. The reason is to control the problem of distractions. The theology is the poverty of spirit to which the ‘single verse’ leads and deepening union with Jesus in the glory of his Resurrection. The stages illustrate the fundamental ascesis of the monastic life and indeed the achievement of its primary goal – the purity of heart by which the vision of God is reached.
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ibid.
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Benedictine Oblate Newsletter - No. 11 - January 2010! It is not surprising that this does not happen in most monasteries. The perception that silent prayer of the heart is the ‘personal prayer’ of the monk, whereas the Office and Mass constitute the collective prayer of the community is deeply set. There is, however, an older tradition that points to community prayer as including both silent meditation and the Office. It would be unlikely that that this older tradition could be recovered in existing monastic communities with their longestablished practices and customs. But for newer manifestations of Benedictine life – such as the oblate communities that both John Main and Bede Griffiths saw as emerging in the monasticism of the future - are more ready to integrate meditation with the Office or lectio. They see them as complementary precisely because they see that they are distinct and different. Meditation is different from lectio, lectio from oratio… but contemplatio is the goal of all prayer.
Remembering what Benedict points to beyond his own Rule can help monasteries to explore new forms of commitment within the community or parallel to it. The ancient form of oblation offers many examples that can be adapted for modern circumstances. Benedictine life is not supernatural. The Rule is very down to earth. So, we should not be surprised to see that forms of the monastic life that do not evolve and adapt will become extinct. The vow of conversatio morum has never been more relevant and deserves our attention today even more perhaps than the often idolized vow of stabilitas. In the past the cohabitation of the vocations of oblate and monk in a monastery was normal. There were very creative variations and combinations. Some scholars claim that the richest periods of monastic spirituality coincided with an increased diversity of forms of oblation. In that historical perspective of depth and variety we might foresee new, more flexible forms of Benedictine life evolving around oblate communities. This was Bede Griffiths’ strong intuition and John Main had already begun some constructive experiments in new forms of life obedient to the Rule and incorporating communal meditation.
Meditating together is a powerful experience of faith and love. It can deepen and heal the wounds and friction of community living. In a Benedictine community the experience of meditating together (as well as of praying the Office and celebrating Mass) creates a perception of personal and corporate union within the prayer of Christ. In Christ, at this level, there is neither monk nor oblate.
Four times a day we meditate together for half an hour – the ‘short time’ of prayer suggested in the Rule. Each meditation period follows the appropriate hour of the Divine Office. The Office, which we see as a form of communal lectio, is our way of preparing for the silence of meditation by an attentive listening to the Word in scripture.5
Oblates yesterday, today and tomorrow How does this experience of unity in shared contemplative experience affect the forms of commitment and common life of a Benedictine community? This is a real challenge. It can also create big problems. Contemplative experience creates a sense of unity and equality. Oblates and monks are one and equal in this contemplative dimension of the life. It enables them to love Jesus’ teaching on discipleship as a way of mutual service not a competition for precedence or about who can be closer to the teacher.
Communal times of silent meditation is not a new idea to monastic tradition but it is rarely found today. Oblates encourage the recovery of this custom – the opening to the full spectrum of prayer - through their life in the world. The meditating oblates of the World Community, for example, have already embraced the discipline of twice-daily meditation before they begin the novitiate year. As they then learn to weave the Office and lectio into their daily spiritual life a fruitful symbiosis happens in which the Word leads to silence and silence empowers the Word. Cassian in the 5th century already describes this marriage-relationship between lectio and meditation in his Tenth Conference. He was surprised to find how the imageless prayer of the mantra led to a deeper reading of scripture.6 The modern oblate, living in the world can balance daily prayer and work (lectio, worship and the prayer of the heart) and bring to light the entire tradition of oblation and its potential for our time.
This equality and unity is hard to live in daily life. The Rule, however, is good at resolving such problems. It has helped many generations to solve their difficulties of adapting to the times. After all, the Rule is good for learning how different and often quite odd people can live together in love. Monks can feel threatened in their identity by sharing community with other kinds of commitment. Often this cannot work. Certainly it cannot without shared contemplative prayer. Then again, oblates may not want to be formally monks or live with them even though they do love the Benedictine life. These are the kinds of challenges of identity, vocation and meaning that we face in monasticism today. It is an aspect of what we call the ‘crisis of vocations’ but which is in fact a crisis of perception. It means can we adapt or do we cling to the death to old forms? The future of Benedictine life depends on first facing and then risking some new ways of living these challenges.
It does not, then, really matter whether the oblate is living in the world or in a residential community. Grounded in this balance and liberating discipline in their daily life the oblate soon becomes the witness and
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Monastery without Walls, op. cit., p.27
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Cassian, Conference 10.5
Benedictine Oblate Newsletter - No. 11 - January 2010! Conclusion
the teacher for others - a development common to all forms of Christian discipleship.
The contemplative dimension of the Rule has often been under-emphasized because Benedict seems to concentrate on the challenges and structures of community life rather than on the interior journey. The oblate and the monk are, however, enriched and made more flexible in their respective vocations by remembering the full mystical import of the Rule. Seen in the light of Chapter 73, the mundane details of the Rule acquire a rich symbolic meaning that points to the goal of contemplation in every aspect of life: ‘so that in all things God may be glorified.’ The goal of the monastic life according to the first monks was simply ‘continuous prayer’.
As Augustine Baker remarked in the 17th century, a certain re-prioritizing of life activities may be necessary if a person wishes to live a contemplative life in the world. He mentions going out to dinner less often. We might add less time in front of the television or online. But as Baker stressed, long before Vatican II, the call to contemplation is universal. Recovering this contemplative dimension of the Benedictine ethos in the oblate life could provide a model and influence for monasticism generally which faces so many difficulties today. A rediscovery of oblation may save and renew monasticism for our time. A historical review of oblature may be very helpful in the reconstruction of monastic communities. We have seen how oblature has been remarkably responsive to the spiritual needs of the times, and has always cherished the precious legacy of monastic prayer. Consider the variety of legitimate roles and functions that oblature provided in the Cluniac familia, in large cenobia, in small priories, in eremitical orders. It has shown a remarkable elasticity--not shapelessness, but a creative response to the needs of a particular situation interpreted through a vital tradition. The Oblate may live for life in monastic communities as mortui mundo, having given himself and his property to the community without reservation (a plenus oblatus, a persona ecclesiastica). He may face the challenge of living "in the world" by the principles of the Rule in fraternal union and affiliation with the monastic community. This is the option that probably most oblates in history have taken. It allows for a diversity of accommodations to persons and situations. Perhaps it is now time to consider yet another option which has recurred in history, and may have much to offer prayerful people in our time--the creation of residential communities of Oblates of St. Benedict who may minister to their fellows in a new monasticism to a world crying out for the silent, generous prayer which it has to offer. The free and supple structure of oblature adapts well to a wide variety of religious temperament and social circumstance. It seems to present marvelous and large opportunities for the life of intensive Christian meditation and prayer; it is a rich inheritor of, and contributor to, the life of evangelical humility and simplicity envisioned by Our Holy Father Benedict, a man of God for all times.7
The Life of Benedict reveals the saint as healer, spiritual father and mystic. His vision of the whole world gathered together in a ray of divine light pervades the therapeutic insights into the human soul – alone and in community – which has made the Rule a major part of Christian wisdom literature. There is only one Rule for all forms of Benedictine life – for monks, nuns and oblates living in the world. It has no clerical bias and, like the desert tradition, does not elevate one form of vocation above another. The monk who clings to his status in distinction to others is not yet a free monk. The oblate who sees himself as less of a disciple, because he is not a monk is not yet a free oblate. What matters is to ‘truly seek God’. This spirit of equality and fraternity is a direct fruit of contemplative consciousness and pure prayer. It rings true with the modern mind. And it creates a contemporary and flexible form of following Christ through the ancient tradition of oblation. The Rule embodies the contemplative dimension of the Gospel by laying the moderate, ascetical foundations for the interior journey. Seen like this, new forms of monastic life can be creatively imagined and courageously risked. The oblate may live in the monastery or in lay communities of oblates that are probably closer in form to the monasteries that Benedict himself knew. Or, the oblate can continue in the more conventional form to live in the world as a spiritual friend, associate or member of a monastic community. In whatever form of commitment the oblate seeks God through prayer and work and makes peace his ‘quest and aim’. In our modern confusion Benedict offers us a clearer understanding of the nature of these three spiritual elements of life. Prayer is more than ritual and mental prayer. It needs to nurture and lead into contemplation – the prayer in which as Cassian says ‘all the riches of thought and imagination’ are surrendered. Work means more than making money. It is about service and the making of a just world that consciously and continuously awaits the coming of the Kingdom. And peace is not just a passing state of mind, a temporary relief from stress and anxiety. Peace is the mind of Christ because ‘he himself is our peace.’
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Benedictine Oblate Newsletter - No. 11 - January 2010! If the oblate today recovers this latent contemplative energy in the Benedictine life we could expect to see a greatly increased influence of the spirit of the Rule in our world. This would affect not only monasteries but all the institutions of society: in the ways in which dialogue is conducted, the church is run and families raised. Benedictine monks and oblates face the same challenges and so are equal partners in this work of seeking God through the wisdom of our Holy Father Benedict. Laurence Freeman OSB Talk to the Second World Congress of Benedictine Oblates, Rome, 3rd October 2009
Congress group photo taken in the grounds of the Salesianum
Further reading:
The Congress – a personal view
John Main, Community of Love , Medio Media 2009
I had a lovely time! It was, as one oblate put it, ‘like going home to Grandma’s at Christmas and meeting all the distant relatives’ - over two hundred of them from all over the world - such was the sense of our gathering as Benedictine family. Indeed it was good to be in the company of oblates from so many places, all representing their monasteries – some I’d heard of (‘oh, you’re from there!’), many I hadn’t; great was the bond between us, born out of common interest, familiarity and vision, great, too, was the obvious witness of enormous love and warmth and loyalty to our own monasteries, the tug to our own spiritual homes.
Laurence Freeman, The Selfless Self, Canterbury Press 2009 Paul T. Harris, John Main: A Biographical Memoir, Medio Media 2009
“Tradition is not what has been done but what is being lived in continuity with the past and in a hopeful thrust towards the future. The word itself, traditio, means a ‘passing on’, a ‘transmission’. Christian faith is effectively lost, though the structures of Christianity may remain powerful for a while, when tradition becomes archaic rather than a contemporary reappropriation and projection forward. What is being regained and passed on is not something that can replace the necessity of our personally experiencing it. The life of a tradition is precisely this multiple personal experience forming and awakening the ecclesial reality. Experience and tradition are inseparably integrated in John Main’s teaching and his insistence on the need for ‘personal verification of the truths of our faith’.”
It was good to live and share our faith through the liturgy, though a challenge at times as we embraced celebrations in five languages... thank goodness for the commonality of Latin, used increasingly in the Eucharist, and through conversation, at times an even greater challenge as we (I) wrestled with languages that weren’t our (very poor) second, but we shared ideas and ideals and meals, the agape nature of which always won through. It was so good to have walked the way of St Benedict as we joyfully and prayerfully visited those ‘oft heard-of’ Benedictine sites, the abbeys of Subiaco, Montecassino and Sant’ Anselmo – reflections on these places alone would be full of superlatives and could run to thousands of words. How wonderful it was to kneel in prayer in St Benedict’s cave at Subiaco and renew our Oblations in the presence of the relics of St Benedict at Montecassino! Magnificent too, and humbling, was the generosity shown to us – Benedictine hospitality indeed: dining in the fine refectory of Montecassino and feasting in the cloisters at Sant’ Anselmo as night fell on our last evening, and then being serenaded by the Abbot Primate, Dom Notker Wolf, on his flute (Brother Christian accompanying him on the piano – what patient humour he’d shown to us all week in the chanting of the liturgy... dulcet-toned most of us weren’t); what an end to the Congress, Abbot Notker making his concluding
John Main: The Modern Spirituality Series
!from The Preface by Laurence Freeman OSB
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Benedictine Oblate Newsletter - No. 11 - January 2010! remarks and sending greetings, his ‘very best wishes, from the big heart of a small man to all oblates, everywhere.’
road of dialogue with the world. I have to admit that I don’t care for the word ‘dialogue’; it seems a bit ‘fuzzy’ and I’m not sure what it means. My dictionary offers the following: conversation, chat, interview, discussion, exchange of ideas... all of which somehow miss the mark, for without an adjective –‘deep’, ‘warm’, ‘intimate’ – they seem cold, but wait... what about this offering - ‘channel of communication’... this surely opens the way of love and attention to others for it goes to the very heart of Trinitarian love – picture Rublev’s well-known icon in which the Three Persons of the Trinity incline their whole being to the other. When we incline our whole being to others, when we pay real attention to them, when we really listen to them with both our ears and heart – rather than putting ourselves in the centre – our thoughts, opinions, advice, solutions – we may just... just... recognise that Other who dwells within them.
It was so good to be at this wonderful Congress, the organisation of which was a mammoth task in the first place, and was to be heroically carried through with love and generosity - and not a little patience and self-sacrifice - whilst there. I am grateful for the opportunity to have been present and thank all who supported me with their love and prayers and have taken interest. The object of the Congress, though, was not simply for us oblates to have ‘a lovely time’, but was surely to give us a sense of the wider Benedictine family to which we belong and to focus our minds and hearts on the nature of Oblate vocation, a vocation which one of our Sisters described as ‘prophetic’, for at a time when monastic vocations are decreasing, those of the lay oblate are increasing. Within this general objective, however, the specific one to be addressed at this Second World Congress was entitled ‘The religious challenges in the world today – the Benedictine answer’. This was a tall order; at the end of our week could we even begin to think we came up with ‘an answer’... or to even begin the process of finding an answer; is it that ‘answers’, like fruit, will grow slowly from good stock? First of all, of course, we need to understand the question.
As oblates we are mindful of the wisdom of St. Benedict when he begins his Rule with the instruction to listen: ‘Listen carefully, my child, to my instructions, and attend to them with the ear of your heart’. The importance of listening permeated all our talks and discussions on inter-religious dialogue: the need to listen receptively and not judgmentally; to listen, not in order to negotiate or compete but to contemplate the other, an oblate from Hawaii, spoke of a beautiful phrase used in her culture, that of ‘listening with fourteen hearts’.
The brief we were given stated that the societies in which we now find ourselves living are becoming ever more multiethnic, multi-cultural and multi-religious, as a result of which Christianity is challenged to open itself to a new situation which contains an ‘other’, meaning, that which was formerly distant, is now living on the same floor. We are now facing the challenge – and frequently the fear – of ‘difference’; who is this ‘other’? The ‘our’ in the Our Father is brought home to us in a very tangible way which we might not have thought about that much in the past when churches did not live side-by-side with mosques and temples and council literature did not come translated in all those ‘strange and squiggly’ languages; we are now jolted into having to consider who ‘our’ means... who is our neighbour, whose neighbour am I, and are our attitudes consonant with the Gospel precept of universal brotherhood?
Opening our hearts and listening to others, of course, tends to soften – to expand - the heart and it makes us vulnerable; might it be that society – Christians in society - may see risk in this sort of dialogue with the fear of ‘isms’ getting the upper hand -relativism, syncretism, secularism and indifferentism - resulting in the view that it’s less risky to keep up a defensive and insular front... or a low profile, battening down the hatches. Such concerns are surely born out of the fear that comes from not really knowing our own identity as Christians; there is therefore a real need for us to know the tenets of our faith and ‘the reason for our hope’ (1 Peter 3:15-16), and to be firm and confident in following Him who is ‘the way, and the truth and the life’ (John 14:6); with such ‘armour’ we surely have nothing to lose but everything to gain.
We need to address the realisation that ‘we’ are not the centre of the universe – that others have received gifts from God; this we may ‘know’ in our minds... but how do we know it and ‘live’ it in our hearts, in the depth of our being... how are we to live and love as brothers and sisters to those who are ‘different’, to those who worship at different altars – both religious and secular? How, it was asked, are we to build bridges and break down walls which keep us separate and perhaps suspect of those who are ‘not the same as us’? How are we to envisage and build a ‘civilization of love’ which was the dream of Pope Paul VI?
So, how may we build those bridges and break down the walls which separate us so as to build this ‘civilisation of love’? Many thoughts were shared by our keynote speakers of the different faiths and by oblates, but I would like to focus on the practice of contemplative prayer – or meditation - as presented by Dom Laurence Freeman, seeing it as a tool which enables us to incline our whole being to recognise the presence of God dwelling in the other, a tool whereby we may both come to know the beauty of our own identity but not let our own ‘me-ness’, ego – blot out God and the other. (1) As Benedictines we pray the Divine Office which is essentially vocal prayer, that is, mental, and St Benedict is prescriptive as to how to do this in twelve minutiae-filled
Our brief put forward the hope that this dream could be realised by Benedictine oblates setting out together on the 8
Benedictine Oblate Newsletter - No. 11 - January 2010! chapters, we, as oblates, praying it as we can, in the circumstances of our lives. Indeed Benedict’s ‘minimum Rule for beginners’ is filled with minutiae; it may seem pernickety but in reality it contains the essence of a beautiful spiritual teaching. It provides the means to get along with others and to live regulated - and balanced lives in which ‘good zeal’ may be practiced which leads to preferring ‘nothing whatever to Christ’ (ch.72), this preference enabling his followers to ‘walk in his paths by the guidance of the Gospel’ (Prologue), ‘that in all things God may be glorified’ (ch. 57). The Rule, then, provides the optimum conditions for contemplative prayer, Benedict alluding to this in his last chapter (ch. 73) when he points to the teaching of the holy Fathers. The Rule puts ‘stuff’ into place; it surely puts the ego in place, that which grows big and becomes out of hand so that we fill the big picture and not God or others –others who are ‘different’ to us - members of our own communities, parishes or families... or, in the context of our theme, those of different colours or creeds or customs.(2)
may recognise Him dwelling in those who are, after all, not so different from us after all... for we are all made in His image; in ‘knowing’ this in our hearts and minds we may indeed go forward positively to build that civilization of love. I had a lovely time at the Congress... and I unexpectedly discovered …… ‘the pearl of great price’... Sue Thomson, U K., Email : suethomson@cotswoldwireless.co.uk ________________________________________ (1) For a transcript of Fr Laurence’s talk, ‘The Contemplative Oblate Today’, go to www.wccm.org. (2) One of our speakers reflected on a Buddhist’s perception of the Cross in Western Christianity as being an upright, representing ‘I’, that is ‘me, me, me’, with the crossbeam being ‘your boss, Jesus, who came to cut your ‘I’ off’... (3) On different expressions of prayer, vocal, meditation and contemplative, see the Catechism, nos. 2700-2724
This is not the place for a thesis on what constitutes ‘contemplative prayer’; (3) what does seem plain though is that we have to exercise self-discipline so as to put ourselves into the position that we might contemplate and that is the work - the ascesis - of meditation. Fr Laurence’s teaching is in the Christian monastic tradition of the desert, of Cassian, referred to by St Benedict, and recovered by Dom John Main; it is simple... we only need to withdraw, sit still, be silent and say our sacred word interiorly for 30 minutes, twice a day, every day. In meditation we don’t measure our ‘success’; we put ourselves aside and enter that poverty of spirit where we come to union with Christ, where we are ‘all one in Christ Jesus’ (Galatians 3:28), whatever our religion, culture or ethnicity. We might baulk at such a practice for it is demanding; ‘what, sit still...what a luxury to be able to do that, when will I find time in my busy life...it’s alright for monks and nuns who have a timetable which allows for such...’ we might say, except we who know something of life in monasteries know that the framework might be in place but it’s no easier, there are always things to do and minds are full of clutter. There will always be tension between ‘doing’ and ‘being’; nobody’s life can be completely contemplative, the question is, how do we integrate these strands? If Martha has been called ‘the saint of stress’ because her anxiety over ‘doing’ lead to fragmentation, we may surely look to St Benedict as ‘the saint of integration’ because of his balanced way, and so we, as oblates, seriously seeking Christ, have to seek balance, live our lives ‘in the world’ but take time away, to withdraw.
Paula Holmes, Trish Panton and Sue Thomson at Montecassino
Door to Silence. John Main OSB - “By a strange paradox, as we journey into the infinite space of God’s being we come closer to one another. True communion depends on people plumbing the depths of their own being, knowing themselves, and then revealing themselves known. Love is fulfilled in the revealing of our true self to another who is equally real.”
In conclusion, any ascetic practice we take on must surely have only one aim, ut in omnibus glorificetur Deus – “that in all things God may be glorified” (ch. 57), and if, in integrating meditation into our lives, we are able to be centres of contemplation in which we rest in God, we 9
Benedictine Oblate Newsletter - No. 11 - January 2010! before seemed to have been a preparation for this. I felt a deep inner joy within at having come to this moment.
Houston Oblate Community He gave gifts…so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Ephesians 4 On January 3, in the dark stillness of the New Year, WCCM Oblates in Houston gathered to begin again as a Community of Love. Each Oblate responded to the question, “What gift do you want to bring into the world in 2010?” How would you have answered this question? Here are our responses. We want to: ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
be at peace; to love what is. discern through stillness and listening deeply be filled with joy love love even more become; to find our own voices be present, sometimes in absence wait and to accept not knowing reach out and bring others to meditation be spontaneous channels of life be stubbornly hopeful
As we give these gifts to the world, God gives them to us. May all who receive these gifts, and all who use them do so to the praise of His glory as we grow in Unity and the grace-filled goodness of Oblate Comm-Unity. Carole Keating - Houston, Texas, USA Email: momkeating@aol.com
Niloufer Harben , Selangor, Malaysia Email: niloufer@streamyx.com
The Oblate Path – My First Step
Final Oblation
In taking the first step of postulancy on the first September, 2009, I felt blessed indeed to be making this commitment within our meditation group that meets weekly at St Mary's Cathedral, Kuala Lumpur.
When I began the process of exploring a call to Oblation within The WCCM it came as a bit of a surprise. I say that because as an Anglican Parish Priest I thought I had fulfilled my ‘vocation’. Of course in one sense I had; but I also realised, some years on, that something still felt to be missing.
As we've been gathering to meditate for over a decade, their presence and support meant a lot. The music that led us into the time of meditation, Raag Pahadi, played on the bansuri (bamboo flute) struck a deep chord within me. Poignantly registering the call of the Divine, it spoke also of an indelible spiritual connection with India, the country of my birth, where meditation and interior silence are at the heart of the contemplative life. After meditation, I read the words from the Postulant Chart and then signed it in front of the group. It felt like the culmination of many steps. So much that had happened
In thinking about the term 'oblation' as an offering, it spoke to me of being called to 'offer' my life to God in a particular way. I realised quite soon that the path of Christian meditation, The Rule of St. Benedict and the process of oblation was touching something I had not felt before. Early in the process of postulancy I spoke to my mentor about how I felt it had filled a space in me that was empty. She responded by saying: "perhaps you were 10
Benedictine Oblate Newsletter - No. 11 - January 2010! previously full of empty things and in learning, (and practicing) a way of emptying yourself you make space for Him to get closer to you, and to love you in the way that brings a richer meaning to all other loving relationships."
now what wasn't so clear once, that they are complimentary to one another. I believe they have awakened in me a new vigor to live these as fully as I am able. I know I have grown, and continue to do so, in my understanding about community. Being part of this community has helped me to understand how I can relate to communities in general more fully. It has opened me to the relationships in the community connected with my work life. I don't say those relationships are always easy, but that's part of the issue of working at community life. I know this will benefit me both in my working role but also in my daily life with all my relationships.
I feel that has spoken true of things for me throughout this whole time leading to making my final oblation. I believe the practice of meditation in the tradition of The WCCM; The Rule of St. Benedict and the process of oblation has been giving new life to me and has allowed me to open the way for God to come closer and so enrich so many different aspects of life, including my vocation as a priest. I have certainly felt whilst testing my call to oblation that I have had tremendous support from my mentor and the meditation community in general. I am conscious of the difficulty I have of getting to events due to my work role and often the long distances for the events which would mean needing to take time out which is simply not normally available. However, I have felt that this gap has been bridged by the contact I have had with my mentor and others at the oblate days in December. I am aware I may be fortunate in having had a positive experience of support from my mentor but I have certainly felt that she has always been encouraging and affirming whilst making me think and reflect on the necessary areas relating to oblation. It has been helpful to exchange email correspondence and to be able to ask advice or her thoughts where there were issues of concern. It has been a really positive part of the process for me in aiding me to think seriously and deeply about the call to oblation and what that has meant.
Through all of this the path to oblation has given me a newness and an experience I want to share with others. It may not always be that they want to hear it yet but I am keen to help them feel and experience something I believe has brought freshness to my spiritual journey. I continue to follow my practice of meditation and to follow the Rule of St Benedict and the working out of my commitment to Obedience, Stability and Conversion as fully as I can. Making the step to full oblation is for me the culmination and affirmation of all I have and am committed to. Stephen Gott Email: s.gott@hotmail.co.uk
! Silent Meditation Retreat Led by Laurence Freeman OSB
I feel it has been good to be able to share and exchange thoughts and reflections in an open way. There has always felt to be a sense of working at this together, which I feel is how it should be. Rather than it being a matter of one side ‘having the answers’ and ‘testing’ me to see if I passed; instead it felt that it was a shared experience and we were exchanging thoughts and working through issues together, supporting and helping one another. I really believe the mentor approach is of immense value to the work of the oblate community.
and Giovanni Felicioni Saturday 5 June – Saturday 12 June, 2010
Theme: RETURN TO THE CENTRE Fr. Laurence will lead the retreat with a daily conference and evening contemplative Eucharist. Giovanni Felicioni will lead daily yoga. This humane, typically Benedictine balance is blessed by the beauty of the setting and the friendship of the monastic community with whom the night prayer peacefully concludes each day.
During my time of pondering oblation I have learned much about letting go of self; though I know only too well there is a great deal more of self to let go of. I believe I have grown in my understanding of patience as I have waited through the process of becoming an oblate; something I am sure will be good news to many people who I work and live with. As a parish priest I was familiar with oaths of obedience but have come to value the concept as much about mutual obedience as that of authorative obedience. The value of course is in mutual respect. At the same time I have learned so much about stability and conversion. I love the contrast between stability and conversion. Yet at the same time how they open up to each other and bring each other alive. I see
The brochure with full details and registration form may be downloaded from - www.wccm.org Further information email - monteoliveto@wccm.org or phone +44 ( 0 ) 20 7278 2070
11
Benedictine Oblate Newsletter - No. 11 - January 2010! in the words of Elizabeth Barrett Browning in one of her sonnets:
A Reflection - My Final Oblation June 7, 2008
“First time he kissed me, he but only kissed The fingers of this hand wherewith I write; And ever since, it grew more clean and white.”
I began this journey of Studying the Rule of St. Benedict on December 2, 2006. Since then I have tried to remain faithful to the daily readings and meditation, and I have conscientiously worn the St. Benedict medal each day as a reminder of my commitment.
So too, the language of our spiritual life is a language of symbols: “You have called us to find freedom in a love that knows no bounds.”
Today, Don has asked me to say a few words and I would like to begin by reading a prayer from the Benedictine Daily Prayer: A Short Breviary “Lord God, you have created us in your own image, to find freedom in a love that knows no bounds. Lead us further today along this path of freedom, to which you call us, through Jesus, your beloved Son our Lord.”
This love is like the ocean. It is like the prairie. It is like feeling we have in a relationship in which we are treated tenderly and with respect, in which we are loved and we’d like to go on in such a relationship forever. God’s love is like that.
What does freedom in a love that knows no bounds look like?
I would like to share one brief story about hands as symbols –
Ocean - I grew up by the sea. I am used to seeing the
I worked in courts and prisons and on the street for several years, nearly 25 years ago. One day I met a man named John. He had been doing 30 days in the old Nicholas Street Jail. Previously he had been in Kingston Pen for several years for blowing up banks.
ocean as far as my eyes could sea. It was a great expanse of water with no bounds. I appreciate, sometimes with tears, how John Masefield felt when he wrote: “I must go down to the sea again, the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.”
I invited John home for dinner before he went to stay at the Salvation Army.
There is such a freedom when I am there that Jean, my wife, observes, “You are different when you are here.”
We were sitting in my living room and my young son, John, who was then three years old, came into the room. He stopped momentarily when he saw the stranger but big John held out his hands and arms and John went to him. The presence of my young son brought forth tenderness in this bank buster and big John’s extended hands brought forth trust in my young son. I was very touched by this experience.
Prairie - In 1955 I spent the summer in Saskatoon and visited 850 homes in a new sub-division and helped in starting a new congregation. The home where I lived looked out over a vast field of wheat. Wheat as far as the eye could see. Remember the words of the old song:
Finally, in the Anglican Eucharist there are words I have said hundreds of times: “And here we offer and present unto you ourselves, our souls and bodies to be a reasonable, holy and living sacrifice...
Oh give me land, lots of land, under starry skies above, Don’t fence me in. Let me ride through the wide open spaces that I love, Don’t fence me in. Yes, indeed, we all long for freedom in a love that knows no bounds, pictured here by the ocean and the prairie.
Kneeling in the pew I always said these words with my hands outstretched in offering. In a sense I have offered myself to God many times in this way and obviously he took me up on it, too.
In my earlier years I worked with children a lot and enjoyed teaching them choruses about the spiritual life. One of them had the following words:
E.M. Forster once said, “We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”
Wide, wide, as the ocean, High as the heaven above, Deep, deep, as the deepest sea, is my Saviour’s love. I, though so unworthy, still am a child of his care, For his word teaches me, that his love reaches me, Everywhere.
Today, that is where I stand. I am ready and willing to continue to study and live by the Rule with its intention to guide me in study of sacred writings, of worship and to work in this Community of Love in making real here the Kingdom of God. Ron Dicks – Ottawa, Canada. Email: rdicks@rogers.com
Clearly, the language of our feelings is a language of symbols. Catch the depth, the sacredness of relationship, 12
Benedictine Oblate Newsletter - No. 11 - January 2010! that we should graciously accept your resignation now that the time has come for it.” Don began meditating in 1979 and started the first group in Ottawa in 1980 and they continue to meet. In May of 1981 Don was received as an oblate by Fr. John. After the Priory closed Don began organising meetings for the local oblate community and continued in this role then became the national oblate coordinator in late 2005 when Hilda Frost OSB resigned. At the John Main Seminar held in Montreal in 2007 I was delighted to meet Don after communicating with him via email for nearly five years. As our emails went back and forth I knew I could rely on Don’s experience, willingness and generous spirit.
Final Oblation - L to R Ron being received by Don Myrick
I was sorry for Don and Therese when Don informed me that it was time for him to step down. I’m most grateful for having worked with Don and wish him and Therese every blessing.
Canada Yesterday 12 Oblates of Ottawa met with Don Myrick, Coordinator for Canada, to welcome Alan and Sandra Dickinson, of Kanata (near Ottawa) as oblate novices. Alan and Sandra have been meditating for some time and were very happy to be taking this step. They discerned their call to oblation with their mentor, Marian Charbonneau. Over the years Marian has been a faithful and committed mentor for many meditators discerning their vocation to the oblate way of life.
Fr. Laurence asked Polly Schofield if she would take on this role and she has graciously accepted. Polly and her husband Mark were among the first oblates of the community in the early days of the priory in Montreal. The Canadian community will continue to be nurtured and I look forward to working with Polly. Trish Panton
BOOK CORNER JOHN MAIN The Expanding Vision
CHARLES TAYLOR, PETER NG, SARAH BACHELARD, YVON THEROUX AND OTHERS Edited by LAURENCE FREEMAN OSB and STEFAN REYNOLDS
This book evolved from the proceedings of the 2007 John Main Seminar, organised by the Montreal Community. By re-presenting Christ’s call to renounce the desire for power by embracing simple poverty of spirit, John Main’s teaching shows us how to remain spiritually alive personally, and to breathe new life into tired religious language and structures. A quarter of a century after his death, John Main: The Expanding Vision celebrates a remarkable legacy of spiritual teaching for our times.
Alan & Sandra with Don and Marian Ron Dicks Email: rdicks@rogers.com
Oblate Coordinator - Canada Because of illness in his family, Don Myrick has found it necessary to step aside as coordinator of the Canadian oblate community. The following tribute to Don by Fr. Laurence speaks for those of us who knew and worked with Don over many years:
Together, the contributors reveal both why John Main’s influence and vision has expanded so widely and deeply, and why it continues to be so profoundly relevant to a world in search of peace, unity and the true understanding of human wealth.
“You have cared for and led the oblate community in Canada very generously and wisely over the years. We are all immensely appreciative of that and it is only right 13
Benedictine Oblate Newsletter - No. 11 - January 2010! In her commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict, Joan Chittister captures this beautifully when she says, “Benedictine simplicity gentles us into the arms of God. Benedictine community supports us on the way to God. Benedictine balance makes a wholesome journey possible.” Amen.
IN LOVING MEMORY !
“When someone we love dies and when we experience their dying we return to our own living with a clearer and purer perception of the true perspective of life simply because we have participated in the death of one we love – in a death of a part of ourselves.
Carole Keating – Houston, Texas, USA Email: momkeating@aol.com
And death itself, especially the death of someone we have loved, teaches us what love teaches us. It reveals to us that the more deeply we love and enter into communion, so the more radically we must become detached and non-possessive.” Community of Love: “Death - The Inner Journey”. John Main OSB
We Loved June Goodbye
June and Bill
On October 5, 2009, June Holly entered into the full presence of God.
Diana Halloran
Her death was the peaceful end that she and Bill had always talked about. It was what Fr. Laurence Freeman would call a “good death”.
27th November 1943 – 18th September 2009 The New Zealand Meditation and Oblate Community have been mourning the loss of Diana Halloran, Oblate and Auckland Meditation Regional Co-ordinator, who died on 18th September 2009.
June always welcomed each of us and made SPACE for each of us and there was always a sense that there was more space if needed. As June became increasingly fragile, we, her Oblate community, drew closer, giving love and support to her and to each other. We stayed in close contact via e-mail and telephone.
Diana was one of those people who was so ready for meditation that when she joined the Massey parish group in West Auckland, from day one she didn’t look back. She began praying the Liturgy of the Hours about ten years ago and when Fr. Laurence received her Final Oblation in 2005 both meditation and the Divine Office were a regular part of her life. When I came to the parish in 2004 she asked if she could join me in teaching meditation at our parish school, and this became her real love.
On Sunday October 4, in her hospital room, we gathered around June for the last time. We made a circle that included June in her bed. We meditated together, June’s breath being the only audible sound. We celebrated Eucharist, after which each person went to her with a touch, a hug, with personal words lovingly whispered into her ear. As one of us said, “We loved June goodbye.”
In June 2008 Diana experienced the death of her fourth daughter, Tiffany, and it was the courage and openness with which she bore this loss that demonstrated the real fruits of her meditation practice. She made no secret of that. At the time of her daughter’s death she herself had been diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent surgery immediately afterwards. The cancer reappeared in the first quarter of 2009 but she remained active till the end. My lasting memory of her was at the National Catholic Education Convention, where we were giving a seminar on meditation with children; the purpose of this work, she said, was to offer the children the opportunity of a real relationship with Christ. Diana had little formal education but she had no difficulty in speaking to diverse
We trust that the experience of companioning our sister and friend to the end of her life was comforting to her, but what we know for sure is that it has been comforting and transformative for us. Our experience with June has turned our grief into gratitude, and it has crystallized our community, which is exactly what June would have wanted. It has also created a deep sense of her continued spiritual presence with us. Furthermore, it has given us a deeper understanding of our Oblate commitment: We live together and we die together. In community, we love each other in this life and, finally, we love each other into the arms of God. 14
Benedictine Oblate Newsletter - No. 11 - January 2010! groups of people about the significance of this work, such was her love for it.
trust that it was part of God’s plan for her. Throughout Mary’s life, her faith was a predominant theme and she was an Extraordinary Minister of the Eucharist in both Tasmania and The Entrance. Mary took her commitment to Oblation seriously and was involved in the teaching of meditation and forming groups with Ernest, where ever they lived.
One of the particular elements of the oblate commitment is: “A sharing in some way in the work of the community to pass on the Christian tradition of meditation”. To offer children the opportunity of a real relationship with Christ was Diana’s gift to New Zealand. Diana is being sadly missed. RIP.
Mary entered Eternal Life surrounded by the love and comfort of her family. Mary is survived by her husband Ernest, and their seven children, twenty three grandchildren and seven great grandchildren.
Peter Murphy, New Zealand Email: petermurphy54@hotmail.com
Ernest Lindfield, The Entrance, NSW, Australia. Email: lindfair@tpg.com.au
Mary and Ernest
Diana Halloran
Mary Lindfield
EDITORIAL.
21st November 1928 – 25th November 2009
In 2009 we mourned the loss of three women of faith and commitment. They were great role models for us. In expressing our gratitude for having known them personally, or through hearing/reading of their work, we hold all whom they loved and who loved them, in prayer.
Mary was born in the London suburb of Islington, coincidentally in the same locality as St. Mark’s Myddelton Square. Mary started meditating in 1986 with her husband Ernest when they were living in Tasmania. They found Christian meditation via a correspondence course on John Cassian and another on the “Cloud of Unknowing”. Mary opened up her home to others who wished to meditate with them. At the time of leaving Tasmania for New South Wales in 1999 there were active meditation groups in Devonport, Sorrell and Wynyard.
It was indeed a wonderful experience to have Fr. Laurence speak at the Congress. The conversations around the table with him at meal times afterwards were appreciated for their teaching opportunities as well as their social aspect. His departure came all too soon, as some delegates were still hoping to meet with him. Carole Keating is now easing into the role of coordinating the Houston Oblate Community tended by June Holly over many years. We thank Carole for accepting this role and offer her our prayerful support.
In 1992 Mary and Ernest attended the National Forum in Melbourne and in time were drawn to the oblate path. They were both received as oblate novices in 1995 and Fr. Laurence received their Final Oblation at Monte Oliveto in June 1996. Shortly after Ernest was appointed as the first Australian oblate Coordinator, and as in all their enterprises, Mary supported Ernest in this role unstintingly until her health declined in 2001. Prior to that, Mary was actively involved in the meditation groups they had started at The Entrance, just north of Sydney. When Mary was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Mary responded to this news with a calm acceptance and
The generosity of Sue Thomson in allowing me to include the article she wrote for her oblate community at Prinknash Abbey is much appreciated. Sue was one of the delegates from the U K who unexpectedly found ‘the pearl of great price’. New friendships formed through common bonds bring their own life, energy and joy. With love and peace, Trish 15
Benedictine Oblate Newsletter - No. 11 - January 2010!
JANUARY!2010!
OBLATE COORDINATORS
!! EDITOR:
!
Trish Panton P.O. Box 555 Pennant Hills, NSW Australia 1715
U.S.A.: Greg Ryan Email: gjryan@optonline.net U.K.: Eileen Dutt Email: eileendutt@yahoo.co.uk
Tel +61 2 9489 1780 Mobile: +61 409 941 605 Email: pantonamdg@ozemail.com.au
NEW ZEALAND: Hugh McLaughlin Email: hungnz1916@yahoo.com
AUSTRALIAN DESIGN:
ITALY: Devis Maccarelli Email: macdev@tiscali.it
Leon Milroy PO Box 246 Uralla NSW 2358 Email: leon.milroy@gmail.com
IRELAND: Rowena O'Sullivan Email: rowenaos@gmail.com CANADA: Polly Schofield Email: mark.schofield@sympatico.ca
Visit the Community’s Website at: http://www.wccm.org Be sure to visit the Oblate pages regularly updated by Greg Ryan.
BRAZIL: Carlos Siqueira Email : !"#$o%@wccm.com.br
!!!!!!!!!!AUSTRALIA and INTERNATIONAL"!!!
Australia’s Website is on http://www.christianmeditationaustralia.org
Trish Panton Email: pantonamdg@ozemail.com.au
!! Please notify the Oblate Coordinator in your country if you have changed any of your contact details.
!!
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CONTACT DETAILS
“The journey into the God who is Love cannot be followed in isolation. We cannot pre-determine the itinerary of our pilgrimage or the conditions of our commitment. Indeed when we find ourselves planning our inner journey, steering a course so as to catch the sights on the way, it is a good sign that we have yet to take our hand off the wheel. We have yet to let the Goddriven direction reveal itself. We have not yet placed our centre of consciousness outside of ourselves. Community is the context in which we learn to do this. We learn directly about the truth and power of othercentredness. Fidelity to the community is our loving openness and freedom with others. It is the complement to our fidelity to the mantra. It is all about generous, magnanimous poverty of spirit.
Each oblate coordinator or their delegate does their utmost to keep accurate records of their respective oblate communities. It is so disheartening when emails are returned and even more so when copies of Via Vitae are ‘returned to sender’. All we ask is, could you please inform your oblate coordinator, listed above, if there are any changes to your contact details. If you do this by email, could you please cc to me also. For those not connected to the internet, perhaps you could ask someone from the community to send an email on your behalf if you do not have the phone number or postal address of your coordinator. In our monastery without walls, it is essential to keep connected. Please spare a minute or two to ensure that your contact details are up to date………………Trish
Monastery Without Walls: The Spiritual Letters of John Main. Edited by Laurence Freeman OSB, Ch. 6
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