Oblate Day 2020: Fidelity to My Monastic Life
by Sr. Susan Hutchens, Prioress
I believe I first thought about becoming a Sister of St. Benedict when I was about 7 years old. I had a wonderful young Sister as my teacher in 1st grade and another one in 2nd grade, and they became my idols. They seemed to love us as students, to be happy, and joyful and I often thought “that is a great life.”
As time went on, I continued to meet and get to know many more sisters of this community. They gave me encouragement in what I did, and I became aware that there was something about their life for which I longed, and this continued into high school. Even though I had a different community of Sisters in high school, I remained drawn to the Benedictine community. But you know how things are – ideas change. I was a typical teenager and I enjoyed the company of girl-friends and guy-friends – and decided perhaps I should look into that more. I enjoyed my high school years, had great friends who also enjoyed music, studies and fun.
In college I worked hard, and my desire to enter a community waned a bit, but it never totally left me. Having finished college, I began teaching back in my hometown with these sisters again. Providence? Maybe. Again, I saw the fun and joy of life that these sisters seemed to share.
I must give God some credit here though, lest you think this was all about these women. I never stopped wanting to belong to God – through high school, and college. Especially in college, Mass was an important part of my day, as was prayer, and the study of Scripture, even when I didn’t really know where God was calling. In my 4th year of teaching, I decided I had to take the plunge and seek entrance to the community. It seemed that I would not be at peace until I had given religious life a chance. If it weren’t meant to be God’s calling, then it would end. But here I am.
My formation was a bit different than others. I spent my Postulant time as a teacher since I was under contract at that school. Over Christmas vacation, I just moved about 2 miles away, from my parent’s home into the convent with the Sisters and finished out the school year there. There were 8 Sisters living in the group. The majority of the women I had known when I was younger, and admired so much, had left community in the late ‘60s, as did so many others. Except for one, I had not previously known these women with whom I taught. But they were just as fun. I moved to Nauvoo for my Novitiate, and I was the only one in Formation at that time. I taught a math class for 6th graders (my favorite grade); worked in the finance office, served meals, and did many other cleaning duties at the monastery. At the same time reading constantly and attending classes on the Rule and the Vows. Hopefully I was drawing ever closer to God, who was likewise drawing me.
After making my first profession, I was sent to St. John’s University in Collegeville, MN to study theology. That was a difficult year, at least at first. I was nervous and felt very alone, though not actually lonely. I had completed graduate studies in Mathematics, but could I do it in theology? In a few classes I was the only female, but that did not bother me, and I learned I could hold my own there. I studied organ and was a bit snowed by the 3-tiered 85 rank organ, in a very large and public space where guests and students were in and out all day! Eventually, I felt comfortable at St. John’s and loved the classes. It was the classes, attending the Liturgy of the Hours with the monks each day and Eucharist with them, and the graduate community that made me want more – and more – of God, of the Rule, of Benedictine life. All of it. And so – together – God and I moved on.
I made my Perpetual Profession in 1978, and I have never looked back.
What keeps me faithful? The monastic ideal of Conversatio or Fidelity to the Monastic Way of life refers to all the elements of our lives: prayer, common life, humility, obedience, stability, and all other of our values such as hospitality, and stewardship.
Several years ago, I was asked to speak to women getting ready to make their perpetual professions. I used an image of “winding a clock” to describe this fidelity/faithfulness to the life. Each day we make our decision over and over again to continue to be faithful – like winding the clock – just as married couples do, or those living single lives; just as any working person does with a job. Each day we choose prayer, choose community, choose obedience, stability, humility, hospitality and all the values.
The Rule tells us to prefer nothing to the Work of God – the Liturgy of the Hours. First and foremost – it is the Daily prayers that keep me faithful. Both personal prayer, Lectio Divina and the Liturgy of the Hours. I never have to “miss” personal prayer, unless I’m sick or just plain lazy. If I don’t spend that time with God, I have no one to blame but myself. Occasionally I have to miss communal prayers for some reason – but I miss it in my “very inner being” if I am not there. It is the Psalms, the music, the Scripture, and the being together with community – acknowledging that we are the face of Christ for each other, that keeps me faithful. That is one reason I love that our choir chairs face each other, rather than the way most church pews are set up to all face one direction. We face the faces of Christ.
Secondly, it is the community with which I live that keeps me faithful, even though there are times I feel like pulling out my hair because of that very same community. I have said before, and I will continue to say, that we don’t go to God alone. Just recently I read something in a “Soul Searching” column in the NCR by Becky Eldredge in which she said: “Thanks to God for reminding me that none of us is ever alone in finding our way forward in life.” [Becky Eldredge, NCR 9/18-10/1/2020 p. 16]
The community calls me often to let go of my own will and do what together is chosen as best. That is what discernment does for us. The community calls me to live with those chosen by God to be here, even when sometimes I question why? Common life is not easy, nor is married life I’m certain. It requires surrendering one’s own self-will – very difficult for us humans to do! Growing older together, witnessing the final surrender of others as they are called home to God, and rejoicing with others when they make their perpetual professions - those are the things that keep me faithful.
Stability, as defined in the Rule in Chs, 4, 58, and 60, keeps me faithful. Benedict says at the end of Ch 4, on the “Tools of Good Works”: The workshop where we are to toil faithfully at all these tasks is the enclosure of the monastery and stability in the community. Well known to us, the now deceased Abbot Claude Peifer, from St. Bede Abbey, Peru IL, made a distinction between “stability of place” and “stability of heart.” One is defined by physical presence – the place. Stability of heart implies love for one’s monastery and one’s monastic community. It encompasses perseverance in living the cenobitic monastic life, as it is followed in a specific community, by observing poverty, silence, humility, and prayer as that group of monastics does. The place and the life are both significant.
Through fidelity to the monastic life we support one another in our professed lives. We don’t just remain faithful for ourselves, but also to help one another do the same. Community affirms our worth, goodness, and gifts; and sometimes it draws from us gifts which we never realized we possessed. Then we use that goodness and our gifts to support others.
Archbishop Rowan Williams, Welsh Anglican theologian and former Archbishop of Canterbury, has said: “Home is God’s company.”
May your home as a Benedictine Oblate of St. Mary Monastery always be in the company of God. Know that you never travel alone. God travels with you, as do all those who profess in whatever form, a commitment to Benedictine life following the Rule of St. Benedict.