Reflection: Vigil of St. Benedict, March 21, 2022
By Sr. Susan Hutchens, Prioress
For my Lenten Reading, I am completing the latest of Fr. Michael Casey’s books entitled Coenobium: Reflections on Monastic Community. It has taken me a long time to get through it – not the easiest of readings on community. But certainly very thorough. I began this book long before Lent, because it seemed appropriate for our Life Formation study for this year. Casey covers so many aspects of our lives as we dedicate them to seeking God in this way of life. He speaks of being together in an intentional community, following a call from God, and ultimately journeying to God throughout this life.
We have all had the opportunity throughout our years in community, to take classes on the Rule of Benedict, to read many books and articles on the Rule, and to find in them various interpretations of the Rule.
As I reached the end of this book, I found myself asking the question: what is the one thing Benedict wanted most to accomplish in and through monastic communities?or by living the monastic life according to his Rule, whether lived in community or outside of it?
My first answer was that he wanted us to “Seek God.” Millions of people seek God in their lives, through their faith communities, their churches, mosques and temples, and they don’t live in monastic communities or follow a monastic Rule. By itself, seeking God can be done in innumerable ways, by everyone, even those who aren’t “churched”.
Fr. Casey put it this way:
“One who catches a glimpse of God begins a journey to find God, less as an external object to be sought than as an energy to be absorbed. In a sense, the person is not searching for God but seeking to become like God, to be transformed by the divinizing light into a new creature.”
A life as a monastic is a unique way to do this. For each of us, perhaps, the only way. It requires giving oneself completely to God’s self-revelation: in each other, in what we do, and in our very togetherness. Together we are shaped by the lives of one another.
We are on this life-long journey to God, and through God as we meet God in each other. God’s divinity comes to us through the Word in Scripture, through all created things, and through one another as we share how that Word impacts and molds our lives.
Each day let us rejoice that God has called us to this path on the journey, to this community, to following this Rule of life. Then one day we will each be a new creature “transformed by the divinizing light” as together we join the everlasting life of eternity with God.