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No 16

Notes & News

SINCE the last Newsletter we have had two oblate retreats, a well supported one the weekend after Easter and another mid-week one at the end of April. Naturally there were fewer participants mid-week but it does provide an opportunity for those who cannot come at weekends. So we shall continue to hold a mid-week retreat each year.

We thought it would be a good idea to circulate a brief report after each retreat together with copies of any handouts issued for the benefit of those who were not able to be present. We did this after the last retreat electronically to those who have email addresses and will send paper copies to those without this facility with this newsletter.

Similarly to save paper and postage we shall send an email link to the Oblates Newsletter to those with this facility in future.

Prayer themes

Another proposal which has met with approval is to have a common prayer intention for each month for Oblates to use. The themes suggested so far are:

May - for peace in the Middle East.
June - for fair trading and third world producers.
July - for the youth of today.
August - for peace between India and Pakistan.
September - for all who suffer domestic violence.
October - that all oblates may growin Christ.

Oblation

On April 6 Deacon Peter Lattey made oblation, Michael Gerrity became an oblate novice and Tom Barrow transferred his oblation from Buckfast Abbey. On April 30 Michael Aloysius Blackburn made oblation and Ali Wrigley and Fr Antony Hayne became oblate novices.

Future Retreats

The dates of future retreats this year are June 28 - 30, Sept 27 - 29 and Dec 13 - 15, 2002. As bookings stand at present in the guesthouse we have only one single room available for June and one for December, so if any lady wishes to book one of these please let me know as soon as possible.

Next years dates are Apr 4 - 6, Tues May 13 - Thurs 14, July 4 - 6, Oct 3 - 5, Dec 12 - 14, 2003: I advise early booking.

Oblates Prayer

This prayer was recently placed on the Oblates Forum by John Green an oblate of Ealing Abbey. He uses it on Tuesdays, the day all Oblates are requested to pray for their monasteries.

O Loving God,
I ask your blessing this day
on all the past, present and future
monks, nuns and oblates of Saint Benedict
and especially those with whom we are affiliated.
Help us to become people of prayer and peace.
Though scattered far and wide, help us to be together
in the spirit of your love.
Give us hearts wide enough to embrace each other
as well as those whose lives we touch.
Enable us to listen and to learn from each other
and those around us each day.
May we be models in our homes,
neighbourhoods and communities
of wise stewardship, dignified human labour,
sacred leisure, and reverence for all living things.
Above all, O God,
may our presence among others
be a constant witness of justice,
compassion, and hope to all. Amen.

(Alliance for International Monasticism adapted by Sue Walkoviak Obl.OSB St Scholastica Monastery, Duluth, MN and John Green Obl.OSB, Ealing Abbey, London.)

Oblate Directors Meeting

In June we shall be hosting a meeting of Oblate Directors at Douai. If any oblates have suggestions for topics we should consider please let me know.

Monastic Community

FR Vincent Deane OSB died in Royal Berkshire hospital on April 10. He had been ill for some time. An obituary will appear in the next Douai Abbey Newsletter. It was good to see a number of oblates present at his funeral in the Abbey Church on April 16.

Br Hugh Somerville-Knapman made his temporary profession on April 6, during the Oblates Retreat.

Fr Leo Arkwright OSB has gone to look after the parish of Studley for a few months. Fr Paul Gunter OSB who has been parish priest for the past three years, is to go to Sant’ Anselmo, the Benedictine College in Rome to study Liturgy in the autumn. Before that he has to go to Italy for a ‘crash course’ in Italian. His successor as parish priest will be Fr Alexander Austin OSB who is presently parish priest of Pershore but will not be free to go there until September.

Prayers

Oblate Bill Heaton Armstrong was taken to Berkshire Independent Hospital recently suffering from pneumonia. Please pray for his continued recovery.‡

Recommended Book: The Family Cloister, Benedictine Wisdom for the Home by David Robinson

Crossroad, New York, 2000

MANY Oblates have families of their own, or they participate in those of their children or siblings. This book is for them. The author, David Robinson, is pastor of Community Presbyterian Church, Cannon Beach, Oregon. He and his wife, Trina, have three sons. He maintains that the wisdom of St Benedict writing for his sixth century monastic community is equally applicable for families facing the challenges of today’s world. He uses the Rule of St Benedict as his guide for life in his own family and recommends it to others. Such families he calls ‘cloister families’.

Parenting is a spiritual calling from God: the advice St Benedict has for an abbot in being a father to his monks, is applicable for a parent guiding her or his children. Like the abbot the parent will be accountable before God. Even when divorce has raptured a family, a single parent still has need of Benedict’s advice. A parent will endeavour to love each child with God’s love, adapting to the needs of each, but aware that mistakes by children must not be ignored any more than a gardener may ignore weeds, but that they must be disciplined with kindness and love.

Just as the abbot should consult the whole community if anything important is to be done, so a family should have meetings to ’share our lives, though stories, games, discussions and prayer’. Every family member is encouraged to express views and ideas in family counsel, including the youngest son since ‘the Spirit oftens reveals what is better to then younger’ (RB 3). Having listened to everyone’s view in a context of prayer, the parents have the responsibility to decide what is to be done.

Silence is important for St Benedict. It is important for families too; making time for silent listening to one’s children is essential, just as are shared periods of silence each day, especially at bed time, so that the family can listen to the Lord together.

As a monastery needs an organised prayer schedule, so does a family. A family must make time and place for prayer. Benedict’s ‘vision of praying throughout the day has helped me bring prayer into our busy schedule. During the crazy time just before leaving to school, we stop for a minute and have a short prayer for the day ... We say a prayer together in the car before our children hop out into the next activity. Cloister families make prayer a priority in the home. As we take St Benedict’s simple practice of praying through the day, God’s goodness will flow into our lives ...’

St Benedict stresses the importance of communal meals for the monks. Indeed one of the causes of the collapse of monastic spirituality before the Reformation was the gradual decline of communality at meals, and sociological evidence suggests that the contemporary decline in family meals is a cause of much family trouble and breakup. Family meals are important and Robinson offers some practical advice based on St Benedict. The family can be built up at meals, every member should be involved in the preparation and clearing up. ‘Benedict would warn us today from buying faddish foods, fast foods, and processed foods. Instead, he would focus upon wholesome foods, natural products and simple menus’.

‘Just as Jesus made preparations for his last meal, prepare the home for the evening meal. Turn off the TV; turn off the phone; sit together around the dinner table; join hands in a circle; sing praise to God for his saving grace during the day’. Unhealthy habits are overeating, wasting food, playing with food complaining about food’. These are all avoided by following Benedict’s advice. St Benedict’s view that the utensils of the kitchen are to be treated as vessels of the altar suggest the kitchen and dining-room are set apart as sacred as the high altar.

St Benedict calls private ownership an evil practice. Modern culture views private ownership as a symbol of success. Living as a Christian is necessarily to be counter-cultural. The big danger of private ownership for modern people is that possessions start to own them. ‘The more stuff we carry around the more difficult we make our journey of faith’. Belongings accumulate unless we take care. The Rule of St Benedict helps a family learn the importance of responsible stewardship, and reminds them that the Christian has a duty of sharing the good things of creation with others. For St Benedict the concern is that each person should have all that is necessary for them.

Greed can demand more and more and never be satisfied. As a precaution Robinson says ‘My wife and I go through our home and purge it of unused clothes and objects about once a year’. Whatever is considered unnecessary is given away. This is a way of showing that we depend on God alone, and that we do not worship created things; as well as enabling us to show hospitality to those who have less than ourselves. We can avoid the false security of wealth. How many clothes, how many things do we really need?

‘All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ’ (RB 53). These words are applicable to a family as to a monastery. Hospitality can often upset a family routine, but it is something which we should accept willingly. St Peter teaches Christians ‘Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling’ (1 Pet 49). It is more comfortable to turn our homes into mini-castles and be unwelcoming to guests, but that is not living in a Christ-like way. David Robinson expresses it ‘One of our challenges as parents has been to preserve family unity, while welcoming others into the family circle.’ As a Christian family we have to welcome Christ in the hungry, thirsty and the stranger as well as in our friends and colleagues.

The final chapter is on family growth. Like St Benedict Robinson is a realist, he is fully aware that there can be disunity and quarrels will occur. There will be pain and hurt, but with prayer, love and patience reconciliations can be effected. He is honest about failures in himself and his own family and the need for mutual confession, forgiveness and reconciliation when things have gone wrong. Applying RB 72 the family cloister is to be a centre for service, not for competition, power-grabbing or arrogance. The household must always be placed under the sign of the cross.

Parents must be ready to let go of their children when the time comes. Good parenting will prepare young people to go out and establish their own families. The bond that will continue to unite them is prayer. David Robinson draws on St Benedict’s injunction that ‘all absent members should always be remembered at the closing prayer of the Opus Dei’ (RB 67)

This thoughtful book will be a useful tool for all parents who strive to have Christian families in today’s world.‡

The Family Cloister is available from Douai Abbey Bookshop price £9.99

Saint Anselm 1033 - 1109

CONTINUING our occasional series on Benedictine saints, we turn to St Anselm.

Anselm had been born in Lombardy, but moved first to Burgundy and then to Normandy, where attracted by the reputation of Lanfranc, be became a monk at Bec. He was soon made prior, and lived a scholarly existence, writing two books in 1077-8, Monologion and Proslogion the latter containing his famous ontological proof for the existence of God.

In 1078 he was elected abbot in succession to Herluin, the monastery’s founder. Meanwhile his mentor, Lanfrance had become archbishop of Canterbury in 1070. When Lanfranc died in 1089 the clergy wanted Anselm to be his successor but the king William Rufus left the see vacant. Four years later Anselm was present in England for the foundation of a dependency of Bec at Chester, when the king appointed him and Anselm reluctantly agreed. He was reluctant because he realised there would be a constant battle with the king, about papal and church authority, by temperament he was unsuited to politics and by nature uncompromising when it was a question of principles. Anselm had already recognised Urban II as pope, whilst the king supported the anti-pope Wibert. This conflict caused Anselm to be exiled in 1097. He was able to return home when Henry I became king in 1100, but a disagreement with the king on lay investiture led to another exile in 1103. Pope Paschal advised Anselm to seek a compromise solution with the king which allowed him to return to Canterbury in 1107. The compromise allowed the king to appoint bishops but the church would give them their symbols of office. His lasting mark on the English scene was the erection of the see of Ely.

Anselm was more suited to the life of the monk scholar and teacher than that of archbishop with a poltical profile. His life can be summed up in the phrase he coined ‘faith seeking understanding’.

St Thomas of Canterbury promoted Anselm’s canonisation by Pope Alexander III in 1163, and although no official record of this remains, his feast appears in a Canterbury calendar of 1165. The cult was slow to catch on and was quickly overtaken by that of St Thomas Becket. He was named a doctor of the church in 1720. His feast is kept on April 21.‡

Benedictine Monastic Tradition Flourishes

We are indebited to Oblate Zina Neagle for sending us the following article in Zenit News on line.

ROME, May 21, 2002 (Zenit.org) While traditional religious Congregations still experience the crisis of vocations, the Church is witnessing a growth of new contemplative vocations, particularly in the Benedictine spirituality.

The news is reported in "Vita Pastorale" (Pastoral Life), the monthly magazine of the Pauline Family, directed to Italian parish priests. In its latest issue, the magazine includes a well-documented article stating that the best answer to the "need for a more intense and profound religious life" is spiritual support.

"Truly we are witnessing a monastic explosion of the Benedictine tradition; without exaggeration, we can speak of a kind of globalization of the Benedictine charism. The number of foundations increased during the whole 20th century, with 116 Benedictine foundations alone in the period between 1980 and 2000. An interesting case is that of South Korea, where there is a monastery with over 200 Olivetian nuns."

According to the article's analysis, the phenomenon is complex. On one hand, there is verification of "the decrease in vocations, both priestly and religious, which do not flower without a spiritual atmosphere," and on the other, "the explosion of the monastic and contemplative life."

In order to respond to this new demand, "Vita Pastorale" makes four suggestions: "Spiritual Exercises and retreats; the apostolate of prayer; communities of Christian life; spiritual support not only on the part of priests, and men and women religious, but also of trained laymen."

Of these four ways, the magazine says the "best" is spiritual direction or guidance. "It is an extremely important apostolate because without it, there are no priestly vocations, especially the most suitable for people who suffer the effects of secularization."

"The flowering of spirituality that can be observed at the beginning of the 21st century leads one to hope in the good of the Church and the world and to nourish the certainty that God acts irresistibly in hearts, despite the signs and gestures that might imply lack of confidence," the article concludes. ‡

Reproduced with permission from Zenit Org. Visit their website http://www.zenit.org

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Douai Oblate is the Newsletter for the Oblates of Douai Abbey. It is published at Douai Abbey, Upper Woolhampton, Reading, Berks, RG7 5TQ, phone 0118 971 5338, fax 0118 971 5303, e-mail douaiabby@aol.com May 27, 2002

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Return to Oblates Page  : To Douai Oblate February 2002.

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Douai Abbey Registered Charity No. 236962

29/05/02(GH)

Gervase Holdaway OSB, Douai Abbey, Upper Woolhampton, Reading, Berks. RG7 5TQ