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OBLATES: MUTUAL SUPPORT |
Douai
Oblate
February 2000
No 9
From the Oblate Director
The book was published by Lion in February. The publishers kindly sent me a pre-publication copy. I had been looking forward to reading it, and I was not disappointed. My account of it is included in this issue.
THE quantity of material of interest to Oblates on the internet continues to grow. One new site is that of the Abbey of St Walburga in northern Colorado, which has extensive Oblate pages. The Oblate director, Sister Genevieve Glen OSB writes some excellent articles for their Oblate Newsletter entitled ‘Musings’. In the January issue there appeared the first of a series entitled Lectio Divina for the Jubilee which she has kindly given us permission to reproduce. I think you will find it most helpful.
ANOTHER site I recommend is that of the Starcross Community. This is a lay monastery of Oblates in Sonoma County, California, which is attached to the Cistercian Abbey of New Clairvaux, California. They take their inspiration from the family or house monasteries of the early church, such as that established by St Paulinus (354 - 431) and his wife, Therasia at their home in Nola. The origins of the Starcross community lie in the psychological revolution that was taking place in the sixties. The founder members, Toby and Marti belonged to the ‘Association for Human Psychology’, searching for what it meant to be human, and working in the field of human development. Eventually their searching led them to the Rule of St Benedict and monasticism. In 1971 they formed the ‘Starcross Monastic Community’.and made their monastic vows.The Community has been involved in various types of work, farming, Christmas trees, teaching, then caring for children with AIDS, which took them to Romania and later to Uganda. One striking work is the writing of Haiku, a Japanese poetry form, which is reflective and contemplative.
THE number of people making enquiries about becoming Oblates continues to grow, there will be several new faces at the April retreat. During the Advent retreat David and Lynda Pollard and Nicky Dillon were received as oblates having completed their novitiate year and Sylvia Parkes and Jacqueline Pullen became Oblate novices.
IN the church of St Margaret, Westminster, next to the Abbey, on the first Sunday of each month this year, the sermon at Evensong at 3pm will be about St Benedict. The first, On Janaury 2 was preached by Canon Robert Wright on the title Benedict 2000: St Benedict Speaks to a New Millennium and the second in February was given by the Anglican Bishop of Portsmouth, Kenneth Stevenson on The Abbot: Authority of Affection and Demand. If you are able to get to St Margarets, you might consider going to some of these sermons.
THE dates for the retreats during 2000 are April 7 - 9, July 7 - 9, Sept 29 - Oct 1 & Dec 15 -17. As our numbers are growing, we are grateful for those ladies who are willing to share a room. The need for more guest accommodation is becoming increasingly obvious, not only as oblates increase, but also as our retreat programme develops.
Gervase Holdaway OSB
Lectio Divina for the Jubilee
This article is reprinted from the January edition of the Oblate Newsletter of St Walburga Abbey, Colorado, by kind permission of the Oblate Director Sr Genevieve Glenn OSBNOW that the Jubilee has begun I thought you might like some suggestions for lectio divina and reflection centering on the themes of the Great Jubilee found outlined in Leviticus 25:8-55 and translated into terms that might find some resonance in the modern Benedictine spirit.
The year of Jubilee prescribed by Leviticus was in essence a year-long celebration of the weekly Sabbath. We often call the Sabbath a day of rest, and so it is; or a day of worship, and so it is; or a day to be kept holy, and so it is. St Benedict gathered all three of these ideas together in his vision of the Lord’s Day as a day for immersion in the Word of God, which is, in the monastic tradition, the fountain of peace, the inspiration and content of worship, and the source of holiness.
This year of Jubilee, then, might be for Benedictines a year for deepening the habit of returning often to the scriptures as the primary school in which the monastic imagination is formed. Although that requires a discipline that can seem more like work than rest, it is in fact a restorative more powerful than many of those marketed by and for our restless, hungry, thirsty world. There is a telling little phrase in Matthew’s gospel: [Jesus] drove out the spirits by a word (Mt 8:16). One of the central concerns of traditional monastic spirituality has always been the discernment and choice of spirits, those forces that move us from the sometimes inaccessible depths of our being as well as from the world around us. The monastic habit of praying the scriptures during the Liturgy of the Hours and in lectio as well as allowing scriptural phrases to percolate through the mind all day long is intended to keep the imagination busy with the Word to the exclusion of all those spirits that drag us away from God: criticism of others, complaints, and the whole traditional list of pride, anger, greed, lust, vanity, restlessness, and so on. This is a very concrete and practical way to allow Christ to continue the redemptive work of driving out [evil] spirits with a word! The result? St Paul caught it in words that haunt us still: Then the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will stand guard over your mind and heart in Christ Jesus. (Phil 4:7).
To get from here to there, the Jubilee offers several steps: atonement, return to one’s own land, remission of debts, freeing slaves and allowing the land to lie fallow. In future issues of the newsletter, we will take a look at each of these themes in relation to Benedictine life today.
© Abbey of St Walburga, Virginia Dale CO
Benedictine Saint: St Walburga
It seems a good idea to include from time to time in our Newsletter an article about a Benedictine saint. Since we are including the article from the St Walburga Abbey Newsletter, it is appropriate to begin with St Walburga, especially as her feast falls on Feburary 25.ST Walburga was one of the Anglo-Saxon Benedictines who were engaged in missionary work in Germany in the eighth century, the most famous of whom, of course, was St Boniface.
Walburga was born in Devon, the daughter of a West Saxon chief about 710. Because of her royal family connections she is often depicted with the Plantagenet coat of arms.
Walburga was sent to be educated at the double monastery of Wimbourne in Dorset where she became a nun. (A double monastery was one that included a community of nuns alongside a community of monks.) St Boniface, who was a relative, called for more recruits to go to help with the evangelisation of Germany. Two of Walburga’s brothers, St Willibald and St Wynnebald had already gone there in 739. So it is not surprising that Walburga along with some companion nuns answered the call. Among the companions was Hugeburc who wrote the ‘Life of St Wynnebald’, which is a source of information about Walburga herself. There is a tradition that before leaving England the party visited Minster Abbey in Kent. This is quite probable, given that the abbess, Eadburga was a friend and correspondent of St Boniface, and it was very close to a possible port for beginning a Channel crossing.
On the continent they travelled first to Mainz where they were welcomed by Boniface himself. They were then sent to Tauberbischofsheim where Walburga preached and developed her medicinal skills. After two years she was sent to Heidenheim where a monastery of monks had been established by her brothers Wynnebald and Willibald, who was bishop of Eichstätt. With her nuns she turned it into a double monastery, the only one known to have existed in Germany. Heidenheim followed the Rule of St Benedict and became an important centre, not only for the propagation of the Rule, but also of evangelism and prayer.
After St Wynnibald died in 761, Walburga became the sole superior of both nuns and monks. According to Hugeburc’s ‘Life of Wynnebald’ Heidenheim was a difficult mission field with ‘much pagan depravity, many idolaters,’ and adversaries ‘prepared to murder and burn’. Besides the mission work, there were also the difficulties of being superior of a monastery of men, who would not be accustomed to be ruled by a woman, double monasteries being unknown in Germany. It was quite an extensive undertaking, including workshops, mill and dairy farms. Little detail is known of Walburga’s rule, except that she was a "sensitive vulnerable person who knew how to be patient and forgiving. She must have radiated kindness and brightness" (Brigitta zu Münster). Thus arose the legend of the light miracle. When the door keeper of the Abbey Church refused to light the way for Walburga and her nuns on a dark night, she herself streamed with a miraculous bright light.
Walburga died in 779, and was buried at Heidenheim. After the death of St Willibald in 787, his successor, Bishop Gerhoh transformed the monastery into a house for the Eichstätt chapter of secular priests. It did not become a Benedictine Abbey again until 1150.
Meanwhile in 870 Walburga’s relics were translated to her brother’s shrine at Eichstätt, where her cult took root and she was honoured as a saint. Medicinal oil flowed from the rock around her tomb, (it continues to do so until the present day) which became a centre of pilgrimage. In 893 her grave was opened and relics were spread around in various places, which also became centres of her cult.
At Eichstätt a Benedictine monastery was founded in 1035 and from that time Benedictine nuns have always been present there. Even when the monastery was secularised in 1806 the nuns were permitted to stay until their deaths, but before that happened Ludwig I restored the monastery in 1835.
The monastery again became an abbey in 1914, and much of its importance was regained, so much so that it was the abbess of Eichstätt who was chosen to negotiate the surrender of the town to the Americans in 1945.
The Abbey of Eichstätt is also important because in 1851 Benedicta Riepp and two nuns were sent to the United States to help the missionary work of Boniface Wimmer OSB. From them stem the vast family of monasteries of Benedictine women in the USA, including St Walburga’s Abbey, now at Viginia Dale, Colorado, but first at Boulder Co.
Also in 1937, a group of nuns was sent from Eichstätt to restore Minster Abbey in Kent, thus honouring the original missionary journey of St Walburga.
Amazing Grace by Kathleen Norris
This is not a book to hurry through, each chapter requires to be savoured, and re-read: a good source for lectio. A look at the chapter titles gives an idea of the scope, apart from the obvious jargon words like Eschatology, AntiChrist, Salvation, Incarnation, Auuniciation, Righteous, Dogma, there are also Conversion: My Ebeneezer, The Scary Stuff, Inheritance, What Religion Were You Raised in, Where are You Now, to mention but a few.
Kathleen Norris was brought up a Christian. On both sides of her family there had been ministers in the Methodist and Presbyterian Churches, but she says "My confirmation classes in the Congregational church of the 1950s did little to prepare me for the idea of conversion as a lifelong process". Like so many young people she found it easy to give up religion at college. It was not until she encountered Benedictines, by accident, in her mid-thirties that she realised conversion was an on-going process, not a once-for-all event, that had been alive but latent all the time. Gradually she came back to religion, became an oblate of Assumption Abbey, North Dakota, and returned to her Presbyterian roots. Benedictine spirituality is older than all the present divisions of Christianity, it is open to all, Catholic and Protestant alike.
In the chapter on the Annunciation the study of Mary’s response ends. "I treasure the story because it forces me to ask: When the mystery of God’s love breaks through into my consciousness, do I run from it? Do I ask of it what it cannot answer? Shrugging, do I retreat into facile clichés, the popular but false wisdom of what ‘we all know’? Or am I virgin enough to respond from my deepest, truest self, and say something new, a ‘yes’ that will change me forever?"
Every chapter contains something to meditate upon. Consider this gem from the chapter Christian: "I often think that if I’m a Christian, I’ll be the last to know." Under the title Seeking, we find "Over time, I have learned two things about my religious quest: First of all, that it is God, who is seeking me, and who has myriad ways of finding me".
The chapter Intolerance/Forbearance has an important lesson in view of certain recent public controversies, "when I first encountered the word ‘homosexual’ when I was eight or nine years old, I had asked my mother what it meant. To her eternal credit, she not only defined the term for me, but when I rejected the concept as ‘yucky’ - anything requiring kissing was ‘yucky’ to me then - she infomed me that I already knew some homosexuals. They were friends of my parents, musicians, in the Chicago Symphony who had lived as a couple for many years. ... I have always been grateful that my mother gently allowed me a vision of a much larger and more various world than I could have imagined at the age of nine". And in the monastic context she quotes one elderly monk whose experience was typical "What is it to me that the man I have lived next door to for thirty years, whose homilies have benefited me, who is my favorite bridge partner - what can it possibly matter to me that he is homosexual?"
Grace is a short chapter, less than two pages, but especially rich, it ends "maybe that’s one reason we worship - to respond to grace. We praise God not to celebrate our own faith but to give thanks for the faith God has in us. To let ourselves look at God, and let God look back at us. And to laugh, and sing, and be delighted because God has called us his own."
This is a book full of wisdom, it will deepen the spirituality of anyone who approaches it and digests it with an open mind and heart, seeking to grow in love, a book to return to again and again.
Amazing Grace is available in the Abbey Bookshop price £16.99.
From the Rule of St Benedict
All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, for he himself will say: I was a stranger and you welcomed me. ....All humility should be shown in addressing a guest on arrival or departure. By a bow of the head or by a complete prostration of the body, Christ is to be adored because he is indeed welcomed in them. RB 53 1-2, 6-7
revised 24/07/01 WS(GH)