|
Back to WELCOME and INDEX |
Back to 1. WHAT WE DO |
Back to 1.4 OBLATES: MUTUAL SUPPORT |
|
|
Back to WELCOME and INDEX |
Back to 1. WHAT WE DO |
Back to 1.4 OBLATES: MUTUAL SUPPORT |
What St Benedict says about the abbot
Blessed Hugh Faringdon - Last Abbot of Reading
Recommended Book - The Rule of St Benedict - Insights for the Ages by Joan Chittister
During the past year, I have been working on our parish of Ormskirk in Lancashire, which has a large and thriving congregation, and it has always struck me that all the people on the parishes which the community looks after are, in a sense, oblates. Of course, they don't make a formal promise of oblation, but they are dependent for their spiritual nourishment on Douai priests and over the years have formed strong attachments to Douai. Above all, their prayer is, like your own, joined to ours, and so the Word of God is carried on in innumerable places and times. I look forward to meeting those oblates who visit Douai, and those oblates who are in far distant places are assured of my prayers.
Geoffrey Scott OSB
Return to Index
Bishop Crispian Hollis will confer the abbatial blessing on Abbot Geoffrey on November 14 at 11am. We hope as many of you as possible will be able to be present on what will be a special occasion in the life of the monastic community.
Interest in the oblates continues to grow, so much so that with only seven rooms in our Guesthouse, we are not able to accommodate all the ladies who wish to stay during our Oblate retreats.
It has been suggested that in addition to the residential retreats we should hold day or half day meetings. This would be useful to those who live reasonably close and for those who are not easily able to spend a night away from home. Most monasteries hold such meetings, indeed some also hold area meetings away from the monastery for people living at a distance. St Meinrad Archabbey, where I spent my sabbatical, has twenty-one such local area groups in different parts of the United States. As our numbers grow we may perhaps do something similar.
I am suggesting that we hold a meeting at Douai for those Oblates who are able to Oblate Director come on Sunday February 7. We will begin with Mass at 11.30, and conclude with Vespers at 6.15pm. If everyone brings food for a shared lunch, we shall not need to worry about numbers and there will be no need to let us know if you are coming. It is something which is worth trying.
Oblate Novice Benjamin Standish ask prayers for his mother, who died in September after suffering a series of strokes. She had been ill for a number of years. We hear that Benjamin is hoping to rejoin the monastic community in the near future.
We would also ask your prayers for Geoffrey Sargeant, a good friend of the community, who is seriously ill with a sickness the doctors are unable to identify. This is a particularly difficult time for him and his wife, Doris.
Wishing you all a joyful celebration of the Feast of All Saints and a prayerful All Souls Day.
Gervase Holdaway OSB
Return to Index
The abbot is instructed to lead by example rather than word, he is to be a role model for his community. He does not rule by instilling fear or by making automatons of his monks. Rather he is a father who leads his children towards mature adulthood, not by forcing them into his own image and likeness, but by enabling them to make mature decisions with a free, but well informed, conscience. St Benedict's teaching for the abbot would make a good guide for parents bringing up their children.
The abbot has to live-out the ideals he would instill in his monks, not just give orders. He is not above the community but at the centre of it. This century has seen enough of blind obedience to know how humanly destructive it can be. The monastic is not called to that. In a recent commentary on the rule, Joan Chittister OSB writes 'Autocrats and militarists and spiritual charlatans and abusive parents and corporate moguls want people under them to obey laws from which their exalted positions hold them exempt. Benedict says that the only authentic call for obedience comes from those who themselves demonstrate the value of the law.' (The Rule of Benedict. Insights for the Ages page 40). How often have you heard a parent tell a child to do or not do something 'because I say so'. That is never a good reason for doing anything. Leadership is quite different from authoritarianism. St Benedict makes that quite clear. In his day he was going against the trend, a trend that is still around.
Favouritism is anathema for Benedict's abbot. Everyone is to be valued equally as a person, not for social status or wealth or education. The order of the monks is the order in which they arrive at the monastery. Too often in contemporary society, ecclesiatical as well as secular, people curry favour with whoever is in charge in order to get preferment so we say 'it's who you know that counts'. This is quite contrary to St Benedict's thinking, where everyone is valued, and friendship and kinship are not a way to power. This, of course, is plain gospel teaching, but then St Benedict's Rule is just spelling out the application of Gospel values.
Monastics are first and foremost people, individuals. The abbot has always to nurture the individual, he is not a commander of an army, making sure that everyone conforms to a single pattern. St Benedict tells his abbots that they must always remember what they are called - 'father'. They must 'vary with circumstances .... at times stern, at times devoted, and tender.' The abbot must adapt according to the temperament of each individual. He cannot treat everyone the same, although he must treat everyone fairly and equally.
Too many people in positions of authority spend all their energies in creating efficient organisations. People are expendable, the good of the organisation is supreme, its growth and wealth are all that is important. St Benedict's concept of leader could not be more different. A monastery is not called to be an efficient machine, it does not have to be rich and powerful, it has to be a place where everyone can grow and develop spiritually, it has to be a school of the Lord's service.
The abbot has to strive to 'be loved rather than feared' and to 'let mercy triumph over judgment'. These are not characteristics which are cultivated by leaders in the contemporary world. The rule excludes excitable, anxious, extreme, obstinate, jealous or overly suspicious persons from bring abbot, since such people are 'never at rest'. It would be impossible for people to grow under such an abbot. Rather St Benedict says 'they must show consideration and forethought' and so 'they must so arrange everything that the strong have something to yearn for and the weak nothing to run from'. In the words of Isaiah the 'dimly burning flame must not be quenched, the bruised reed not broken'. In many ways this is the very antithesis of modern leadership in practice, if not in theory. The manager too often treats people as machines, if they cannot produce results fast enough and to sufficiently high a standard they are made redundant, discarded like an out-of-date machine. The tempo of modern commercial life demands this. Mankind desperately needs St Benedict's wisdom to humanise life by insisting on the spiritual values without which one cannot be fully human.
St Benedict's chapters on the abbot would make useful study for anyone aspiring to leadership in business or politics. St Benedict was revolutionary in his own day, counteracting the Roman tradition of the absolute power, even over life and death, of the paterfamilias. In our present day world, when the record of a Pinochet or an Amin or many another ruler is examined, or the conduct of some leaders of industry is seen, then we see the need for Benedict's spirit. Leadership exists not for its own sake, but solely for the sake of those who are led. It is possibly the most complete ministry, total service of others, leading them to God.
To quote Joan Chittister again, the chapter on the abbot is 'a model for businesses and families and institutions that would change the world. It is also a model for leaders who become so consumed in leadership that they themselves forget what it means to live a rich and holy life' (op cit page 47).
Jesus said 'You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognise as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many' Mk 10:42-45. Jesus is the model for Benedict's abbot and the model for for all true leadership.
Return to Index
Hugh Cook came to be named after his birth place Faringdon, Berkshire (now Oxfordshire), and was educated at Reading Abbey. He became a monk and on the death of Abbot Thomas Worcester in 1520 he was elected abbot, the election being confirmed by King Henry VIII. Abbot Hugh was a man of strong character. He maintained strong monastic discipline in the community. Reading was not one of the lax monasteries. As a mitred abbot Hugh had to play a prominent part in State affairs and had a seat in the House of Lords. He was on good terms with the king who referred to him as 'his own abbot'. At his election and later when the king was hunting in Berkshire he sent him presents of 'great pykes, great carps, salmon, sturgeon and other fish.
Abbot Hugh was staunchly opposed to the new heresies, especially Lutheranism. One of his monks was Dom John Holyman, also strongly opposed to Lutheranism, who had been a fellow of New College, Oxford, before becoming a monk. In 1530 he was due to preach a University sermon for his doctor's degree; Abbot Hugh asked that he be permitted to preach the sermon in London instead, so as to counter the growing tide of Lutheranism there.
Faringdon signed the articles of faith in 1536 which acknowledged the royal supremacy of the church, but according to a contemporary writer he had added in conscience 'of the temporal church but not of the spiritual'. Moreover he maintained he would pray for the Pope as long as he lived and would say Mass for him once a week.
Politically Faringdon supported the King and contributed men to fight against the Northern rebellion of 1536, the Pilgrimage of Grace, although some townspeople of Reading had been in touch with the leader of the rebellion, Robert Aske. In December 1537 a rumour reached Reading that the king was dead, a rumour Faringdon repeated in letters to some of his neighbours. This could be construed as treason. However, the king graciously pardoned him.
The lesser monasteries had been dissolved by Act of Parliament of 1536. In August 1538, Dr John London, royal commissioner for the visitation of monasteries under the authority of Thomas Cromwell arrived in Reading. On September 13 Grey Friars, Reading, was surrendered to the crown: on September 17 the shrine of Our Lady at Caversham was destroyed: in both cases the riches were confiscated by the crown, the silver statue of Our Lady was nailed in a chest and sent by barge to Cromwell's house in London. At the same time Dr London visited the Abbey and made an inventory for Cromwell. The abbot was not willing to surrender the abbey.
On May 19, 1539 an act granting to the king all abbeys which 'hereafter shall happen to be dissolved, suppressed, renounced, relinquished, forfeited...or shall happen to come to the King's Highness by Attainder of Treason'. Faringdon still refused to surrender the abbey, so a charge had to be invented. The charge was loyalty to the Holy See which implied a denial of the King's supremacy and was therefore equivalent to treason. Accordingly Faringdon was arrested on September 17, and imprisoned in the Tower of London.
In the Tower were also the Abbots of Glastonbury and Colchester, and they communicated and encouraged each other by means of a blind harpist called William Moore. As a peer of the realm, charged with treason, Faringdon should have been brought before parliament. No trial took place, only questioning in the Tower which may have produced incriminating evidence.He was sent back to Reading for a public trial. It was to be a show trial, the result was determined beforehand. In a note in Cromwell's own hand is written “The Abbot of Redyng to be sent down to be tried and executed at Redyng with his complices...see that the evidence is well sorted and the indictments well drawn.
In 1960 the official report of the trial and indictment was discovered in the Public Record Office and it is now clear that he was tried on November 13, 1539 in the great hall over the Gateway of the Abbey on a charge of high treason for denying the royal supremacy of the English Church. (This great hall still exists). The abbot was allowed no defence and a sworn jury declared that he was guilty of the charges. Two others, John Enyon who was a priest at St Giles Church, Reading, a friend of Faringdon's and John Rugge (or Rudge) a former prebendary of Chichester, who had been living in retirement in the Abbey were also found guilty with him. All three were sentenced to the cruel death of a traitor, that of hanging, drawing and quartering, no exception being made in the abbot's case, despite his being a lord spiritual of the realm. The exact site of the executions which took place the next day, November 14, is not known, but it was in or near the abbey. Marillac, the French ambassador, writing to Francis I on November 30, said the abbot's remains were hung up in chains.
Hugh Faringdon, along with John Enyon and John Rugge, and Richard Whiting, abbot of Glastonbury and Thomas Beche (or Marshall), abbot of Colchester were beatified in 1895. The Ward Vestments at Douai, which will be worn at Abbot Geoffrey's blessing were made to commemorate this event and images of all five martyrs, along with many others, are embroidered on them.
Return to Index
Return to Index
revised 24/07/01 WS/(GH)